stan,
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I completely fail to see the parallel. The guy is repeating part of Petraeus's recommendations and assessments and at the same time calling him dead wrong.
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actually, the rhetoric is the same but the solutions they advocate are different. petraeus believes that by instituting security around the country, it gives the iraqi leadership breathing space (by reducing the need for revenge-attacks) and time to come up with a political solution, thereby largely solving the iraq problem. thus, keep as many troops in country as possible.
biden believes that american intervention causes over-dependence, and that by threatening/carrying out withdrawal, it will force the iraqis to become more self-sufficient (thus his talk of local control).
i think a good strategy might be to utilize sections from both methods. in the short-term, keeping as many troops as possible (there will be a rather significant drawdown in spring 2008 due to manpower issues anyway), but keep the iraqis in the dark as to when the withdrawal is going to happen, or how it will be carried out. we don't want to cause overdependence, but neither do we want a wholesale power struggle as we see in the british withdrawal from basra.