Military conditions might allow for even greater reductions in the number of troops in Iraq.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday raised the possibility of cutting U.S. troop levels in Iraq to 100,000 by the end of next year, well beyond the cuts President Bush has approved.

Stressing that he was expressing his hope, not an administration plan, Gates said it was possible conditions in Iraq could improve enough to merit much deeper troop cuts than are currently scheduled for 2008.

Asked at a news conference whether he was referring to going from today's level of about 169,000 to about 100,000 U.S. troops by the end of next year, Gates replied, "That would be the math."

It was the first time a member of Bush's war cabinet had publicly suggested such deep reductions, although many in Congress have pushed hard for big cuts to begin bringing the war to a conclusion.

You see, the determining factor will be the situation on the ground and military necessity, not politics and pandering like this proposal from the Democrats.

Now that President Bush and Gen. David H. Petraeus have charted their course for the Iraq war, Democrats in the Senate say one of their proposals aimed at shifting the president’s strategy is finally close to winning enough Republican support for a real chance at being approved. It would require that troops spend as much time at home as on their most recent tours overseas before being redeployed.

The proposal, by Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, has strong support from top Democrats, who say that the practical effect would be to add time between deployments and force General Petraeus to withdraw troops on a substantially swifter timeline than the one he laid out before Congress this week, and that it would protect troops from serving protracted and debilitating deployments.

In other words, the Democrats are offering yet another plan to undermine the ability of the military to conduct operations during time of war. They seem to have forgotten, for example, that troops during WWII were not rotated home -- indeed, many remained deployed for the duration of the war, and didn't see loved ones from the time they shipped out until late 1945 or early 1946. But then again, these weak-kneed, limp-wristed liberals would have swooned as they read casualty reports from Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, and Normandy -- each of which cost the United states more troops in a matter of weeks (or, in the case of D-Day, hours) than Iraq has in four years.

In 1943 or 1944, proposals like the one offered by James Webb and promoted by Joe Biden and the Democrat leadership would have been promptly labeled what they are -- seditious capitulation to the enemy. It is disheartening to see that the party of Roosevelt has become the party of Benedict Arnold.

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