Too many...

New Years Day 2008 - 100,000

New Years Day 2009 - 25,000 or less

The troops will not be withdrawn en masse until the end of Bush's 2nd term.  Unless they are needed to be redeployed into the Iranian theater of operations sooner...

2008 - 130,000
2009 - 35,000

generally the same amount in both years. when Bush said he won't change course, he meant it. He'll stick to it through hell and high water. stubborn man!

If we continue to build/staff a 1,000 person embassy and harden/expand the current "permanent" bases then on NY day 2008 we will have, unfortunately:

40,000 combat troops for force protection and backup/rapid deplyment,

30,000 trainers/advisers

10,000 logistics/support + God knows how many civilians doing militaryish jobs.

[Estimates done without knowing the splits today]

I'm with Ed on this question -- "Who will be the last to die for a Presidential ego?"

That's the grotesque aspect of all this. W stubbornly wants to 'protect' his 'legacy' & not fail like his dad. He's taking a complete "Bush to Nation: F**k You!" approach.

I fully expect more troops will have their stays in Iraq extended, more national guards will be called up, & more reservists pulled back into service, all to support a losing war of Bush's choice.

I do hope I'm wrong though....

0 on both dates. This war cannot be sustained by a volunteer army with no public support and no mission objective.

I won't predict the mechanism, but our system is not so broken (although it got close there, before the midterms) that it will not end the worst foreign policy fiasco in this nation's history.

Whatever will make McCain look good heading into the presidential election. Powerful are politics and delusion with this administration. I'm not sure how much leverage the Dems will have.

2008: Same as today

2009: Same as today

Leaving = losing.

Dissent Protects Democracy.

We don't have 300,000 troops to insert now. Even the 20,000 number is gonna be hard to make.

What Shinseki was saying, and why he was cashiered, is that we didn't have the troops required for an inevitable period of occupation.

This was a failed enterprise from the outset, because, for whatever reason, the aftermath was not planned for. At very senior levels, it looks like they bought into the flowers and candy scenario. Or, worse, didn't care as long as they had a war president in 04.

I think you're wrong on this one. McCain is going to be hurt by an escalation. If they were trying to rig this for him, they'd be drawing down. Escalating is a very unpopular decision. McCain's calculation that he could claim to have been an unheard voice in the wilderness in supporting escalation has, imo, backfired.

It was only a good position to take if it wasn't actually implemented. Implemented, because it will fail, it will turn out to be a political failure as well as a policy failure.

Democrats should be rooting for a McCain nomination. But I don't think they'll get it. He's got too much baggage for the base, and he's flipping and flopping like a perch in a row boat. The other two who are getting the most press, Romney and Giuiliani are also non-starters.

We're gonna be looking at a Cleveland-Harrison election. No good choice on the ballot.

1000 Quatloos on the following:

2007: 180,000 (the "double-down", or as much as we can muster)

2008: 100,000 (from phony pre-election drawdowns to help Repugs)

2009: 80,000 (trainers, force protection, resupply, and fighter jocks to continue the air war against Iran)

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada

2008 167000

2009 213000

You think you have a choice?

2008 0
2009 0

In 2007, one of the warring factions will decide it's in their interest to get the Americans out. They will turn on the Americans attacking them every where and any where they can. Perhaps the coming buildup will be the justification. The Iraqis will rally to their cause because they will offer hope – justified or not.

The Americans will have to leave, or get really, really ugly.

The Middle East will erupt in a war. All the proxy wars will end. The final all out war between the Sunnis and Shiites, between the Persians and the Arabs, will begin and the last of the British governmental legacies will be wiped out.

Israel will become a haven for displaced Arabs.

2007: 135,000
2008: 125,000
2009: 118,000

Asking for concrete predictions is very useful, but the specific focus on troop numbers requires correlation of too many "unknown unknowns" for me, even if I had the necessary expertize concerning force structure, force posture and the tactical situation in Iraq etc.

More importantly that focus itself presupposes an attitude towards the war that is certainly consistent with the consensus here, but does not reflect my understanding of what's actually important - the war is not about troop numbers or casualties.

