You don't often hear any Congressmen or Senators demanding answers on how long the duration or how great the number of troops will be required in Kosovo, South Korea, or Germany.

But you hear little other than those questions when the subject of Iraq comes up.

There's isn't much discussion of extracting U.S. troops from Qatar or Kuwait, but hardly a day goes by when one or more of the Democrats who are running to replace George W. Bush in the Oval office don't lay out some plan on how to get the troops "home."  (Of course those plans do not and cannot guarantee that the troops summoned back from Iraq won't be sent off to Okinawa or Djibouti --it is a global military, and its missions are many and spread across the continents.)

The reality is that politicians demand that the troops be withdrawn from Iraq because that withdrawal will inflict a political defeat on the Administration.  If the Army and marines are obliged to retreat, Democrats reason, there will be no way for the GOP to portray the invasion of Iraq as a sound decision.  They will claim their votes for war were manipulated by intentionally deceptive intelligence, and they will rely on the MSM to avoid calling attention to inconvenient speeches made and op-eds written back in late 2002 and 2003.

Responsible analysts know that that not only are American troops going to be stationed in Iraq for many years to come, but that talk of withdrawal exposes those troops to increased risk of attack as al Qaeda in Iraq redoubles its efforts to drive America from the country in response to American casualties.  Numerous observers expect an Arab version of the Tet offensive before General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker make their reports on the surge in mid-September in an effort to rekindle the anti-war hysteria of May and June, a hysteria that has been greatly dampened by the rising tide of good news from Baghdad and al-Anbar province.

So for how long and with how many troops will America remain in Iraq.  Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Max Boot offered one estimate in the new issue of Commentary Magazine:

The strain on U.S. forces, especially the army, is great. Nevertheless, the current force level can be maintained through at least the spring of next year. Thereafter, we could begin to draw down troops at the rate of one brigade a month until August, when we would be down to a pre-surge force of 15 Brigade Combat Teams or about 140,000 troops. This, assuming we stick with the current schedule of 15-month tours of duty, could then be maintained through 2009, with adjustments up or down at the recommendation of General Petraeus.