Iraq War: "Can it be that it was all so simple then?"

Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time rewritten every line?
                           - "The Way We Were"

A flashback to the past: Reduction in U.S. Troops Eyed for '04 : Gradual Exit Strategy Tied to Iraq's Stability by Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post 10/19/03. Ricks wrote back then:

U.S. military commanders have developed a plan to steadily cut back troop levels in Iraq next year, several senior Army officers said in recent interviews.

There are now 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. The plan to cut that number is well advanced and has been described in broad outline to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld but has not yet been approved by him. It would begin to draw down forces next spring, cutting the number of troops to fewer than 100,000 by next summer and then to 50,000 by mid-2005, officers involved in the planning said.

Oh, yes, back in the day...

The optimistic estimates that have been popping up lately in the US and British press are holding out hope that US troop levels in Iraq may drop below 100,000 sometime this year.  Something sounds vaguely familiar about this.

How were they planning to do this back in 2003?  Well, according to Ricks:

Officials involved in the discussions about troop reductions insist that implementation will be dictated not by a set timetable, but by security conditions in Iraq. Nonetheless, the drawdown is tied to events that are scheduled to begin in January [2004], when a major round of U.S. troop rotations that will last several months is to get underway.

During that period, the U.S. military hopes to turn over as many basic security functions as possible to the Iraqi security forces now being created and to any additional foreign peacekeepers that U.S. diplomacy secures. If the Iraqi security forces can shoulder more of the security burden, it might be possible to replace the departing divisions of about 16,000 troops each with brigades of about 5,000 each.

Over the spring, that changeover would represent a cumulative reduction of more than 30,000 soldiers; along with other cuts, it could lower the U.S. troop level to fewer than 100,000 by mid-2004.

As more units of Iraqi soldiers and civil defense troops are created, and as some additional foreign peacekeepers begin to arrive, cuts in U.S. troop levels would continue next year. Ideally, said one official involved in the planning, by mid-2005 the number of U.S. troops would be as low as 40,000. Army planners consider a presence of that size to be sustainable for years without placing undue stress on the overall force. (my emphasis)

The plan seems to have been, "As the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down".  We're still waiting on those "additional foreign peacekeepers", though.

Maybe the Pentagon is at least saving a few bucks on public relations by just recycling the same old press stories year after year after year.