Instead I'll offer the following speculations (not predictions at this stage) about factors relevant for making such estimates.

1. A solid working majority in both Houses of Congress will continue to support whatever troop levels are proposed by both this Administration and the next one and will also support whatever strengthening of the US armed forces is necessary to accommodate that, and whatever level of increased taxation is necessary to finance that (and also to finance increased aid to Iraqi reconstruction as recommended by the Baker Commission).

2. There will be no mass mobilization aimed at forcing the US government to accept defeat. Opposition will become shriller rather than deeper as it becomes less possible to focus on Bush due to bipartisan rejection of defeatism. Unlike the Vietnam solidarity movement there is no significant section that actually welcomes US defeat and is prepared to fight for it as opposed to blaming Bush for it. In particular there is no prospect of anything like the GI movement that was decisive in defeating US aggression against Vietnam.

3. There will be an early proposal to strengthen and enlarge the US armed forces, and to send more troops to Iraq, initially by a relatively small increment - both to keep up pressure for a stronger national unity government to take charge in Iraq and to demobilize opposition in the US. Further increments will depend on requirements but the backbone of opposition will be broken by acceptance of the first one.

4. Between now and the 2008 Presideential election there will be a significant split between the DLC leadership who will accept the bipartisan conclusions of the Baker Commission that defeat in Iraq would be catastrophic and large sections of the party base who will continue to insist that the war is already lost, but will be unable to mobilize a mass movement for accepting defeat.

5. Consequently there is very little likelihood that the next President will be a Democrat, since the significant Republican opposition to the war will also accept the bipartisan conclusions about defeat being catastrophic and will not split to anything like the same extent.

6. Israeli withdrawal from major settlements on the West Bank will begin and a viable Palestinian State will be established with bipartisan support. Condi Rice will get a lot of credit for that, with a fair chance of her becoming the Republican candidate for either President or Vice-President.

7. Lebanon's current political crisis will be resolved by Hezbollah gaining proortionate representation and accepting the international trial of Hariri's murderers. No concessions will be made to Syria and the regime there is toast.

8. There will be a substantial political re-alignment in Iraq with major sections of the Sunnis accepting a fair constitutional settlement and turning against the Sunni rejectionist insurgency as well as against the murderous takfiri attacks on Shia civilians aimed at provoking civil war, thus enabling the Iraqi government to suppress Shia death squads.

9. Iran will remain "unhelpful" but cannot confront SCIRI as well as Daawa on this issue now that Hakim has openly come on board opposing rapid US withdrawal. Other neighbours (including Syria and Saudi Arabia as well as Jordan have already come out strongly opposed to rapid US withdrawal and will make the issues very clear to Iraqi Sunnis.

10 The effect on troop levels at different dates depends on how early this realignment occurs and whether the Mahdi Army backs off or resists to an extent that requires US combat against it. I do not understand the internal Iraqi situation well enough to speculate about that. This is a major reason for not predicting troop levels.

This is a trick question, right?

The same amount, unless George Bush is no longer president (impeached).

There's no reason for Bush to change Iraq policy. He's not up for re-election and he is only looking out for himself.

The real question is will Bush abandon his political party before they abandon him.

The National Guard may be the Achilles heel of the policy. The National Guard is much more visible in middle America than the regular army. Everyone out here knows someone in the National Guard and they're frequently middled aged, married with middle school aged kids.

The impeachment question is almost as difficult as the Iraq questions isn't it?

Although I believe it has been wrong to dismiss it out of hand the way Pelosi has, and that impeachment at this point is a question of preserving democracy, it is hard to see what benefit would be derived from installing Cheney, other than to make him more visible, and therefore, at least a touch more accountable.

With regard to Cheney's motivations and Iraq benefiting our country at large here at home, I should have been more clear and kept writing.

Oil is finite, as you know, and the Imperial window is open, so to speak. Cheney understands that oil's importance stretches well beyond making our cars go and running the military machine that protects us. Oil does EVERYTHING for us, and that's just an unfortunate result of the unleashing of economic forces and industrial power that oil afforded us when we didn't realize it was finite.

