 NYTimes. Huddling in a drawing room with his top commanders, General Franks told them it was time to make plans to leave. Combat forces should be prepared to start pulling out within 60 days if all went as expected, he said. By September, the more than 140,000 troops in Iraq could be down to little more than a division, about 30,000 troops.
If the United States and its allies wanted to maintain the same ratio of peacekeepers to population as it had in Kosovo, the briefing said, they would have to station 480,000 troops in Iraq. If Bosnia was used as benchmark, 364,000 troops would be needed. If Afghanistan served as the model, only 13,900 would be needed in Iraq.
The start of the real resistance began with global guerrilla tactics (this is from a note by John Sawyers, the senior British Official in Baghdad in June 2003). It was the start of the deligitimization process for the American occupation. It also put US decision makers on the horns of a dilemma -- security or reconstruction?
"It has been a difficult week in Iraq," Mr. Sawers wrote. "The new threat is well-targeted sabotage of the infrastructure. An attack on the power grid last weekend had a series of knock-on effects which halved the power generation in Baghdad and many other parts of the country. " "The oil and gas is another target, with five successful attacks this week on pipelines," he continued.
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