Today’s Must Read

Now he tells us.

General Peter Pace became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2005, the first ever Marine to become senior military adviser to the president. Known as “Perfect Pete” inside the Pentagon, Pace was a consistent and steadfast supporter of the Iraq war. Throughout 2006, now considered something of a “lost year” in Iraq by war supporters, Pace painted a rosy picture of the war — even describing it as going “very, very well” just weeks after the destruction of a major Shiite mosque sparked a new wave of intense sectarian fighting. Pace’s boosterism cost him his job in June, when Defense Secretary Robert Gates declined to renominate him to another two-year term rather than face a grueling reconfirmation hearing.

Now that Pace is on his way out, though, he’s singing a much different tune. The Los Angeles Times reports that Pace, following a recent trip to Iraq, will call for nearly half of the roughly 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq to come home by 2008.

Administration and military officials say Marine Gen. Peter Pace is likely to convey concerns by the Joint Chiefs that keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military. This assessment could collide with one being prepared by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, calling for the U.S. to maintain higher troop levels for 2008 and beyond.

Petraeus is expected to support a White House view that the absence of widespread political progress in Iraq requires several more months of the U.S. troop buildup before force levels are decreased to their pre-buildup numbers sometime next year.

Pace’s recommendations reflect the views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who initially expressed private skepticism about the strategy ordered by Bush and directed by Petraeus, before publicly backing it.

Historians will have to sort out whether Pace always believed that troop levels needed to come down and kept silent or whether he changed his mind after being fired. The senior military leadership, as of late 2006, expressed great skepticism that a surge in troops could appreciably affect the war’s fortunes at an acceptable cost to military readiness. Pace, in public, supported the surge at every turn, telling a governors’ meeting at the White House earlier this year that “Marines don’t talk about failure. They talk about victory.”

The debate now inside the Pentagon is over what to do after the spring, when, as Lieutenant General Ray Odierno, the ground forces commander in Iraq, acknowledged last week, a troop reduction is inevitable for readiness reasons. Odierno and others in Iraq believe only the nearly-30,000 surge forces should be withdrawn. Pace will tell President Bush — apparently reflecting the beliefs of the chiefs of the military services — that vastly more troops need to leave Iraq if the U.S. is to be prepared for other military threats.

As the Times reports, Pace’s decision raises the stakes for General Petraeus’ September assessment that a larger force level is needed in Iraq. War opponents in Congress will now have an alternative approach blessed by the nation’s senior military officer. Petraeus will need to at least implicitly contend, compellingly, that the service chiefs are wrong. Of course, if Pace had spoken out earlier, maybe Petraeus — and the country — wouldn’t be in such a difficult position.