TODAY’S FRONT PAGE of the Washington Post carries a story about a classified memo from Britain’s defense minister to Prime Minister Tony Blair detailing “emerging U.S. plans” to reduce by half the number of soldiers in Iraq by next summer. This would leave American troop levels at around 66,000. The Pentagon has denied there are any fixed plans as yet and reductions will depend on conditions in Iraq.
Although the Pentagon is surely accurate in saying that no final determination to reduce troop levels has been made, it is almost certainly the case that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been pressuring the military to do precisely that. Indeed, we have also heard that the secretary has told his new Afghan commander, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, to try to get U.S. forces substantially out of Afghanistan within two years.
