In its May 9, 2005 issue, the National Review featured a cover proclaiming, “We’re Winning,” accompanied by a breathless cover story by National Review editor Rich Lowry:

It is time to say it unequivocally: We are winning in Iraq.

If current trends continue, our counter-insurgent campaign in Iraq will be fit to be mentioned in the same breath as the British victory over a Communist insurgency in Malaysia in the 1950s, a textbook example of this form of war.

After two years of “winning,” the National Review believes the war can still be won. From its new Sept. 24 issue:

This war can still be won, but only if we have the nerve and the patience to see it through. Recent events on the ground, strategic interest, and morality all point to only one imperative: Stay.

In yesterday’s congressional hearings, Gen. David Petraeus suggested that he will withdraw 30,000 troops from Iraq next summer:

Based on all this and on the further progress we believe we can achieve over the next few months, I believe that we will be able to reduce our forces to the pre-surge level of brigade combat teams by next summer without jeopardizing the security gains that we have fought so hard to achieve.

Petraeus claimed that “progress” in Iraq allows the United States to begin withdrawing troops. But in reality, security and political progress in Iraq is nonexistent. Petraeus, who has said he wants to stay in Iraq for 9-10 years, is in fact reducing troop levels next summer because the escalation has overstretched and overburdened the military to its breaking point.

Under Petraeus’s plan, troops will be finishing this “token” withdrawal right before the Nov. 2008 elections, and the administration appears to be planning to take political advantage of this fact.

In July, Rove spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival and reportedly stated, “Iraq may not be a big issue in the next election because…troops will be coming home by then.”

But while the Bush administration is going to withdraw a nominal amount of troops before the elections, it then plans to continue staying the course. The Aspen Daily News reported in July on more of the White House’s strategy:

Overall, Rove said the goal was to make the “U.S. combat footprint smaller,” but he also surmised later in the interview that when the next president is sworn in on Jan. 21, 2009, plenty of American troops would still be in Iraq.

Recall that Bush’s strategy on Iraq is to “get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence,” and to ultimately “stay longer.”

On Thursday, President Bush will address the nation on Iraq and announce that he will be, not surprisingly, accepting Petraeus’s drawdown recommendations.

UPDATE: Today when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked Petraeus whether it was “highly likely that “a year from now we’re going to have at least 100,000 troops in Iraq?,” Petraeus replied unequivocally: “That is probably the case. Yes, sir.”

At the Senate Armed Services hearing on progress in Iraq today, Sen. John Warner (R-VA) asked Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, “if we continue what you have laid before the Congress, this strategy, that if you continue, you are making America safer?” “Sir, I don’t know actually,” replied Petraeus, adding that he is solely focused on the mission in Iraq. Watch it:

Transcript: Read more

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell yesterday tried to claim that the new expansive FISA law adopted by Congress prior to the August recess was responsible for the foiling of a recent alleged terror attack. The New York Times reports that McConnell tried to tie the capture of three Islamic militants accused of planning bomb attacks in Germany to the FISA bill:

Mr. McConnell made his remarks to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. When asked by the chairman, Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, whether the new law that Congress adopted last month facilitated the German arrests, Mr. McConnell said, “Yes, sir, it did.”

Fox News quickly used the comments to drum up support for the administration’s demand for broad spying authority. “Just last week three Germans allegedly planning attacks against US interests were arrested and it was partly due to a strengthened Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in danger now of being scaled back by Democrats in Congress,” Fox reported. Watch it:

McConnell’s statements have no basis in reality, but rather, appear to be an effort to build public support for the new FISA law that expires in five months. The Times reported today that a government official said “McConnell might have misspoken.” In fact, the information gathered ahead of the alleged German attacks was done under the prior FISA law — the law that required warrants:

[T]he official, who has been briefed on the eavesdropping laws and the information given to the Germans, said that those intercepts were recovered last year under the old law.

Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) sent a letter to McConnell demanding that he back up his claims. The letter states:

Please state whether a specific decision was made to de-classify the information you provided to the Senate Committee and, if so, when, by whom, under what authority, and what was the specific background and explanation. In addition, please clarify whether the intercepts in question were foreign-to-foreign, as your statement implied, and whether they were in fact obtained under the old FISA law or the new FISA law.

UPDATE: Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), a member of the House intelligence committee, issued this statement:

“Contrary to DNI McConnell’s remarks before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Reform Committee yesterday, the so-called ‘Protect America Act’ played no role in uncovering the recent German terrorist plot. Those arrests were made with the assistance of intelligence gathered under U.S. laws in effect earlier this year. The DNI knew that going into the hearing. The questions remain why he asserted otherwise during the hearing, and why he has yet to correct the record.

“The German terror case in question is another example of why I voted against the ‘Protect America Act’ when it came to the House floor in August. Our existing collection activities are working well overall, uncovering potential terrorist plots in Europe and elsewhere. While some technical adjustments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) might be in order, the bill the Congress passed last month went far beyond what was necessary by effectively suspending the Fourth Amendment. I’ll be exploring these issues with DNI McConnell in future oversight hearings.”

This morning, New York Times columnist David Brooks joined a small chorus including Washington Post columnists Charles Krauthammer and Jackson Diehl, and Michael O’Hanlon in giving up on listening to what Iraqis think. Instead, Brooks wrote that the U.S. mission in Iraq is to partition Iraq:

What we’re really trying to build, in other words, is a road to partition. We’re trying to build a pathway to separation that involves the sort of low-intensity civil war that Iraq is enduring right now. We’re trying to prevent a pathway that is even worse — a high-intensity genocide.

This week’s ABC News/BBC/NHK survey of 2,000 Iraqis found the following:

Nearly every Iraqi — a whopping 98 percent — said the separation of people on sectarian lines is a bad thing for Iraq;

A majority of Iraqis — 62 percent — support one unified Iraq with a central government in Baghdad. Even though this figure has declined 8 points since 2005, overall support for a unified Iraq remains strong.

The surge of U.S. troops has seen the number of Iraqis pushed out of their homes double. As widespread sectarian cleansing in Baghdad occurs in the presence of tens of thousands of U.S. troops, extremist gangs and militias may push the silent majority of Iraqis closer to some partition scenario. But that doesn’t mean Americans should support the agendas shared by those Iraqi extremists who are murdering others in Iraq’s civil war.

This raises another tough question more Americans should ask: Is publicly advocating partition actually encouraging Iraqis who are conducting sectarian cleansing to accelerate their vicious campaigns?

- Brian Katulis, co-author of Strategic Reset

At Sean Hannity’s Freedom Concert in New Jersey tonight, which Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will be attending, the headliners are country duo Montgomery Gentry. Eddie Montgomery, one half of the band, is a big Hannity fan. So big, that he thinks the Fox News talker should seek higher office:

“Sean makes sense to me.” [...]

But Montgomery, for one, wouldn’t mind seeing Hannity try a different career path.

“I could see him running for president,” says Montgomery. “I think he’s that smart.”

Hannity has not made any presidential aspirations known, but he is supporting Rudy Giuliani.

Newsweek “has learned that a separate internal report being prepared by a Pentagon working group will ‘differ substantially‘ from Petraeus’s recommendations.” An early version will “recommend a very rapid reduction in American forces: as much as two-thirds of the existing force very quickly, while keeping the remainder there.” “There is interest at senior levels [of the Pentagon] in getting alternative views” to Petraeus, an official said.