Time to draw down troop levels in Iraq (US Rep Jim Cooper D-TN)

[struggle4progress]

There is a big fight going on inside the Pentagon between the highest levels of the Army. It is a gentlemanly fight — no one is killing each other — but the stakes are very high. The outcome does affect how many more soldiers will die ...

Petraeus and Cody are not trash-talking each other but, within the confines of the Pentagon, they might as well be. Petraeus is the rising star who wants to prove that the surge is working (or, at least, that a longer surge could work) and probably wants Cody's job. Cody is an older warhorse in charge of the entire Army, and on the verge of retiring. Petraeus is so fit he can outrun his troops; Cody is built out of concrete blocks.

I think Cody is right: We should continue drawing down our troop levels. Petraeus is an amazing general — he himself is on his third tour in Iraq — but he is probably exaggerating our success in Iraq. His phrasing is careful so you might not have noticed that his surge has been bribing 91,000 Iraqi insurgents to stop murdering our troops. He calls them "Sons of Iraq" and is paying them three times the Iraqi per capita income. That is the equivalent of paying gang members in the U.S. $100,000 a year not to shoot policemen.

Cody is less political. He wants to go fishing, not angle for another job. He oversees all of our soldiers' and their families' needs, not just those in Iraq. He is not prone to exaggerating how many Iraqi troops we have trained, how well they fought in Basra, or how few have deserted so far ...

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080418/OPINION01/804180418/1008