Iraq Non-Surprise of the Day: We'll Stick Around for A While

It didn't take long for the US military to confirm our speculation that a lot of US troops won't be coming home soon. From The New York Times:

The top American commander in Iraq said Saturday that some soldiers would remain in a support role in cities beyond summer 2009, when a new security agreement calls for the removal of American combat troops from urban areas.

The commander, Gen. Ray Odierno, said American troops would remain at numerous security outposts in order to help support and train Iraqi forces. “We believe that’s part of our transition teams,” he told reporters in Balad while accompanying Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who arrived on an unannounced trip Saturday.

Odierno's spokesman coined a new term to cover the retention of troops --- they're now "enablers" --- but his boss tipped off the long-term strategy:

General Odierno said Saturday, as Pentagon officials have said previously, that the agreement might be renegotiated with the Iraqi government. “Three years is a very long time,” he told reporters.

And, just to drive the point home, Secretary of Defense Gates identified the Bad Guy to justify Occupation Lite:

The president-elect and his team are under no illusions about Iran’s behavior and what Iran has been doing in the region and apparently is doing with weapons programs.

To me, it looks like US policy is now being fashioned, not by the President or the President-elect, but by Gates, Odierno, and General David Petraeus, the head of the US military's Central Command. This doesn't mean that Obama is opposed to the policy --- far from it, if he put his foot down, he would have a chance of limiting the commitments --- but with his increasingly unreal statement that US troops will be withdrawing from iraq within 16 months, Barack is letting himself be boxed in.