Testimony Stopped Short of Strategy (Sen. Jack Reed)

I think they’re both very well respected, well regarded public servants. I think, though, that there are some critical questions they were not willing to answer. One is how long do they anticipate American troops staying in Iraq, and in what number, based on their strategy? And I think they arbitrarily said, “Well I can’t say anything until next March.”

Essentially what happened in their testimony was they accepted the reality that the force structure will require reduction in the beginning of next spring, but they were unwilling to go any further and say, “Here’s a strategy that we think will be beyond that and carry us forward to the objective.”