Wake me up when September Ends

Besides being an odd, misplaced and haunting Green Day song, this seems to be the elite consensus opinion on Iraq as that will be the time to 'assess' the surge and wait for Lucy to pull the football away as the vulnerable Republicans in Congress make noises about defecting from their more secure compatriots but then don't.

The Washington Post is reporting that the current round of troop deployment orders are being made with the intention of keeping twenty ground combat brigades in Iraq until at least next April.

"The surge needs to go through the beginning of next year for sure," said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the day-to-day commander for U.S. military operations in Iraq. The new requirement of up to 15-month tours for active-duty soldiers will allow the troop increase to last until spring, said Odierno, who favors keeping experienced forces in place for now.

"What I am trying to do is to get until April so we can decide whether to keep it going or not," he said in an interview in Baghdad last week. "Are we making progress? If we're not making any progress, we need to change our strategy. If we're making progress, then we need to make a decision on whether we continue to surge.""

Let's start talking about that --- contigency planning to extend an escalation and wreck the active duty military as well as the National Guard has already been pillaged and cross-leveled eleven ways to Sunday instead of contigency planning to prepare for an eventual withdrawal.