Peter Spiegel the writer of first article Bowser linked {http://news.ft.com/cms/s/9f81fef2-14de-11da-9df1-00000e2511c8.html with title:US general sees significant withdrawal in Iraq } Says:
"The US is expected to pull significant numbers of troops out of Iraq in the next 12 months in spite of the continuing violence, according to the general responsible for near-term planning in the country."
...
While he cautioned that any troop reduction would be conditional on continued political progress and ongoing improvement in Iraqi force training, he said Centcom planners believed “the political process will play out, that we will see a constitution, that we will see, by some political machinations, the Sunnis brought into the process and we will proceed to national elections in December”.

“If we see that and if we see progress on the second front, which is continued progress with the Iraqi security force next year, this time we'll be in the position to make some adjustments in our force structure.”

Bowsers say this regarding "US general sees significant withdrawal in Iraq"
"If one read this headline, one would assume happily that the troops are coming home."

My reply: I wouldn't assume this from the headline. First of all, the troops are coming back to US all the time. They rotate in, do a tour, then rotate out. {the length of time can vary, but 12 months is standard for US, whereas I believe the Brits have 7 month as their standard duration}. Another issue is the soldiers could be stationed in Kuwait or go other areas, such as Afghanistan. And finally I don't associate "sees significant withdrawal" with being the same as "troops are coming home". For instance we had "significant withdrawal" from S Korea and Germany within last few years. But then again maybe Bowser is hoping to have a parade of soldiers returning from Iraq. I suppose it's possible that some coming home parade could occur before August 2006. But it will probably similar to the "mission accomlished" on the carrier [that Bowser constantly whines about], in other words it could mark a major phase in the war on Terrorism, or the completion of a major *army* combat operation.

Regarding second link [U.S. to send 1,500 more troops to Iraq] Bowser says:
"Of course both could be true, as could the statements that the US wasn't going to engage in nation-building, we'd be out of there as soon as there as a regime change, in one year, in two years, etc."

If we only added 1500 more troops for election period, that mark quite shift from the more than 20000 we added Jan 30 election period, but believe the story could be a bit misleading. There will probably be more troops added as we get nearer to Iraqi elections* to handle the increased security need. I did see the news conference and "1500 troops added" was mentioned, but what I got was it was said to mean "for instance" 1500 are being added in next week or so, and *NOT* we only going to add 1500.

* This addition may be accomplished by overlapped the rotating in and out of troops. Or it's possible that since we letting Iraqi soldiers handle zones by themselves, this might allow less US troops in total required to secure the election period, but I would expect at least 10,000 added to normal US force levels for this period.