Asked during his press briefing yesterday about the timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq, the secretary of defense replied that a lot would depend on Iran and Syria. Here’s the relevant passage (read the entire transcript here):

SEC. RUMSFELD: Nothing has changed. It’s [the timetable] condition-based….Some of those variables that I’ve mentioned repeatedly are what are the Iranians doing? Are they going to be helpful or unhelpful? And if they become increasingly unhelpful, then obviously the conditions on the ground are less advantageous. Same thing with the Syrians; to what extent are they being helpful or unhelpful?

Rumsfeld and the president have often made the very reasonable point that setting a date certain for withdrawal would only encourage the bad guys to wait us out, but here Rumsfeld appears to be making the opposite mistake, namely that of giving the bad guys the ability to keep us bogged down in Iraq just as long as they’d like. There isn’t much we could actually do to the Iranians or the Syrians, as far as I can tell, but by misbehaving, Rumsfeld seems to have announced, they could do plenty to us, forcing American troops to remain in Iraq indefinitely.

The inexhaustible John Podhoretz will now tell me why my analysis is mistaken, and for once I will genuinely welcome John’s corrections.