Increasing pressure on the Iraqis by discussing "Plan B"

Wherever you stand on the Iraq war funding debate, there can be little argument that the Democrat's position has significantly increased the pressure on the Iraqis to move forward.

Iraq's military is drawing up plans to cope with any quick U.S. military pullout, the defense minister said Monday, as a senior American official warned that the Bush administration may reconsider its support if Iraqi leaders don't make major reforms by fall.

Notice the anonymously "senior American official" sourced warning. In an effort to increase pressure, the administration is beginning to "leak" lots of Plan B scenarios like in this David Ignatius piece yesterday.

President Bush and his senior military and foreign policy advisers are beginning to discuss a "post-surge" strategy for Iraq that they hope could gain bipartisan political support. The new policy would focus on training and advising Iraqi troops rather than the broader goal of achieving a political reconciliation in Iraq, which senior officials recognize may be unachievable within the time available.....

Senior officials discussed the outlines of a "post-surge" policy late last week in what they said was an effort to build bipartisan support from Congress and the American public. Their comments appeared to be a trial balloon aimed at testing whether a Baker-Hamilton approach could gain traction in Washington.

NPR has a piece on the Pentagon's planning for a "withdrawal." Surprise, surprise, permanent military bases.

A series of military installations could be maintained around Iraq, with a total of total of 30,000 to 40,000 U.S. troops, for a long period of time — maybe a few decades.

Also today, we might be able to get some sense of just how far the Iraqis are from that "political reconciliation."

Parliament was due to sit on Tuesday to discuss several important issues including constitutional reform, one of Washington's benchmarks.

And, as per the ungodly usual, on a day when political deliberations are set to take place, a mass casualty bombing.