People might hate it, but Cheney knows that Americans stepping up and finding a way to completely changing their economic and manufacturing infrastructure within the next 30 years (known oil) is an extreme outside longshot.

A small, fitting example would be the defense industry. Can you see the American people protesting in the streets demanding that Boeing, Raytheon, et al. reconfigure their assembly lines so that F-16s, Abrams tanks, etc run on ethanol? Or those companies appeasing? Me either.

To me, the American people will only be able to move forward from here if we stop complaining about Cheney being a secrecy-loving draft dodger and start asking themselves serious, serious questions about what we're willing to sacrifice, whether we're even capable of enduring those sacrifices psychologically after enjoying the comforts we have, and if our moral clarity is truly more important than our way of life.

On top of that, we have to be willing not to only to ASK the questions, which, sadly, seems a stretch, but to answer them perfectly honestly.

1/1/2008 25,000
1/1/2009 0

I'm an optimist. Otherwise, I'd go with JeffC's predictions.

No, you can't have your own facts!

2008 10,000
2009 0

By January 2008 Bush and Cheney will have been impeached and convicted. By January 2009 they will have been executed for treason.

The corollary question is how many military contractors and subcontractors will there be, performing quasi-military jobs? While the # of troops in Iraq has stayed flat, the number of contractors has only gone up.

Informed speculation at Eason Jordan's new site suggests there may be as many military contractors and subcontractors in Iraq as there are troops.

http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/topic/44

1/1/08 - 45,000, mostly at one or two of those 'enduring bases.' Because we'll have gotten our butts kicked out of the Green Zone, and will have withdrawn to the 'enduring bases.'

1/1/09 - 0, because we'll have gotten our butts kicked out of Iraq.

This is almost like a lottery pick.  There is no possible way to intelligently estimate what American force will be in Iraq in even one year, let alone two years.  Even today we don't know how many are there, considering that so many  of the traditional military activities are now contracted out to Bush administration supporters to make money off of.  It isn't even possible to predict what the Iraqi "government" will do by then, if there even is an Iraqi "government.  They may well demand that we pull out, and we may or may not agree to do so.

You can take it to the bank that Bush will not approve any reduction in military activity in Iraq for the remainder of his term.  And, you can also take it to the bank that the Democratic majority in Congress will split on any question of overruling Bush, through cutbacks in funding or anything else. So, the answer to the questions is, in my opinion, that unless we are driven out, which isn't very likely, we will have a comparable number of bodies on the ground as today throughout Bush's term in office.  We will not know how many that is though. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

1-1-08 140,000 to 150,000
1-1-09 140,000 to 150,000

Otherwise George W. has changed his mind, which seems impossible.

While I think you're right--that this was meant to be the final vindication of Rummy's RMA dreams, it's also the case that they did not have the time to raise a sufficiently large force. If they had waited until say, September, to have the time to get another hundred thousand in the pipeline, the UN inspectors would have demonstrated that there were no WMD, and that Iraq did not represent a threat to the US or the region.

As it was, it was a near thing. Anybody who paid attention to the inspectors' reports in March knew that there was no case for invading Iraq.

Ed,

I salute you there fellow Vietnam Vet! How ironic the two of us would think along this same line...

Bear with me on this one...

First, just to show how poor a prognosticator I am...

Last September 30, 2005 after Rep. Jane Harman had visited the Cafe I had put together a little prognostication metric off something she had said in one of her posts about: "So much pivots on the outcome of the elections over the next 90 days..."

And then in an update to show what the outcome was after the 90 days Rep. Harman had mentioned I left this New Year's 2006 comment, UPDATE 2006: The View from the Graves.

If you didn't notice, my original prediction was short by 48 deaths.

Now, even though I'm not very good at reading tea-leaves, I must point out:

To the families of the troops... It's not so much how many troops will be on the ground on New Years Day 2008 or 2009, but how many more troops will be in the ground...

The crystal ball shows by loosely using today's current metrics:

12/15/06 to 01/01/2008:

805 additional dead. Bringing the un-grand total to 3745.

01/01/2008 to 01/01/2009:

785 additional dead. Bringing the un-grand total to 4530.

