WASHINGTON POST: JUST THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT WAS HEARD AT GOP CONVENTION: PENTAGON URGES EXTENDED PAUSE IN IRAQ DRAWDOWN

Senator Lindsay Graham (R. South Carolina) angrily told the GOP convention that we are "winning in Iraq" even as the Pentagon was issuing a statement calling for a slowdown in a drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq because of the unstable conditions in the country.

Pentagon Urges Extended Pause in Iraq Drawdown

By Karen DeYoung and Ann Scott TysonWashington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 5, 2008; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/04/AR2008090402820.html

Pentagon leaders have recommended to President Bush that the United States make no further troop reductions in Iraq this year, administration officials said yesterday.

The plan, delivered this week, calls for extending a pause in drawdowns until late January or early February -- after the Bush administration has left office. At that point, up to 7,500 of the approximately 146,000 troops in Iraq could be withdrawn, depending on conditions on the ground there.

The reduction would coincide with new deployments to Afghanistan, officials said.
Defense officials described the recommendation as a compromise between those who believed that security gains in Iraq remained too tenuous to contemplate further withdrawals now, and those who proposed continuing the reductions that began this spring.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, adopted a cautious approach in an assessment he presented last week to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Petraeus cited several areas of ongoing concern, including the postponement of provincial elections initially scheduled for this month, the disputed status of the northern city of Kirkuk, lingering ethno-sectarian conflicts, and questions surrounding the future of a local security force known as the Sons of Iraq.

There was also the factor of "a new commander coming in," one official said. On Sept. 16, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno will replace Petraeus, who will become head of U.S. Central Command.

According to another military official close to the process, Petraeus and Odierno also considered the rising violence in Afghanistan as well as the overall strain on the U.S. military from the two conflicts. Under the proposal Gates and Mullen gave Bush in a video briefing Wednesday, at least one additional Army combat brigade -- about 3,500 troops -- would be sent to Afghanistan instead of its scheduled deployment to replace a brigade leaving Iraq. An additional 4,000 would be withdrawn from disparate units. In Afghanistan, a Marine battalion due to depart by the end of the year would be replaced.

Read full story here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/04/AR2008090402820.html