What a way to silently increase over all troop presence in Iraq. Send in a 30,000 as part of a “surge” and then when you declare it a success, only pull out 20,000. This leaves you a net gain of 10,000 troops:

The United States will probably have more troops in Iraq this summer than it did before pouring in forces last year — even after a planned drawdown, a U.S. general said on Friday.

There were some 132,000 U.S. troops in Iraq before President George W. Bush ordered a surge of about 30,000 more to curb rampant violence that threatened to plunge the country into all-out civil war.

By summer, U.S. commanders plan to have withdrawn more than 20,000 combat troops deployed as part of the surge. But officials indicated some support units sent around the same time would remain or be replaced.

I bet a President McCain, lover of the surge, would implement this plan a couple of times throughout his presidency. Hell if we keep doing this then we could end up just moving all our bases into Iraq. Now that would be a neo-con wet dream.