The Administration, hoping to counteract that graphic showing twice as many troops in Afghanistan by September 2012 as when President Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, offered a different graph in a White House blog post by Ben Rhodes. This one blends troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan and shows a consistent reduction in troop levels over time.

Click on graphic for a larger version.

You see a slow reduction, with the withdrawal of troops from Iraq blended with the surge in Afghanistan, from January 2009 to today, from about 180,000 to 150,000 troops. Then, by the end of the year, there’s a sharp reduction. How can that be? Obama only announced a decrease of 10,000 troops by the end of the year.

The only way this works is if the Administration follows through on its commitment to remove all troops from Iraq by the end of the year, per the status of forces agreement.

The infographic lists as one of its “promises kept” ending the war in Iraq, but it does not actually get around to saying that the remaining 47,000 troops there will leave by the end of the year. It just says “President Obama removed 100,000 troops from Iraq and ended the combat mission on schedule.” Rhodes similarly doesn’t mention Iraq in his blog post.

In recent months, it has clearly not been the hope of the Administration to pull out the other 47,000 from Iraq, at least not all of them. Military and diplomatic leaders have played this annoying game, saying things like “if Iraq wants us to stay, they’d better tell us now so we can accommodate them” and the like. But the entire theory of consistent and sustained withdrawals rests on honoring the SOFA and pulling out of Iraq. Is that the plan now? It’s right there in a White House infographic.

I’ll be happy to hold them to this commitment. It happens to be the right thing to do. Keeping a military presence in Iraq beyond the SOFA would be catastrophic. The Sadrists would bolt from the ruling coalition, collapsing the government. They would return to the battlefield and specifically target US troops. And they would spark a mass popular uprising, becoming the Tahrir Square equivalent to the US military’s Hosni Mubarak. It would be a terrible situation.

So from this infographic, I can infer that the Administration has come to their senses and will fully leave Iraq.

Right?

UPDATE: Just today a top US general said “time is running out” for Iraq to ask US forces to stay. Except, under this infographic, the White House has dismissed any call to stay and will withdraw by the end of the year, right?