Petraeus: Withdrawal through Summer 2008 may be much less than 30,000 troops

Above: A soldier with 2nd Infantry Division provides security during the during a mission in the Dora district of Baghdad in August.

Gen. David Petraeus says U.S. military commanders are still assessing what the right levels of U.S. troops in Iraq should be after mid-2008, but that further reductions will be needed...

INSKEEP: I want to ask about the reduction in troops that you've talked about. I want to first make sure that I understand the numbers that you're talking about. It's been said that what you've described is a reduction in 30,000 troops. Is that, in fact, what you –

GEN. PETRAEUS: What I've described is a reduction of five brigade combat teams, Army brigade combat teams, the Marine Expeditionary Unit, which actually is coming out this month without replacement, and two Marine battalions. Now, we want to take out other –

INSKEEP: That's a little less than –

GEN. PETRAEUS: Well, we have to do the math, candidly. We've got – I have not yet said how many thousands of troops.

INSKEEP: So when people have said 30,000, they're not quite accurate. It might be 30,000 — it might be quite a bit less.

GEN. PETRAEUS: Well, we've got to determine what it can be.

Read the rest at NPR

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