Here is an outstanding analysis of Barack Obama's strategy, or as the writer calls it, a "non-strategy," for pulling out of Iraq. Dennis Byrne, in the Chicago Daily Observer, literally takes Obama apart and shows how disastrous an Obama Presidency would be in terms of Iraq. John McCain must drive this home to voters should Obama become the nominee for the Democrats:

Take his “plan for ending the war in Iraq.” “He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.” (Elsewhere, he says by the end of 2009.) Do Obama supporters know how many troops are in a combat brigade? (About 3,500 in the Army and about 5,000 in the Marine equivalent.) Or how many combat brigades are in Iraq? (Thirteen Army and two Marine.) Do they know that those brigades account only for about 60,000 troops in Iraq? (The rest are medical, transport, maintenance and other support troops.) The drawdown, he said, will be “strategic” and done in consultation with military commanders on the ground. In other words, it will be left up to the military commanders, none of whom think that timetables and arbitrary withdrawal are good ideas. Obama doesn’t mention that they’ll have to figure out how to fight a rear-guard action.

This is ridiculously arbitrary. What makes the end of 2009 strategically important? Why not June, 2009? Or the end of 2008? This is the calendar driving strategy for the sake of the calendar. It would have been as if Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War Two, said: “Well, if we don’t reach Berlin by the end of 1944, we’ll start a ‘strategic, phased drawdown’ of our troops. That’ll force the Germans to end the war.” It’s patent nonsense.

It’s what you get when your non-strategy is based on flawed assumptions and non-facts. For example, Obama prattles on about how 2 million Iraqis are homeless, but fails to mention that half of those were displaced before the war by Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. He omits the fact that the number of newly displaced Iraqis is down by two-thirds, compared with 2006. These are not minor errors of fact. It’s an attempt at deception, resulting from an effort to make the war sound worse than it is.

Obama mistakes or omits not a few other items when he tries to depict the war as a failure: There are more children in school, the University of Baghdad attendance up dramatically. The media are freer and more plentiful than ever. The number of Internet subscribers and telephone subscribers—both good measures of a free society—are up dramatically over pre-war levels. Inflation was down to 5 percent annually, from 50 percent annually in 2006. The gross domestic product has doubled since prior to the war.

Attacks on oil and gas pipelines are down to almost zero after being a regular occurrence; kidnappings of foreign nationals are down to zero.

This is in addition to the important military victories that Obama tries to claim are inconsequential. The number of civilian and U.S. casualties are down significantly, but, ironically, Obama discounts this. In the past, the number of American fatalities was the only number that matter for the anti-war crowd, but the improvement now doesn’t matter. Obama claims that it doesn’t matter because the “surge” in American military forces can’t be counted as a success unless it brings forth an immediate political solution.

Obama’s Iraq “strategy” rests on this premise: If we say we’re leaving by a data certain, we’ll force the Iraqis to get their political act together. They’ll agree on oil-revenue sharing, religious conciliation, federalism and the rest of the deeply divisive issues. Since the majority of Iraqis say that they want a unified nation led by a central government (true), our abandonment of their security interests will force them to see the light, and push them into political, economic and societal concordats.

This premise would make sense if our presence actually was what was keeping them from reaching an agreement. The premise naively suggests that freed of the boot of American oppression, the Iraqis would come together, amicably and rapidly.

The reality is just the opposite. Our presence is what has prodded the Iraqis forward in the first place. Would Obama have us believe that there would have been free elections, a constitution or any kind of federal government without our presence? Does Obama seriously suggest that after centuries of primal conflict and virtually no democratic experience the Iraqis could suddenly come together in peaceful accord? Maybe Obama’s starry-eyed supporters believe it, but no amount of audacity and hope would make it so..

In the face of this reality, the rest of Obama’s plan for ending the war is a cruel joke. Just the words themselves make it all sound like a fairy tale: “Obama will engage representatives from all levels of Iraqi society—in and out of government—to seek a new accord on Iraq’s Constitution and governance. The United Nations will play a central role in this convention, which should not adjourn until a new national accord is reached addressing tough questions like federalism and oil revenue-sharing.”

Oh, that’ll work. Forcing the United Nations to do anything is laughable. So is arguing that a UN-sponsored conference will accomplish something, anything. How, pray tell, will Obama keep this imaginary conference from adjourning before a “new national accord is reached,” by locking everyone in a room, like they did during the American constitutional convention? Does Obama believe that his “most aggressive diplomatic effort in recent American history to reach a new compact on the stability of Iraq and the Middle East” will work on the strength of his nice personality? When it gets down to real negotiations, what will he give to the Iranians and Syrians that will make them guarantee stability—not to mention freedom—in Iraq?

Obama, for all his smarts, doesn’t see the internal contradiction of his plan: He would leave the Iraqis to themselves, but at the same time, he would force them to adopt a new constitution.

As far as I can see, Obama’s supposedly detailed war plan doesn’t get around to the real issue: the question of stability and freedom in the Middle East. As the various, continuing and escalating direct attacks on America and Americans by Muslim fanatics has demonstrated, sitting back and hoping for the best has not worked. Our direct involvement in the Middle East—in Iraq and Afghanistan—is of one piece. Whether you agree with it or not, it is a real strategy. Obama may call his plan a “strategy,” but when you get down to the details, it’s not merely strategy that’s wrong. It’s not even a strategy.