It’s Not a Timeline, It’s a “Time Horizon”
George Bush has long been opposed to timetables for withdrawal from Iraq. So when prime minister Nouri al-Maliki started pointedly looking at the clock and asking whether American troops didn’t have a plane to catch, obviously Bush couldn’t just set a timetable for withdrawal. However,
President Bush and Iraq’s prime minister have agreed to set a “general time horizon” for bringing more U.S. troops home from the war, a dramatic shift from the administration’s once-ironclad unwillingness to talk about any kind of deadline or timetable.
Of course, the thing about a horizon is that no matter how long you walk toward it, it never gets any closer.
Especially when considered that some of those troops won’t be headed home, they’ll be headed to Afghanistan to pick up where things left off 5 or so years ago.
To say nothing of the 4000+ who won’t be returning home, period.