Redstate

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Barack Obama | Iraq | The Best Laid Plans | War — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

One wonders what Obama supporters will say when they see this:

A key adviser to Senator Obama's campaign is recommending in a confidential paper that America keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq as of late 2010, a plan at odds with the public pledge of the Illinois senator to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.

 The paper, obtained by The New York Sun, was written by Colin Kahl for the center-left Center for a New American Security. In "Stay on Success: A Policy of Conditional Engagement," Mr. Kahl writes that through negotiations with the Iraqi government "the U.S. should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60,000-80,000 forces) by the end of 2010 (although the specific timelines should be the byproduct of negotiations and conditions on the ground)."

Mr. Kahl is the day-to-day coordinator of the Obama campaign's working group on Iraq. A shorter and less detailed version of this paper appeared on the center's Web site as a policy brief.

Both Mr. Kahl and a senior Obama campaign adviser reached yesterday said the paper does not represent the campaign's Iraq position. Nonetheless, the paper could provide clues as to the ultimate size of the residual American force the candidate has said would remain in Iraq after the withdrawal of combat brigades. The campaign has not publicly discussed the size of such a force in the past.

This is not the first time the opinion of an adviser to the Obama campaign has differed with the candidate's stated Iraq policy. In February, Mr. Obama's first foreign policy tutor, Samantha Power, told BBC that the senator's current Iraq plan would likely change based on the advice of military commanders in 2009. She has since resigned her position as a formal adviser.

Gosh, there really does appear to be a lot of winking and nodding regarding this issue, doesn't there? Maybe some enterprising reporter would be kind enough to ask why it is that a number of Senator Obama's advisers seem to think that his plan to withdraw troops precipitously is not the best of ideas. And perhaps they will also do well to ask whether these trial balloons being sent up by Obama's advisers might portend the Senator himself backtracking from his promise to remove troops in less than a year and a half after becoming President.

If these questions are publicly and insistently asked prior to the Pennsylvania primary, I should be most grateful. And so would a lot of other people.