Bush Agrees to Time 'Horizon' on Iraq

According to the latest news, The White House says President Bush has agreed to set a "general time horizon" for deeper U.S. troop cuts in Iraq. That's a dramatic shift from his once-ironclad unwillingness to talk about any kind of deadlines. However, there is no indication of what kind of timetables might be envisioned; nevertheless, this has been long awaited and perhaps the war in Iraq won't be a leading issue in the election this November.

Bush Considers Increasing Pace of Iraq Pullout

The progress on the ground in Iraq might have a greater effect on the November elections that originally expected, even just days ago with the announcement that we can anticipate the withdrawal of troops by mid-2009 regardless of who is the president next year.

Well, according to the latest news, President Bush may begin withdrawing some troops from Iraq as early as this September (good political strategy) and the “political benefit might go more to Mr. McCain than Mr. Obama. Mr. McCain is an avid supporter of the current strategy in Iraq. Any reduction would indicate that that strategy has worked and could defuse antiwar sentiment among voters.”

With Obama shifting to the center on this issue and "refining" his earlier committment to immediately withdraw troops, it would be interesting to see how it would effect voter sentiment, particularly the Catholic Left should the war in Iraq have the same general direction regardless of whom you vote for.

The War In Iraq Over By Mid-2009?

The war in Iraq has been advertised by the media as a central issue in the November elections. I certainly don’t disagree. This war is a critical issue that brings to mind a host of issues—human rights, the morality of preemptive war, the American interventionist mentality, and our moral obligations to the Iraqi people now as we try to leave more justly than we entered.

Sen. Barack Obama has criticized the war from the beginning. Despite his most recent "refinements" of that issue, he boasts that his plans to exit Iraq have not changed and he will began to withdraw troops immediately once he takes office. This is certainly sweet talk for voters who are anti-war that disapprove of the Bush Administration’s philosophy on foreign policy and their method of combating the war on terror.

A recent development on the ground in Iraq may cancel out or at least downplay the significance of the Iraq issue in the November elections. Essentially, regardless of who wins the presidential office, it looks like that the war will end either way “by mid-2009.”

From Yahoo! News:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. ground troops in Iraq will be mostly finished with security operations by the middle of 2009, the senior U.S. Army officer in charge of training Iraqi forces said on Wednesday.

"The ground forces will mostly be done by the middle of next year," Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik told the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.

That could be between April and August, Dubik said.

Dubik declined to say when all U.S. forces, including naval and air forces, would be finished with Iraqi combat operations. He said that would depend on when the Iraqi government completes certain tasks, such as purchasing its own aircraft.

Dubik said in January that Iraqi forces could take over security in all of the country's 18 provinces by the end of 2008.

Dubik's comments come as officials in Iraq raise the prospect of setting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces as part of negotiations over a new security deal with Washington. U.S. officials have said they oppose setting dates for withdrawal.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Kristin Roberts)