Gen Petraeus is developing a troop draw down plan which can be implemented in stages and as conditions warrant:

The top American commander in Iraq said Wednesday that he was preparing recommendations on troop reductions before he returns to Washington next month for a report to Congress. He predicted the U.S. footprint in Iraq would have to be “a good bit smaller” by next summer.

But Gen. David Petraeus cautioned against a quick or significant U.S. withdrawal that could surrender “the gains we have fought so hard to achieve.”

…

“We know that the surge has to come to an end. There’s no question about that. I think everyone understands that by about a year or so from now we’ve got to be a good bit smaller than we are right now.

“The question is how do you do that … so that you can retain the gains we have fought so hard to achieve and so you can keep going. Again, we are not at all satisfied where we are right now. We have made some progress, but again, there’s still a lot of hard work to be done against the different extremist elements that do threaten the new Iraq.”

Stability is the key. As the story notes al-Qaeda’s bloody attacks like the ones yesterday that killed around 250 are the kind of things which result if we move too fast. But al-Qaeda also has to do some thinking on this. They want the US out, but their plan so far has been to kill large number of Muslims – as if that would destroy our resolve. It has not, but instead it has created a massive country-wide backlash against al-Qaeda.

al-Qaeda has always missed the opportunity to influence the Iraqis from the pulpit instead of through mass graves. They may now reconsider their tactics which are only delaying our withdrawal and creating support for our staying since we are providing the security the people so desperately need. al-Qaeda may decide to stop killing Muslims, and that would give Iraq time to take over their security and build their nation out.

There can always be car bombs, these cannot be stopped if al-Qaeda insists on killing people. But the country is in overall peace and at peace with itself. Remove al-Qaeda’s influence and we have some Shiia power struggles to address and then there is a very successful end to all this. We will need to watch the dynamic in the Muslim street. Right now they are trending away from al-Qaeda and their brutal methods. If this continues to happen then peace will come and we can withdrawal and let the Iraqis take over.

Update: The death toll in the suicide bombings is likely to double news reports say today.

Iraqi Army and Mosul police sources earlier put the number at 260, but said it was likely to rise; 320 were reported wounded.

The Tuesday truck bombs that targeted the villages of Qahtaniya, al-Jazeera and Tal Uzair, in northern Iraq near the border with Syria, were a “trademark al Qaeda event” designed to sway U.S. public opinion against the war, a U.S. general said Wednesday.

All these dead Muslims so al-Qaeda can get headlines in the US and shake up weak-kneed Democrats. The Dems and Media created this bloody symbiatic connection between bomb tolls and media attention. If the media would do a balanced job and show all the successes stories in the same volume they do body counts stories al-Qaeda might try a different way to make headlines. But no, after years of warning the Democrats not to play politics we see the wisdom in that approach. When killing innocent people is thought to be a way to garner a surrender in Congress then the killings will happen. And when killings are the only sure way to get media attention, the killings will happen. This doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out. al-Qaeda has been trained by the liberals in Congress and the liberals in our media that killing innocent people in ever larger scales is their only hope for success now.

Only the media and the Democrats can now stop this carnage and end the war in Iraq. Failure to do so will hurt them in 2008. Time to bury the BDS libs. Let’s be clear here. The massacre of Muslims is making al-Qaeda enemies in the Muslim streets of Iraq. al-Qaeda knows this because they have warned leaders like zawaqiri, before he was killed last year, that his tactics were backfiring. The massacres are not impeding the US military and are marginally causing issues with the Iraqi government. They do not impress any of these groups who are key factors in Iraq. They do impress the liberal media and the Surrendercrats in our Congress. Therefore these killings are for them and no one else. It is time to leave al-Qaeda as the only group who thinks mass killings of Muslims will bring a victory. When the Media and Surrendercrats abandon the concept, it will die out. But not until then. Bury the BDS and join forces with Bush. Before the report comes out. Be leaders, not followers.