5,700 troops out by Christmas, and 20,000 out by July 08.
And yet the Democrats are more outraged than ever before?
What gives?
A few weeks ago when Sen. Warner recommended cutting 5,000 troops by Christmas, he was treated like a rock star!
More important...Bush better make sure we don't need to send forces into Basra now that the British have left.

I was about to make the same exact point. When a republican was seen to be breaking from Bush, he was adored by the media and democrats. Bush proposes a similar action and liberals are OUTRAGED!! What a bunch of phoneys!

President Bush, like his fellow Republican Larry Craig, will take a wide stance in Iraq and Iran tonight.

Sorry I can't watch. It just hurts me too much to watch a President of these great United States Blatantly lie to all the people of this country.

It should be 57,000 NOT 5,700 by XMAS.

Wow!!! I really can't believe we're going to abandon the "Powell" doctrine of war. STRONG FAST HARD

This just shows that Liberals really do hate America. Nothing George Bush does will ever be right. They disagree only for the sake of disagreement. They can only be right if we lose.

Bush is not telling the facts. The troops that are coming home are due to come home in December and in regards to the troops coming home in April, well they are part of the surge that started in January. They're 15 months will be up. In the meantime there is an entire Army Brigade leaving from Schofield Hawaii late November thru early December this year and they are scheduled to be in Iraq for 15 months. The surge needs to stop! When is the media going to focus on this fact?

How many times do we have to go through this? What is this, round 8? By now, I'd hope more people would have realized the cold, hard truth: Bush does NOT want to "win" in Iraq, whatever the hell that means at this point. It never was the point. The point was to destabilize the country, induce genocide, and once it sufficiently fell apart, divy it up and take control of the oil. We all know that oil equals power; what we don't agree on is whether or not such a definition of power is one worth pursuing. How many Iraqis must die so that we can charge our cell phones and drive ever-bigger SUVs? Is this what it means to be a "superpower"? To destroy other nations? It's time for a paradigm shift.

No link to 9/11, no link to Al-Qaeda, no WMDs, no enriched uranium, no workable strategy, no functioning government, no pan-MidEast democracy, no extinguishing of jihadism, no safety or status for women, no trainable police force, no safety for the United States, no consistency or even the tiniest hint of honesty from Bush, and absolutely no end in sight.

And all the while the Constitution has been reduced to stationery. Civil liberties? What are those anymore? Here comes the police state.

These numbers mean nothing when they are being replaced by other troops. Lets just see if it happens and see another false flag terror event stop the troop withdrawl that Bush talks about just in time to scare us into the REAL ID scenario that is to take place in May '08! I am certainly no democrat or liberal. I am a true conservative(not a neo-con) with an open mind that loves the U.S.A that sticks by the U.S. Constitution(which is what makes this country great) and I will vote for Ron Paul---AND I THINK THAT BUSH IS A LIAR AND THAT THIS POLICE ACTION IN IRAQ IS WORSE THAN CATASTROPHIC AND THAT ALL OF THE BLOOD LOST HAS BEEN OBSCENE ESPECIALLY SINCE THE ONLY BENEFIT OF THIS WAR GOES TO CORPORATIONS LIKE HALIBURTON, RICH ELITE RESOURCE POWER GRABS, AND SHADY HEGEMONIC AGENDAS OF THIS ADMINISTRATION TO CONTINUE SUCH ACTIONS. AMERICA'S INFRASTRUCTURE IS IN A DIRE STATE OF DISREPAIR AND WE ARE REBUILDING IRAQ?! WHERE IS THE DEMOCRACY AND CIVIL RIGHTS THAT WE ARE PROTECTING(CERTAINLY NOT IRAQ)WHEN BUSH IS TAKING THEM AWAY HERE AT HOME? BUSH AND CONGRESS ARE LIARS AND TRAITORS period!

Liberals don't hate America. They hate what this administration has done to America. While you guys spend so much time "armchair soldiering", and being the mouthpiece for all things Bush, perhaps you could ask them why they did such a poor job from the get go. He created this mess. It began by canning anybody that thought we needed more troops and continued with "Mission Accomplished." They did a really poor sales job boys. Somehow though, they constantly get a pass with you.

Under Bush, significant U.S. military presence in Iraq is an open-ended, unending committment. Greatest single waste of taxpayer money ever. The money would have gone a long way to shoring up Social Security. I lost trust in this administration a long time ago. How many times must Bush mislead us?

I am confused. This means we won the war? if not is he heeding to the American's wish and pulling out of Iraq? What is it?

In the last three weeks, I heard two stories that I thought were remarkable on NPR: one that Moqtada al-Sadr had announced that his militia would stop fighting for six months, and the other that the Sunni faction that had left Nouri al-Maliki’s government in protest had decided to return to the table. The most amazing thing to me about these two stories was that I did not hear about them from other news media. Granted that I may not be the most active news-groupie around, but I did turn in eagerly to the Sunday-morning news shows expecting to hear about possible progress on the political front. Perhaps tainted by additional news that (for example) al-Sadr had found that he didn’t have that much control of his militia, or that the Sunnis had decided to leave again. But SOMETHING. I do not understand why these two stories are not huge news. Can someone there help me understand?

We can't maintain current troop levels forever. The "surge" is stretching our military. But next year, when the "surge" is over and the violence will be back in full force, he can do another "surge." And then over the following year he can do another "withdrawal." Increase, decrease. What a joke!

Our troops are held hostage in Iraq by a deranged president. Nothing we are doing over there in Iraq is making America safer, yet Bush wants to keep killing off our best soldiers by trying to referee a civil war. All for the sake of his "legacy."

Now since Iraq is so important to him, I wonder if Bush will go fight there after the end of his presidency? Nah, he'll probably just doze off on the couch in Crawford.

just because he says so does not mean it will be so

Bush is punishing our soldiers for not containing the civil war in Iraq. He said in his speech that they can only return home after they "succeed." Bush throws them into a quagmire and says it's up to them to make it out alive? This is an outrage! The American people will no longer put up with this! Our men and women in uniform should not be held hostage by the President of the United States.

If this were 1995: "Conservatives don't hate America. They hate what this administration has done to America. While you guys spend so much time "armchair soldiering", and being the mouthpiece for all things Clinton, perhaps you could ask them why they did such a poor job from the get go. He created this mess. It began by canning anybody that thought we needed more troops and continued with "Mission Accomplished." They did a really poor sales job boys. Somehow though, they constantly get a pass with you."

"5,700 troops out by Christmas, and 20,000 out by July 08. And yet the Democrats are more outraged than ever before? What gives?" Let me guess: You failed first-grade math, didn't you, sparky? Let's tally: 130,000 troops plus 30,000 troops equals 160,000 troops. 160,000 troops minus 5,700 troops equals *154,300* troops!