The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Washington

President Bush boasts that he's bringing 8,000 troops home from Iraq by February. What he doesn't say is he'll leave office with more troops there than before last year's big military buildup and few options for shoring up the force in increasingly violent Afghanistan.

The bottom line of Bush's troop announcement on Tuesday is that the U.S. military footprint in Iraq largely will stay intact for the rest of the year when he'll pass command of the wars to his successor. Bush is sending more troops to Afghanistan, but Democrats say it's not enough.

Bush chose the measured drawdown in Iraq because he didn't want to jeopardize recent security gains. He sent in 30,000 extra troops last year to buy time for political and economic progress in Iraq, which has been slow to materialize. Military commanders tell Bush there appears to be a "degree of durability" to the security gains, but progress in Iraq remains fragile and reversible.

In a speech at the National Defense University, Bush emphasized the positive:

"While the enemy in Iraq is dangerous, we have seized the offensive. Iraqi forces are becoming increasingly capable of leading and winning the fight.

As a result, we've been able to carry out a policy of return on success - reducing American combat forces in Iraq as conditions on the ground continue to improve."

On Wednesday, Bush is meeting in the Oval Office with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. Tuesday afternoon, he visited severely wounded troops at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, seeing, face-to-face, the human consequences of war.

"On the one hand you see the horrors of war," he said after spending an hour with wounded soldiers. "And on the other hand you see the courage of the people who have volunteered to serve."

Bush advisers said U.S. troop withdrawals were possible because of clear, undeniable progress on the security front, paving the way for other nations to pull out their troops too. They said the 30-member coalition with forces in Iraq would shrink to a handful in the next 90 days. They're leaving it to the Iraqi government to announce who's staying and who's going.