BUGGING OUT. "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters points the way to disengagement. While "We must remain ferociously aggressive in Iraq and around the globe," the General writes,

If our troops in Iraq are stymied by a web of political deals and need to ask, "Mother, may I?" before confronting terrorists, they'll be condemned to lethal inactivity — turned into targets with bound hands. Morale will plummet. And their lives will be wasted...

We owe Baghdad nothing. Nothing. We've already given Iraq an unprecedented chance to build a humane society and a decent government. If, despite our sacrifices, the Iraqis revert to greed, bigotry and tribalism, we'll need to face the reality of yet another homemade Arab failure and "stand not upon the order of [our] going, but go"...

...if the Iraqis lack the guts to stand up for their own freedom, we needn't hang around to watch as the country bleeds to death, unwilling to apply its own tourniquet.

The General is famously outspoken, but I wouldn't be surprised if his opinions here turned out to be the cutting edge of the new reality. After June 30 we will of course still have a lot of troops in Iraq, but already we see signs that the democratization phase of the enterprise is getting less of our direct attention than did the deSaddamification phase. Of course we are less attentive to Afghanistan than before, too, and things are evolving in some interesting ways there as well.

I suspect the Administration is eager to leave Iraq, and will get less shy about showing it.