what do you expect American involvement in Iraq to look like in 18 months?

[Mr. Morden]

OK, here's a question: What do you expect American involvement in Iraq to look like 18 months from now (late October 2008, on the eve of the 2008 election)?  Not what you want it to be, but what you expect it to be.  Will there still be 100,000+ American troops there?

Because I've seen a lot of predictions about how the Iraq War is going to kill the GOP in 2008, and I can't shake the feeling that a lot of people may be underestimating the probability that there's going to be a significant change in policy between now and then.  Not a complete withdrawal, but some sort of scaling down of the mission to training Iraqi forces and special forces / air support of Iraqi combat forces in fighting al Qaeda in Iraq.....which would require far fewer troops than are there now.

When even Mitch McConnell is saying that the surge is a "last chance" that has to produce results by the fall, I have to wonder if Bush isn't about to be backed into a corner, in which all Democrats and even many Republicans will threaten to pull the plug on funding completely if Bush doesn't scale back the mission and withdraw most of the troops.  But it's difficult to gauge how likely this scenario is, which is why I started this thread to see what other people think.

[Mr. Morden]

So no one thinks that a handful of congressional Republicans will team up with congressional Dems to threaten to pull the plug, and force Bush to scale back the mission and withdraw a significant number of the troops?

[Mr. Morden]

Whatever the stated goals of the mission are, if, say, the US was to scale back its role to training Iraqi forces and providing air support for Iraqi forces against al Qaeda in Iraq, one would think that could have pretty significant consequences (either good or bad, depending on your point of view), both for Iraq and for the American political situation.  Perhaps, for example, you think that under such a scenario, the present Iraqi government would be overthrown, as there wouldn't be American troops around to prop it up?  I don't know.  That's just an example.  There are a lot of different ways it could go.

I'm just curious as to what people think are the most likely scenarios.  Because it seems like people are constantly presupposing that American policy isn't going to change much until the next president is sworn in, and I'm wondering how firmly people have really thought through the issue.  Are they just assuming that nothing will change because that's the simplest scenario?