Media missed strategy and redeployment that has been underway for some time in Iraq

Donald Devine:

Why does no one know 30 U.S. bases in Iraq have been turned over to Iraqis with American forces withdrawn to more remote and defensible fortifications?
In early November, U.S. troops withdrew from the first major installation in the troubled Sunni region, Saddam Hussein's sprawling 18-palace hill compound in his Tikrit hometown, magnificently straddling the Tigris River, that so impressed this visitor then. Gen. Donald Alston offhandedly mentioned this was the 30th U.S. base turned over to Iraq this year. Maj. Gen. Joseph Taluto, 42nd Infantry Division commander, told reporters the move was meant to "reduce the footprint" of U.S. forces in the area to "discourage attacks and prepare the way for eventual reduction" of U.S. troops.
Somehow this crucial fact was missing from the debate in Congress recently on U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. President George W. Bush was understandably pleased to end with both houses of Congress rejecting resolutions to withdraw U.S. troops immediately. But the fact the Senate voted 79-19 on a Republican chairman's resolution to designate the year 2006 as "a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty ... thereby creating the conditions for the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq" represents a momentous change regarding the war. Polls showed two-thirds of the public also wanted a plan for disengagement, although not necessarily a published one available to the enemy.
It's a shame but President Bush and the American military have had such a plan almost from the start but have allowed idealistic rhetoric to overshadow what is taking place in Iraq. As a journalist and political science professor, this columnist was invited by the Defense Department to tour the major Iraqi bases in November 2003 and luckily returned to tell the tale.

...
Antiwar media types and antiwar liberals have been too focused on trying to get Bush to admit he made a mistake in Iraq, rather than seeing the mistake they made in opposing the war. They were wrong to oppose the war. They were wrong to say the administration misled the country into war. They were wrong to say the US cannot win. They were wrong to say that the Iraqis were not interested in democracy. They have been wrong all along and they will never admit it. They are the stubborn ones.

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