But the military will have to show some understanding as well. We don't have a monopoly on knowing what the nation's best interests are. National security now involves such spheres as law enforcement, the economy, the nation's industrial and scientific base and even such matters as health care and civil liberties. The military is just one voice among many.

Nor are our military plans and proposals beyond questioning. There's a lot of judgment involved in strategy and operations, and not a lot of certainty. The military is a cautious institution, and plans and options sometimes reflect just the opinion of the most senior person in the room. Even hard military "requirements" should stand up to public scrutiny. So when new members of Congress, Hill staffers and political appointees question tactics, techniques, troop levels and programs, we have to continue to treat these questions seriously and answer them with respect and diligence.

U.S. military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops.

The scheme to engage in chicanery in labeling U.S. troops represents both open defiance of an agreement which the U.S. military has never accepted and a way of blocking President-elect Barack Obama's proposed plan for withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of his taking office.

Even though the agreement with the Iraqi government calls for all American combat troops to be out of the cities by the end of June, military planners are now quietly acknowledging that many will stay behind as renamed “trainers” and “advisers” in what are effectively combat roles. In other words, they will still be engaged in combat, just called something else.

“Trainers sometimes do get shot at, and they do sometimes have to shoot back,” said John A. Nagl, a retired lieutenant colonel who is one of the authors of the Army’s new counterinsurgency field manual [...]

For his part, General Odierno made clear that the Iraqis still needed help — and that the United States would hardly disappear. “What I would say is, we’ll still maintain our very close partnership with the Iraqi security forces throughout Iraq, even after the summer,” he told reporters.

Military officials say they can accomplish that by “repurposing” whatever combat troops remain. Officially, a combat soldier is anyone trained in what are called combat-coded military occupation specialties — among them infantry, artillery and Special Forces — to engage the enemy. But combat troops can be given different missions. From the military’s point of view, a combat soldier is not so much what he is called but what he does.

So what’s the story? We know the Iraqis want us out - and they have just refused to approve any extension for troops from the UK and other countries. Any fair referendum in Iraq is most likely to do the same - and any extension of the occupation will draw intensified attacks from Iraqi nationalist forces. It's not like Gates and crew won't have a war to fight - in fact, the latest reports are that they are speeding up the deployment of US forces to Afghanistan. So why would US generals be so insistent on a longer occupation?

And more importantly, what is Obama going to do about it - and what are we going to do to make certain Obama knows we expect a full withdrawal – preferably starting yesterday.