Our representative's and the bilge-spewing dysfuntional direction from Capt. Flight Suit at the very top can re-arrange all the deck chairs they want -- but the Titanic is already taking on more water than the bilge pumps can handle...

Season's Greetings

~OGD~

Sadly, those expecting no troop draw down between now and 2009 will be the closest to right, but that will be cold comfort to them given the death and destruction that will not yet be close to over.

Because people are not yet on the the streets, the most likely event that might intervene to bring the troops home sooner will be George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft overseeing the extraordinary rendition of W. and the VP. The two incumbants will be subjected to waterboarding until they sign a document permitting Robert Gates to begin the redeployment.

The more constitutionally satisfying option of impeachment strikes me as still highly unlikely unless Henry Waxman and Patrick Leahy uncover a document that directly links the decision to go to war to the 2002 midterm elections along with other documents stating that George W. Bush knew Saddam had no nuclear or chemical weapons program.

Regretably cynically yours,
JH Hugo

December 2008: about 150,000
December 2009: about the same

My fear is three-fold: that Mr. Bush appears to be leaning towards uping the ante, so to speak, by as many as 30,000 troops; that doing so will bring about a commensurate increase in violence; and that as a result our ability to bring troops home will again be pushed further into the future.

OK, I'm not the only one to have to say it.

Even tho I am the secret west Coast king of the hippies, I have included military strategy and tactics among the topics I have studied and considered over 4 decades. Oh and I do have a degree in History with Highest Honors from the dept. from a branch of the UC system.

I can feel it. There are Iraqis, whether Sunni or Shi'ite or Baathist or fundamentalist or of whatever tribe, who are planning a comprehensive attack with studied elements of tactical surprise which will take the Green Zone.

If we can get to something comparable to the retreat from Dunkirk in 1940, that will be the victory Bush's ego searches so vainly for, but of course he won't be able to recognize that in the domestic political maelstrom (which may take either a generally progressive form, a generally conservative form, or some other form not yet foreseeable) which will engulf us when we realize we are the first Americans to lose an army in a foreign disaster.

This is where all that experience of the British and French may yet be useful to us, if we are wise enought to accept it.

1/1/2008 - prediction zero (except special forces under deep cover)

1/1/2009 - lo mismo

Thomas Ricks said on Hardball that what he thinks Bush is doing right now is talking about upping the ante (which the generals don't want) figuring the Democrats will oppose it. Then he can blame this whole moronic Fiasco on the Democrats, enabling more moronic Republicans to be elected in the future.

Tom

January 2008 - near current levels
January 2009 - near current levels
January 2010 - approaching zero

The President will continue looking for the quick fix, the legacy saver, right up to the bitter end. Failing that, he will leave it to the next poor bastard. By the time of the election polling for a quick and total withdrawal will be approaching 80%. Whoever is elected, and from whatever party, will have promised to end it quickly. The withdrawal will officially start about 15 minutes after the inaugural address...

too many

I've just started Woodward's State of Denial.

It dovetails with Clarke's book very nicely.

I say "for whatever reason" because the degree of blindness and incompetence is hard to credit. As you say, these are people who have been running the government for years. And yet they engaged in this absolutely ridiciulous endeavor, with no plan for managing it.

The neo-con whack-jobs had put this onto the table of every administration starting with Reagan. And wiser heads prevailed. This time, with a President completely over his head, they were able to push it through.

I've been forced to accept that these neo-cons really believed this idiocy, that they could just topple Saddam and install a puppet. That they convinced a president that this would be no problem. That Bush fell in love with being a war president, and that Rove really liked the idea of a permanent war on terror.

It's the media that is ultimately to blame here. Buying into this idiocy, and doing so for so long, is a serious indictment of the national journalists.

0 in both cases, since there will not be a state called "Iraq" by January, 2008.

How many in the geographical region that constitutes Iraq today? 250,000 and 400,000, respectively, since we will be involved in a regional war. No idea where those troops will come from.

All the publicity given to Bush's "change of course" that when people start realizing that his only actual "change of course" is to ESCALATE like Lyndon Johnson there's going to be an explosion of anger directed at Bush and at Congress for going along with him.

