Interviewer: Yet Bush is now talking about drawing down troops.
Ellsberg: Nixon was doing what Bush is doing now: He was using the word, "withdrawal," "I'm withdrawing." Meaning, really, "I'm reducing." We haven't done much reduction yet in Iraq, but I do expect some reduction to happen.
Bush's strategy, I'm sure, will be to fool people to say yes, we're on our way out, we're going down and everybody wants to think we're going down to zero when he doesn't have that in mind any more than Nixon had it in mind in 1969 or 1970. Nixon had no thought of going down to zero. A combination of events brought him to that, finally, by 1973. But it was against his will and it was against his expectations.
Well, I don't think Bush has any idea that we'll ever be out of those bases and he would regard that as a total failure, a failure he does not intend or expect to preside over. And I'll go further: I don't expect him to either. I don't expect his successor to do it.
I'm working. I'm hoping that among other things we'll get out of Iraq, but I don't have much confidence. I think there's a chance or I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. I want to enlarge that chance, and I think enlarging that chance can be done. But I admit I think it's much less than an even chance. The odds are, I think we will one way or another hang onto the bases in that oil-rich country indefinitely, for a very long time. We'll let go of New Jersey before we let go of Iraq. Because the oil's pretty exhausted in New Jersey.
[...]
Rest: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/28/20658/6235
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Colin Brace
Amsterdam