raw story is reporting that bush and blair will announce a "phased withdrawal" from iraq later this week. actually the term "phased withdrawal" is a misnomer. it implies a withdrawal that takes place over several different steps (phases). but there's no real phases envisioned by this plan, nor is there a "withdrawal" if by that you mean a total pullout.
no, what they're talking about is a "partial withdrawal" or, even more accurately, a partial drawdown of british and american forces. the idea is to bring the current 130,000 u.s. forces in iraq down to about 100,000. the announcement of the drawdown (ahem, excuse me. i mean the "withdrawal") will be timed to coincide with a statement by iraqi prime minister nouri al-maliki that u.s. forces are no longer needed in some provences of iraq.
this development is actually pretty smart on all sides. troops in iraq is now unpopular with the american, british and iraqi population. al-maliki was elected on a platform that called for the removal of foreign forces from iraq, meanwhile the republicans are heading into a drubbing in november's midterm elections unless they do something big soon. the republican's unpopularity is linked to the president's dismal ratings, and karl rove has concluded those ratings are due to iraq. everyone involved has an incentive to get u.s. forces out. or at least make it look like they're moving in that direction.
but 100,000 is still a lot of troops. in the long-run it probably won't satisfy anyone. and by calling it a "phased withdrawal" a lot of people are gonna be wondering when exactly that next phase will be. the answer, i think, is "never," or at least not on bush's watch, instead we'll get a retrenchment to a bunch of superbases instead.
(all of this is assuming the raw story's sources are right. if they're not, and there's no withdrawal announcement, uh... nevermind)
