There's some confusion regarding precisely what Senator Obama's Iraq resolution entails, exactly. In particular, there are questions about his call for the removal of "all combat brigades" from Iraq. In other words, if we remove all the combat brigades, what's left? Aren't "combat" troops just a small amount of the total force? And what happens to the people who remain?
When people talk about removing "combat brigades", they generally mean the shooters themselves and the troops that support them (i.e. both the "tooth" and the "tail"). The slight wiggle room is almost certainly to allow leaving some forces to continue training Iraqi army and police forces and do counter-terrorism (mostly airstrikes and limited tactical operations but not ground patrols, major presence in cities, etc.). That interpretation is supported by this passage in Obama's press release:
"The plan allows for a limited number of U.S. troops to remain as basic force protection, to engage in counter-terrorism, and to continue the training of Iraqi security forces. If the Iraqis are successful in meeting the thirteen benchmarks for progress laid out by the Bush Administration, this plan also allows for the temporary suspension of the redeployment, provided Congress agrees that the benchmarks have been met and that the suspension is in the national security interest of the United States."This is sound policy, if not necessarily significantly different from proposals by other leading Democrats (such as Edwards, who has been calling for full redeployment by 2008 for about a year, and Clinton, who recently said all troops should redeploy by the end of 2008). Obama's legislation mandates redeployment for the vast majority of soldiers who are regularly getting shot at, the ones who are still ostensibly engaged in counterinsurgency (and, in theory, the troops supporting them). It allows for leaving advisers and training personnel (which could number thousands but almost certainly not tens of thousands) as well as a kind of rapid-response force for counter-terrorism and specific battlefield emergencies.
If the plan were followed (and it won't be of course, but if it were) my best guess is that it would result in the redeployment of 90-95% of forces out of Iraq. As for the safety of the remaining forces, withdrawal in general is a little more dangerous (in the short term) than simply manning defensive positions, but it wouldn't make them significantly less safe. So removing combat brigades wouldn't simply remove everybody who can shoot straight and leave the rest, and while it made a splash as the first legislation along these lines, the plan is in line with popular opinion and the proposals of other major dems.
Not everybody is impressed, of course; Kevin Drum, for example, wonders if the plan is as aggressive as it initially sounds. In the end, many of the resolutions floating around are not that qualitatively different, and hopefully people can coalesce around one or two as things shake out.
