The recent clashes between Congress and the White House over withdrawal dates for U.S. forces from Iraq have me worried that the government may err on how they go about actually doing it, when the time comes to leave Iraq.
One nightmare scenario that I can see happening is that the U.S. military will be on the move under cover of darkness to their pre-invasion positions in Kuwait, as well as heading for Saudi Arabia. No one will realize what exactly is going on, until one of the networks put two and two together and announce that the U.S. pull-out is underway.
When it goes on the air, you can bet that al-Qaeda and many insurgent groups will head to the American withdrawal routes and start staging ambushes.
The same kind of thing happened to the Soviets when they withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989; they lost a lot of soldiers to snipers and ambushes; Soviet President Gorbachev bitterly complained that they were leaving and they shouldn't be shot at, but the mujahideen didn't care. Bullets and bombs continued to hit the Red Army as they headed back into Soviet territory.
Hopefully the Pentagon is looking at this carefully and determining how they will get our troops out. I think a gradual quiet withdrawal is the way to go, instead of having tens of thousands of vehicles and 140,000 troops on the move at the same time. That's a disaster waiting to happen.
We don't need tons of casualties on the last day simply because the withdrawal of troops from Iraq was planned in the same way as the occupation was. We don't need to go there.
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