Beating Me To The Thought.

Donald Sensing at Winds of Change & Demosophist engage in speculating a deeper strategy to the shot that launched the Murtha Maneuver.

It is something that struck me as plausible. First, all know a third Iraqi election is in the offing and from a wide variety of open source material we know the Pentagon is planning on reducing overall troop strength in Iraq. I went to my usual sources for more information on this and there is nothing very cut and dried. However, I heard one report about a division coming out of Iraq and only one brigade of the division that was scheduled to replace the outgoing division is going to be in Kuwait the other two brigades are not deploying.

The upshot is US troop numbers are going to be reduced. It is obvious we can not be there in large numbers forever.

This all got me to thinking. Murtha and some of the other Dems may be talking about troop withdrawal right now in order to get ahead of the curve so to speak. They can see the plans to start drawing down the number of our soldiers so they start making noise about bring the troops home, that way they can attempt to take credit spurring the Bush administration to get the troops home. It was a thought.

I don't buy it. Everyone can see if things start to get bad again then the flow of troops will reverse the Democrats can not bring sufficient pressure to bear at the moment after all how many Democrats voted for Murtha's resolution (don't tell me it wasn't his, the exact text may have not been Murtha's but the sentiment was)?

Demosophist too doubts the Democrats are engaging in a deep ruse

2. It'd be easy to deflect such a strategy by simply observing, loudly and repeatedly, that what the President preserved was our discretion, in case conditions demanded a different draw-down rate. Yes, he always intended to draw down. He just wanted to keep our options open, as would any good Commander in Chief. Therefore a fixed draw-down wasn't a bad plan because the rate was either too fast or too slow, but because it was fixed: non-modifiable.

Source: The Jawa Report - Are the Democrats Fox Crazy?


Perhaps the Left has been as successful as they claim to be in planting doubt (or perhaps FUD) into people's minds about the reasons for going into Iraq. However, most people know what cutting and running means. Osama Bin Laden and his cohorts certainly know what it means.