McCain's pre-emptive salvo in the coming battle of the made-up minds

Senator John McCain issued a statement that sums up the stakes in Iraq very effectively. McCain made his statement on the Senate floor, coinciding with the run-up to the all-night debate that will result as Democrats try to put the fili back into filibuster (or something like that).

Here's one of the better pearls of wisdom from McCain:
The supporters of this amendment respond that they do not by any means intend to cede the battlefield to al Qaeda; on the contrary, their legislation would allow U.S. forces, presumably holed up in forward operating bases, to carry out targeted counterterrorism operations. But our own military commanders say that this approach will not succeed, and that moving in with search and destroy missions to kill and capture terrorists, only to immediately cede the territory to the enemy, is the failed strategy of the past three and a half years.
(Powerline forum)
McCain is correct.

This plan the Dems are pushing isn't even the withdrawal that that the anti-war left has looked for. It's just a draw-down in forces that will almost certainly require our military to revert to the failed tactics it employed prior to placing General David Petraeus in charge.

Troop Withdrawal by April 30: Carl Levin (D-MI) and Jack Reed (D-RI) have offered an amendment that would begin a troop pullout within 120 days of enactment, with a deadline for withdrawing most troops by April 30, 2008. A residual force of undefined size would remain for counterterrorism efforts, U.S. force protection and the training of Iraqi security forces.
(NPR)

It's stupid in almost every way, allowing that it may be a good political strategy for the Dems.

NPR seems to detect details of the Levin-Reed amendment that Levin doesn't even mention in his own statement. Levin says nothing about "withdrawing most troops by April 30, 2008." Levin does say "Some have criticized our amendment on the grounds that it doesn't say how many U.S. forces will remain after the transition to the new missions." If NPR's analysis is correct, then Levin set an upper boundary on the forces that will be needed.

Either NPR got it wrong, or Levin's description makes little sense. I think the former is more likely.