Bush may keep the troops there until 2009, who's going to stop him, but any Democrat who votes for more troops and more money will soon regret it.

Of course, having a volunteer force makes it easier for most people to ignore the war, but not forever.

Time has run out on public patience. We're not going to sit still for another two years of escalating violence and failure in Iraq.

You have hit on the reason I can no longer get a full night's sleep. At 49 years old, I am among the cohort of people who should have been wise enough to help choose better leadership and policies by which this nation is operated.

(I did not vote for Mr. Bush. Failing to recognize the potential for damage that the Cheney/Bush administration would do to this country, I failed to work hard enough against their selection.)

The generations to follow ours deserve better, and I hope we decide (and relatively soon) to start delivering on that commitment.

With great effort and sacrifice, we *may* be able to mitigate the damage.

In "Cobra II" there is never any suggestion that even Zinni's original plan for 500,000 was not possible. Afterall it is not 500,000 fighting all at once. Many of the generals who ultimately called for Rumsfeld's resignation took themselves to task for not objecting to Rumsfeld going in so light. Apparently Rumsfeld and Franks so intimidated the military no one spoke-up, not even Shinseki after his Congressional testimony.

An irony is that in "Ghost Wars" William Casey in extolling the virtue of helping Afghan rebels fight the Soviet regieme is that it takes a lot more troops to oust a governemtn than to project one. Daniel A. Greenbaum

I assume you mean "protect" one?

Tom

Disgusting?

Take a gander of my earlier comment in this thread.

Now you may also find my stats quite disgusting. And that's to be expected. But toughen up butter-cup. War's not for the faint hearted.

Now about my hard cold numbers.

As codegen86 said: Planning must be done. As an example, the month before the invasion, that is what the the Pentagon and a company called Extra Packaging Corp., and an outfit called Year-A-Round Corp. were planning. Although those companies don't manufacture jellybean jars, they must have some type of statistics for planning purposes.

Cold! Hard! Statistics ....

Season's Greetings (... watch the blood pressure)

~OGD~

Jan 1, 2008: 140,000-150,000 - Not much changes between now and then.

Jan 1, 2009: 100,000-120,000: Fulfilment of near election time promises to begin bringing troops home as fast as possible" drawdown occurs Aug 2008-Oct 2008.

Jan 1, 2010: 60,000-80,000: Nobody from either party can be elected without calling for relatively drastic drawdowns, beyond Bush's drawdown.  But getting out and fully leaving Iraq in hands hostile to the US and Israel will not be an option.

 It appears that being proven to be correct on 90% of the issues you comment on is an automatic disqualifier for becoming President.  Far better to go along with the popular "wisdom" and be wrong 90% of the time.  Our country just doesn't like smart people to be in charge.

And, of course, much of this problem is squarely in the lap of the MSM, which treats those who are nearly always wrong as being the elite of the elite, and those who are nearly always right as being wild eyed radicals.  I suppose the talking heads of TV just don't like having someone who knows more then they do being seen as acceptable leaders.  And, unfortunately, that dooms us to second rate minds being in charge. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

Excuse me?
You do not see what benefit would be derived from impeachment?

Should one avoid to prosecute due to dislike for the potential replacement - in case the prosecution succeeded, that is???

Where is your belief in upholding the law - the Constitution, actually?

And this in a country that most recently started the very same process, with much mass media noice, after the previous president had been too discrete about an extramarital sexual affair.

Whether Cheney or someone else as a result would ascend to the throne must be beside the point. That is the very meaning of having a vice president, isn't it? And he is at least as democratically elected as the president, isn't he?

It's sometimes hard to understand how some people can think other nations ought to be impressed by America?

I believe there is a way to save both Coalition troops and Iraqi lives, but it does not necessarily translate into much of a troop reduction.

I'm convinced that if the troops' tactics changed, as to not engage militarily more than in obvious defence of Coalition troops or civilian advisors and contractors - or in fending off other foreign invasions - and this included a stop of the air war that inflates Iraqi feelings against the Western troops, then a lot fewer of the troops would die at the same time as the local militias would take over control of order and law enforcement, which would lead to a much better situation for civilians in Iraq.

