May 24, 2007:
Q: Thank you, Mr. President. You say you want nothing short of victory, that leaving Iraq would be catastrophic; you once again mentioned al Qaeda. Does that mean that you are willing to leave American troops there, no matter what the Iraqi government does? I know this is a question we've asked before, but you can begin it with a "yes" or "no."
THE PRESIDENT: We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It's their government's choice. If they were to say, leave, we would leave.
July 8, 2008:
"We can't have a memorandum of understanding with foreign forces unless it has dates and clear horizons determining the departure of foreign forces. We're unambiguously talking about their departure," he told reporters in Najaf after meeting Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
July 10, 2007:
In a brief statement earlier there, Bush said, "Troop levels will be decided by our commanders on the ground, not by political figures in Washington, D.C."
Today:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. ground troops in Iraq will be mostly finished with security operations by the middle of 2009, the senior U.S. Army officer in charge of training Iraqi forces said on Wednesday.
"The ground forces will mostly be done by the middle of next year," Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik told the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.
Can we get started on that timetable now?