The New Math

We need to get a big picture person on top of things in Iraq. If it wasn't clear before, we're now finding out that this person is not General Petraeus. Yesterday, to quite a bit of notice, he admitted that he really hadn't given any thought to whether or not the war in Iraq is improving American security. In an interview broadcast this morning on NPR's Morning Edition, Petraeus flat-out stated that he'd not bothered to figure out how many troops really would be coming home under the plan he proposed (and that the Prez jumped all over this evening). He said he hadn't done the math, as simple as that. Therefore, he doesn't really know how many troops he's calling to withdraw. Here's the exchange with Steve Inskeep:

INSKEEP: I want to first make sure that I understand the numbers that you're talking about. It's been said that what you've described is a reduction in 30,000 troops. Is that, in fact, what you –

PETRAEUS: What I've described is a reduction of five brigade combat teams, Army brigade combat teams, the Marine Expeditionary Unit, which actually is coming out this month without replacement, and two Marine battalions. Now, we want to take out other –

INSKEEP: That's a little less than –

PETRAEUS: Well, we have to do the math, candidly. We've got – I have not yet said how many thousands of troops.

INSKEEP: So when people have said 30,000, they're not quite accurate. It might be 30,000 — it might be quite a bit less.

PETRAEUS: Well, we've got to determine what it can be.

There's really no hurry, though. This "massive reduction" of troops back to the status quo ante surge isn't even supposed to be complete for another nine months. That's plenty of time to pull out the old calculator.