Medary.com

During a visit of Secretary of State Rumsfeld to Iraq, General George Casey said:

"If the political process continues to go positively, if the developments with the [Iraqi] security forces continue to go as it is going, I do believe we will still be able to make fairly substantial reductions after these elections - in the spring and summer of next year,"

Note to all of you "get out of Iraq now" folks: there's a big "if" right up front there. Think about it for a while before going out to see Jane Fonda's bus tour. (Link ironically to China's People's Daily. You can't make this stuff up.)

Rumsfeld listed several areas where Iraq needed to step up, including doing more to secure its borders with Syria and Iran, making sure the August 15th timetable for a new constitution is met, and taking a larger role in handling detainees within Iraq.