Pay No Attention To Iraq Please

"The last combat brigade has left Iraq" will join "Read my lips, no new taxes", "Mission accomplished" and "The fundamentals of our economy are sound" in the annals of infamy.

The US military and the Obama administration loudly trumpeted the withdrawal of the "last combat brigade" from Iraq last week, but news reports suggest the move is purely semantic: The combat brigades are still there, but under a different name.

The Army Times reported on Saturday that the US still has seven combat brigades inside Iraq, but they have been renamed "advise and assist brigades." The name change will reportedly change little in terms of the duties the brigades carry out:

The Army selected brigade combat teams as the unit upon which to build advisory brigades partly because they would be able to retain their inherent capability to conduct offensive and defensive operations, according to the Army’s security force assistance field manual, which came out in May 2009. This way, the brigade can shift the bulk of its operational focus from security force assistance to combat operations if necessary.

In Sunday's Washington Post, Kenneth M. Pollack argues that the claim there are no more US combat troops in Iraq is "not even close."

50,000 combat troops still remain, they're just not called combat troops.  And the actual combat troops could be headed back into Iraq at any given moment:

The commander of US forces in Iraq doesn't foresee the need for US to resume combat missions in Iraq but isn't entirely ruling it out either.

"We have several different contingency plans for support, but it would have to be something that would change the strategic dynamic here for us to move back to combat operations," Gen. Ray Odierno told CNN's Candy Crowley Sunday.

"Can you define that for me?" asked Crowley. "What is a strategic dynamic that could change?"
"Well, if, for example, you had a complete failure of the security forces. If you had some political divisions within the political forces that caused them to fracture," Odierno replied.

Gosh, what are the odds of a complete crack-up of Iraqi forces?

We're not leaving Iraq or Afghanistan anytime soon, folks.  We'll be there until our economy collapses and we need troops on the ground keeping order here rather than over there.  That may come sooner rather than later...