If only it were true, Condoleezza

During her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week, Condoleezza Rice was grilled about when U.S. troops can come home from Iraq. The president’s nominee for secretary of state, hewing closely to administration talking points, said America’s 150,000 troops can return home when enough Iraqis are trained to take their place. So how many Iraqis are ready for the job? No less a conservative authority than The Economist, the respected British magazine, put the number at 10,000 in a report this week. Other reports have put the number much lower. Rice, who’s supposed to know, pegged it closer to 120,000. In other words, 30,000 more to go. But if that’s true, then why are so many of our troops still there? If we have made so much progress in building an Iraqi army, shouldn’t we now be talking about a timetable for bringing our troops home? [more]