Hey terrorists, quiet down for a little while and we'll leave, ok?

Xinhua - English:

"General George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Iraq, said two weeks ago that if all went well, the Pentagon should be able to make some fairly substantial reductions in the size of American forces by this time next year."

Look. I get the whole deal about being confident and forward-thinking. But why, for goodness' sake, telegraph to all the terrorists that if they'll just hold off for a while, we'll go home and leave them a fertile field for violence?

It really seems to me that it would be better to leave these things a mystery except for right before we're going to make the changeover, when we already have the critical forces in place to deal with any new attacks. But doing things this way seems to me to invite planning ahead by the terrorists.

I can only hope the military has some master rope-a-dope going on or something that they have good reason to believe is going to

1. Draw out the terrorists into open battle to be more quickly defeated
2. Quickly mount such a massive combination of force, political power, and accurate intelligence gathering as to prevent any further significant strategic attacks.

Neither of those options seems particularly likely to involve telling everyone, "Hey, if all goes well, we're pretty much out of here next year!"

I admit, I'm open to correction on this.