I'm also convinced that this ought to be possible for the current U.S. administration to pursue. It would be consistent with their nagging about not leaving Iraq too early.

But it translates to unchanged troop levels during Bush's precidency, and not too rapid redeployments during the next.

Of course it also translates into very much down-scaled ambitions with regard to what is the goal in Iraq, accepting the ongoing partition as a fait accompli, accepting taliban-like sharia-enforcing territories, accepting that the oil in Iraq may not be sold to anyone in the near future, accepting that Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia will compete over influence (as long as not with military means).

I do not imply you being for impeachment of anyone, but the impeachment hysteria from the last years of the 1990s has to be taken into account - weighting on both sides of the scale.

After that event, how can one at all consider not to use the impeachment institute in a matter that is so many magnitudes more serious?, is maybe another way to distil my question.

Yes, this scenario grows more likely by the day.

And the likelihood of strong opposition to a retreat grows more every day, as well.

I don't say FUBAR lightly, but the US is FUBAR in Iraq. And the Dear Leader doesn't know that yet.

Terrifying.

The Democrats can prevent that by cutting Mad Boy King George's money off.

Tom

Doesn't anyone realize it is already over?  When Canada sends an invasion force into Buffalo, we won't have the manpower to defend. 

Bush will go down in history as the president who lost actual American territory to an invading power.  The question is who and where?  Russia and Alaska?  Japan (or China) and Hawaii?  Mexico and Texas?  Cuba and Florida?  Canada and New England?  Bermuda and the Carolinas?

Our humiliation has only just begun.

Au contraire Dan ... You'd be totally surprised how busy I am "at war" at the local VA keeping my pie-hole buttoned and my ears wide open simply listening to my fellow young recently returned Vets when they feel the need to open up and allow the horrors to erupt from within their psyches . . .

~OGD~

So many things have been done so unfairly and outside of the rule of law that impeachment simply won't fix, though.

at the same time as the local militias would take over control of order and law enforcement

Interesting idea to flip the tables and make the militias responsible for their sectors. They have the weapons and have demonstrated some levels of organization in accomplishing missions. 

We keep saying security is paramount so just because we may not like who acts as security is it really a bad idea?

Thomas Ricks says the whole Rovian point is to have the Democrats oppose a troop increase and the blame the failure in Iraq on the Dems in future elections.

Tom

You know how when you have to make a big decision you create the list of pros and cons?

Well when the decision is being made as to start a logical withdrawal or do some version of staying in Iraq longer to do something or another then the extra factor to be weighed is the impact on the thousands who fight.

And although money is not enough I'd love to see the government create the actuarily-determined pool of money to cover the cost of a life of treating the thousands being injured. At least make the cost explicit to decisionmakers and the public.

Wouldn't demands for calculation of the nation's long term costs be fit for a checking and balancing Congress?

The corporations, the neo-cons and their puppet Bush, the American MSM, the religious right, American Enterprise Institute, Council on Foreign Relations and other business-centered policy groups, many of the leading dems - Pelosi, Harman, Reid, Rockefeller, Hillary, etc.

These people are all on the same team. They are not going to listen to the voters. They are going do what's best for themselves. They consider themselves the "elite", those who will decide what is best (for themselves). They are committed to global domination. They control the money and they have the power. Their roots run deep and they are prolific. Their children will not be sent to fight and die in their pre-emptive wars.

It's going to take a lot more than voting some people out of office before things change for the good of the common man in the US of A.

What fascinates me about this entire discussion is how irrelevant the wishes of the American citizens are in the equation. It is as if in Washington public opinion doesn't exist. If polls show that 80% do not want an increase at all, then the "debate" proceeds on how many soldiers are necessary for the increase. Totally oblivious. I understand that we live in a republic, not a democracy, where representatives vote to serve our interests, not merely reflect our desires and loathings of the moment, but even in a republic cannot the people have at least one thing they want? I read about something in Washington called the CONSENSUS, which I gather is a fearsome entity, like many graven idols were in from the past, but does this modern-day Moloch deserve every sacrifice for its empty maw? The political professionals indifference reminds me of that line how the government decided to dissolve the people and elect a new one.