Though there have been reports of officials like new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta wanting to speak with Iraqi officials about keeping a U.S. "presence" in country, the Times report is the first solid story that lists a specific troop number.
There's also that thorny little issue of, well, you know. The Iraqi's themselves. Do they still want U.S. troops in their country, after eight and a half long years? From the report:
Iraqi government officials are divided on whether the Americans should stay. Of the country's major ethnic and religious groups, only the Kurds have come out publicly in favor of U.S. forces staying. In private, Maliki is thought to want troops to stay, but his Islamic Dawa Party released a statement in mid-June declaring that American troops should honor the agreement to leave at the end of the year.
Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr's political movement is strongly opposed to the presence of U.S. forces and probably would present the biggest obstacle to large numbers of American troops remaining. Maliki needs Sadr's support to stay in office. Political leaders are expected to convene a meeting this week to discuss power-sharing in the Iraqi government, but they are also likely to broach the issue of whether American troops should be authorized to stay on.
Public opinion polls amongst those non-military folk have always been strongly in favor of the U.S. leaving their country.
There are a lot of people in this country who are cynical about Iraq, and don't believe we'll leave that country for a long time. In an interview with CL last month, former Florida U.S. Senator Bob Graham said he thinks we'll have an even larger footprint in Saddam Hussein's former domain.
"I think we’ll have something not far different than 50,000 there for a long time just to provide security. We have the largest embassy in terms of its physical size and number of personnel in Baghdad. So were going to have a lot of people there just to protect US interests. I will have to say that I am an optimistic, but I cannot be optimistic about the future of Iraq…the history of Iraq is very much like the history of Yugoslavia….."
The narrative that the U.S. must stay in Iraq is starting to build, and undoubtedly will get louder over the next several months as we get closer to the year end deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw.
In the New York Times earlier this week, reporter Tim Arango wrote about how Iraqi soldiers fear U.S. soldiers and advisers withdrawing :
“The Americans need to stay because we don’t have control over our borders,” said Maj. Gen. Fadhel al-Barwari, commander of the Iraq Special Operations Force.
Last week Vice Adm. William McRaven told a Senate committee that while Iraqi leaders have not formally asked for some U.S. troops to remain, it would be "mutually beneficial" to keep some special operations forces there.
We've got nearly half a year before the deadline for all U.S. troops to leave the country. Prepare to be inundated with stories from the electronic and print press about how it would be a disaster if we pull out.
But after so much blood and treasure has been expended on the war whose original aims (looking for weapons of mass destruction) were thwarted a year into the battle, many Americans are ready to walk away from this sad chapter of U.S. foreign policy. "Mission accomplished" may not be the operable phrase, but keeping a critical campaign promise that Mr. Obama pledged - that might be worth honoring. Certainly among the progressive base that supported him in the Democratic primary over Hillary Clinton because of his strong opposition to the war in Iraq.
