No, that's not how the New York Times headline reads today. My morning edition says: "Military Plans Gradual Cuts in Iraq Forces; 30,000 Could Pull Out if Security Improves."
New York Times story
But, in a classic example of burying the lede, the real news in this front-page article, as I show below, is that the military is making preparations to beef up troop levels.
(Edited to improve URL formatting and add poll -- thanks for the suggestions!)
Most of the article is military and administration officials telling us what they've said for a long time now -- that if and when Iraq's homegrown forces are up to the job of securing the country, American troops will be drawn down. What significance you attach to this attitude depends on whether you think the security situation in Iraq will improve anytime soon. In any case, it's certainly not news worth a page-1 story.
But turn the fold to page 12 of my edition, and suddenly this jarring statement, the only place where I find expressed an actual, concrete plan that isn't conditioned on some pie-in-the-sky hopes that things will magically get better:
"But under the current thinking, as reflected in briefings that General Abizaid and General Casey have provided to Mr. Rumsfeld, the number of American troops would temporarily increase in December to about 160,000 troops, an increase achieved through overlapping the normal rotation of incoming forces and those who have finished their tours, to provide security for elections to a new National Assembly, scheduled for Dec. 15.
Assuming security conditions allow, the number would then gradually decline, first back down to about 138,000 troops, or roughly 17 brigades and their supporting forces, and then by another 20,000 to 30,000 forces by late spring, senior officers and Pentagon officials said."
You got that? No matter what happens, our troop level will increase by more than 20,000 by the end of the year. Only if "security conditions allow" will troop levels be reduced back to current levels, let alone lower.
We've seen this before. The increase from 115,000 to 138,000 was also supposed to be temporary, and then suddenly the military decided it couldn't function without the extra manpower sticking around:
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/04/iraq.main/
Coincidentally, 160,000 is also the total number of soldiers there, counting the British troops:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0711/dailyUpdate.html
Could this be the precursor to the British troops being pulled out, leaving the Americans on their own?
In any case, it seems like big news, and I hadn't heard it before. Somehow the New York Times has managed to bury it. Come December, Scott McClellan will tell us this troop build-up is old news and refer us to the Times story I've quoted. Count on it.