I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a startling prediction: Combat operations (as we know them) will end in Iraq in 2008!
Bold, isn’t it?
But I can tell that you’re probably not convinced that I know something that all the 170,000-some-odd U.S. military personnel; all the brass hats and the suits at the Pentagon; and all the chicken-hawks at the White House (who ducked out of their own military service when they were of age) don’t know about what’s going on in Iraq. I don’t. But, the word is that the President has already started floating trial baloons, such as a transition to “a different configuration” in Iraq after the surge is completed this summer.
I just know that whatever happens on the ground, they are going to “say” something different about what’s going to be going on in Iraq for the foreseeable future. They are going to “say” that combat operations are going to end, and that as many as 50,000 troops will come home. Start planning the parades. Continue reading