Fred Kagan has a new piece up throwing some cold water (and don’t we need that today?!) on the reports that there is a generals surge of disagreement. He points out, in part:

The actual disagreement between Casey and the other chiefs on the one hand and Petraeus and Odierno on the other is less obvious than drama-seeking news stories have made out. After the New York Times reported that Pace would advise the president to draw down tens of thousands of U.S. forces in Iraq next year, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs issued a public statement denying the claim. And a sensationalist article in the Wall Street Journal attempting to pit Casey against Petraeus nevertheless claimed that Casey wanted to pull six brigades out of Iraq by the end of 2008 — in other words, to return to pre-surge levels. That is what both Petraeus and Odierno have been suggesting that they would like to do as well, if it is possible. It is by no means clear from the public record, therefore, just how much space there actually is between the chiefs and the commanders in the field.

and

The Joint Chiefs have the task of preparing American armed forces for present and future combat, while the combatant commanders have the job of fighting the wars. Or, to put it another way, there is no uniformed military officer in the Pentagon whose primary job it is to win wars. Only two people in Washington actually have that job: The secretary of defense and the president.

and

As the debate over Iraq progresses, however, we must keep constantly in mind the perspective that the various generals bring to bear on the problem. The chiefs would be remiss if they did not advise the president and secretary of defense about the strains that this war — like all significant wars — put on the armed services. The commanders in the field would be failing in their task if they did not provide honest advice about what forces they need to win. The ultimate burden of decision falls upon the president. He must evaluate the relative danger of withholding necessary forces from commanders engaged in an important struggle against the damage that keeping more forces deployed for longer is doing to the military.