As we have already said, the troop reduction will be based on conditions, and one of the important conditions is this election, which will be the latest in a series of political developments.
As you continue to either close or turn over these bases, it's just self-evident that there would be some reduced need for the American presence in those areas,
If somebody comes back to me and says there's nothing wrong with the Department of Defense paying journalists, I'll say, 'Even if there's nothing wrong, does it make sense ?
The next step in the process is that the president will decide whether or not he's going to send it to the Congress as is,
That's the kind of exchange you want to have with a country that has not been that transparent.
That's not a good way to determine how good or bad things are going - by (counting) how many things are exploding.
So they've reviewed the standard operating procedures to see if perhaps we could have been more careful in those cases.
The fact is we said we'd proceed on commissions. Hicks is up. And we're going to proceed. And if we're asked not to proceed or ordered not to proceed (by a court), then we won't. That's the plan,
We're going to take a look at the entire scope of our responsibilities in the Department of Defense and determine what is it that we can or should be doing better, differently, more of, less of.
We'll have a lot of flexibility to be able to let the forces stack on top of one another during the rotation (of troops in and out of Iraq) so that we can have a greater capability during key points.
