It sounds more realistic to me

Thomas Ricks writes in today's Washington Post of recent interviews he's had with military and others in Baghdad. It seems as though the military is pushing the idea of cutting our forces there to about 50,000 in a year or so. While I still - and always will - lament our going into Iraq, I do not believe that a total, immediate withdrawal is necessarily a wise thing for us or for the Iraqis. Further, an 'immediate' withdrawal is impossible as there is only one primary way - through Kuwait - to get our gear out of the country; this may take ten months.

Or course, having any of our soldiers there means more American deaths but a phased withdrawal might be best for all concerned, given the current state of affairs: the insurgents might see that we will not be there forever, our friends might realize that we are not abandoning them, and the world might see that we are trying to extricate ourselves from this mess in an intelligent way. I know that I used 'might' four times in that sentence, but I'm not foolish enough to claim to know the future.

There are a couple of interesting comments in the article

• "We had previously 'transitioned' ourselves into irrelevance, and the whole thing was going to hell in a handbasket."
• The 2005 election only made things worse. "We wanted an election in the worst way, and we got one in the worst way."