Needlenose notices it buried in the Post:
The U.S. military is scaling back combat forces in regions of Iraq's Sunni Triangle that were once fiercely contested, freeing thousands of troops to shift to other trouble spots or to go home without being replaced, according to senior military officials.
The U.S. drawdown in parts of central Iraq is a new and important indicator of commanders' confidence in Iraqi security forces in a region long ravaged by lethal insurgent attacks. In Iraq's east-central Diyala province, for example, the U.S. military expects by next month to have cut the number of ground combat units by two-thirds -- a reduction of about 3,000 troops, according to U.S. commanders here.
"We've already off-ramped a great deal of our combat power," said Col. Steven Salazar, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade, based in Baqubah. "I would anticipate you would see an even greater reduction after the election," said Maj. Mark Borowski, operations officer for the brigade.
The shifting of U.S. forces is a precursor to widely anticipated announcements of troop cutbacks following Iraq's national elections, which were held Thursday. "After the elections you will hear about off-ramping as a result of Iraqi capability," said a senior U.S. military official in Baghdad.
This actually follows the oil spot strategy, the notion of pulling back offensive operations and consolidating troops into areas, theoretically, easier to control, such as Baghdad. The pullback actually strikes me , a big-time amateur, as a wise move.
One of the key challenges of the/a occupation is how to maximize the security provided by occupation forces while minimizing the antagonism created by the presence of those forces.
Pulling back GIs from offensive operations in the Sunni triangle could have really horrible consequences. (Example, look at how the town of Haditha fared this summer.) But then again, GIs, who almost by neccisity operate with extremely limited local knowledge, are a huge irritant to the local population. In other words, pulling troops back and having them focus on, say, training seems like a fair balance.
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