"The generals in the field tell me..."

"...how many troops we need." Well, looks like the generals are asking to withdraw:

The top U.S. commander in Iraq has submitted a plan to the Pentagon for withdrawing troops in Iraq, according to a senior defense official.

Gen. George Casey submitted the plan to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It includes numerous options and recommends that brigades -- usually made up of about 2,000 soldiers each -- begin pulling out of Iraq early next year.

Amazing. After all that on the House floor today, after all the rhetoric about "we can't cut and run" and "you're a coward for wanting to leave the Iraqis" the ranking head of the armed forces in the field comes out and asks for the same thing.

If you read Gen. Casey's report, it's fairly similar to that which Senate Democrats like Feingold and Levin have been pushing lately; he asks for a phased withdrawal of a good number of troops throughout 2006, if certain factors are met (security, improved political process, reconstruction). Of course it allows for a lot of wiggle room. But it acknowledges that at some point, this is the Iraqi's fight and they have to go do it.

I wonder if the President will now come out and say "I respect the general, but we have a difference of opinion on this matter."

Part of me wonders if this is not all an elaborate set-up. Republicans fight bringing the troops home over and over again, and then poof! they start drawing down forces just in time for the 2006 elections, so that legislators can return to their districts having taken that arrow out of the Democrats' quiver. But the leaving=losing equation is so ingrained in the rank and file of the GOP (not to mention the oft-forgotten desire on the part of the Pentagon for permanent bases in the country), I don't know if they're that disciplined to have such a strategy right now.

But the real question is, when will Gen. Casey be Swift-Boated for daring to suggest withdrawal?