Iraq: What Now?

Joe Klein speculates:

My guess--a reasonably well-informed one--is that significant withdrawals will begin after the first of the year, with at least two brigades rotating out of Iraq by the end of the winter (and their replacements rotating into Afghanistan instead). Withdrawals will continue apace thereafter, as Iraq transitions into a fairly standard, screwed-up and intermittently violent Middle Eastern state. Indeed, I am told that U.S. intelligence community now considers Pakistan the central front in the war on terror, especially after Al Qaeda tried to blow up the inner circle of Pakistani leadership in the Marriott Hotel bombing in Islamabad.