I agree that the numbers don't work to ever increase troop strength in Iraq again and reduce tour lengths to 12 months. The 12 month tour length limits forces in Iraq to about 140,000. More troops (perhaps another BCT) could be sent to Afghanistan because the Army is expanding the number of BCTs it has available for deployment. It and the Marine Corps are finally getting bigger, so they can sustain more deployments.
The Iraqi's have come a LONG way toward politcial reconciliation. It is a myth that they have not. They have passed much more important legislation in the past year than the U.S. congress. Provincial elections are planned, deBatthification law passed, their budget passed, etc. The sole remaining major obstacle is the oil revenue sharing bill, but even that is showing new life after Maliki demonstrated to the Kurds and Sunnis that he is willing to fight the Shiite militias in Basra. Not an act of an Iranian sympathizer. He is also supporting efforts to root out Iranian networks in Iraq.
The U.S. will be in Iraq as long as Iraq wants us to be. Think Germany, Japan, and Korea. This would be good for the U.S., but unlikely to occur, since the Iraqi government simply does not want to have us cramp their style and look like they are a puppet. They will kick us out when they are confident that their own security forces can act effectively to preserve the prosperity of the state without U.S. direct aid. It is hard to predict when this will be, but with Iraqi security forces growing past 600,000, and increasing its combat effectiveness, I would say the U.S. will be gone in no more than five years, with most of the focus during that time being developing logisitical systems for the Iraqies.
We were not better off with Saddam. He posed no strategic threat to Iran after Desert Storm, his WMD bluff was to keep Iran from invading him in his permanently weakened state. Never ending U.N. sanction enforcement operations were not a good deal for the U.S. (people forget that Navy and Air Force have been at war with Iraq for 18 years, not just 5).
The ability to find Osama is limited by respect for national sovreignty of Pakistan, not money or troops. More troops would be helpful in Afghanistan NOW that the taliban has reconstituted, but this has only been the case since 2006, and their reconstitution was not pre-ordained.
The Kurds and Shiites of Iraq were virtual slaves to the Sunnis under Sadaam. Now they have a chance to determine their own destiny. A peace with servitude is not an acceptable peace. I have no sympathy for the Sunnis, they supported Sadaam and all his abuses.
Sadaam posed a threat because he had the potential to proliferate WMD to proxy forces who would have no restraint in using them against the US. He had every PROVEN intention of reinstating his WMD programs as soon as he could get away with it. It is folly to think that a dictator who's every dream of conventional conquest has been foiled, who has been at war with the U.S. since 1991, and is sitting upon a wrecked economy, would just passivly sit in his palace and not take measures to threaten the U.S. with proxy forces that had proven so effective on 9/11.
Iraq subsidizes it's gasoline price. It also rations gasoline. How a government spends is money (which almost totally comes from oil sales) is its own business. I WOULD like to see the start of some monetary support from the Iraqi government to offset the cost of US operations in Iraq. Japan pays over half the cost of the US presence in their country, it is reasonable to expect that the government of Iraq start paying some of our costs now that they are flush with cash from oil sales.
It seems like there is a new enemy in Iraq every month because there are SO MANY enemies in Iraq. It is the central front in the battle for the future of the middle east, it is strategically vital ground, so everyone is fighting over it. There was an Iraqi Sunni insurgency (largely defeated), and Al Queda insurgency (formerly allied with the Sunni insurgency, now largely defeated but still capable of killing), Shiite militias (at least two major militias), one under Sadr, supported by the Iranian Qom force of the Republican Guards. The fight has shifted amongst these forces, but the government has survived and increased its power and the US has gotten smarter in how it fights. The Sunnis are now allies against Al Queda, and it looks like the government is finally serious about fighting the militias (not just the US), with the full support of the Kurds and Sunnis who hate the Shiite militias.
The war is not over, but victory in Iraq is possible, with victory being an Iraq capable of providing for its own internal security (it may always require outside guarentees against Iran), a representative, constitutional government, with an expanding economy. It see this in five years.
