Last Friday President Obama announced his plan for withdrawing U.S. military forces from Iraq. The planned withdrawal, if not graceful, will certainly be overdue, at least to most of his political base, if not to the military itself.

But the devil is always in the details so let’s examine a few. First, announcing a goal is easy, implementing it is difficult. For the military, which never goes anywhere without literally immense amounts of baggage, this means logistics, logistics, logistics.

As this post in Wired’s Danger Room blog notes, “How do you remove from the country in a year and a half 90,000 or so troops, 40,000 aircraft and vehicles, and 80,000 containers (not to mention 100,000 contractors) spread across more than 280 installations in anything approaching an orderly way?”

See also this 2007 article by veteran military reporter David Wood for details.

This is not to say it is impossible. After all U.S. forces withdrew the bulk of its half a million plus forces in a matter of months after Operation Desert Storm in 1991. But back then the U.S. had not constructed numerous huge military bases. Still, if the U.S. really wants to keep the timetable it better kick planning into high gear now.

It is not just a matter of packing up. Assumptions need to be rethought. Consider the February 12 testimony of Janet St. Laurent Managing Director, Defense Capabilities and Management United States Government Accountability Office to the House Armed Services Committee. She said, “with regard to an Iraq drawdown, DOD’s plans will need to consider the fact that some early planning assumptions about the conditions and timing of redeployments may no longer be applicable in light of the SOFA and evolving U.S. strategy.”

Evolving U.S. strategy is code for send more troops to Afghanistan. But if troops are delayed leaving Iraq it will mean delays, perhaps, not immediately, but certainly in the long run, in deploying troops to Afghanistan, due to the need to rotate troops.

And while you may be able to send more troops to Afghanistan in the near term, providing them with all the necessary equipment may be problematic. St. Laurent said:

the availability of equipment may be limited because the Army and Marine Corps have already deployed much of their equipment to Iraq and much of their prepositioned assets also have been withdrawn to support ongoing operations. Similarly, DOD will need to assess its requirements for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities to support increased force levels in Afghanistan, given its current allocation of assets to support ongoing operations in Iraq.

Let’s return to the goals. Briefly, the aim is for combat operations to be over by August of 2010 and for all troops to be removed from Iraq, withdrawn from Iraq by 2011, per the Status of Forces Agreement between the United States and Iraq. At that point U.S. forces will have been at war in Iraq for nearly 7 1/2 years, a period surpassed only by that of the Vietnam War, at more than eight years, and in the Afghanistan conflict, which began in 2001.

Obama’s date for the end of the combat mission falls between Obama’s initial 16-month pledge and the December U.S.-Iraqi agreement that the last U.S. soldier would leave by Dec. 31, 2011. In selecting August 2010 — 19 months after his inauguration — Obama is siding with the recommendations of his senior military advisers. Though, in fairness, if he had followed their maximum recommendations the troops withdrawal would have been pushed back for another 4 months.

This withdrawal is a bit slower that what Obama himself pledged during the campaign; that combat troops would depart Iraq at the rate of one brigade a month and would all be home within 16 months of his inauguration. But it is unlikely that many people, outside Republicans, are going to make much of a fuss over that.

Major reductions are unlikely to begin until after Iraqi elections in December. More importantly about a third of the current U.S. force, about 35,000 to 50,000, of 142,000 will remain in Iraq until the end of 2011. Their new mission will be to train and advise Iraqi security forces, protect diplomats and civilians working in Iraq, and continue the counterterrorism fight against al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups.

But what happens if there is renewed fighting after Aug 2010 or in 2011? Although it may seem improbably now it is certainly conceivable. A senior military official said Feb. 27 that troops remaining after 2010, while not officially designated as “combat brigades,” would remain “in harm’s way,” embedded with Iraqi combat forces and in U.S. counterterrorism missions. So, will U.S. forces be in combat or not. Inquiring minds would like to know. Especially since President Obama said, “Let me say this as plainly as I can: By Aug. 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.”

No doubt that is why Secretary Gates indicated that President Obama has made clear that he would stop the withdrawal if necessary if conditions on the ground deteriorate. That helps explain why Sen. McCain supports the plan. Rep. John McHugh, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said Obama had assured him that he would “revisit” the withdrawal plan “if the situation on the ground deteriorates and violence increases.”

But if a withdrawal is conditions based what is the point of announcing it in the first place? After all, as military officials always like to say, the enemy always has a vote.

And even if the enemy should stay away from the combat polling stations both Gates, and the top commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, have indicated on the record that they wanted to keep U.S. troops in Iraq, even after that date, based on the assumption that the Iraqi government will renegotiate the Status of Forces agreement.

And NBC News Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski reported just before Obama’s speech that discussions had taken place in the Kirkuk area between some U.S. military commanders and Iraqis “to establish what could end up as a permanent air base, U.S. air base, in Kirkuk.”

Writing for IPS News historian Gareth Porter noted that according to a Washington Post report published Feb, 27, two unnamed “senior officials” – one of whom was presumably Secretary Gates – told Congressional leaders that Obama would let commanders decide not only the exact schedule of withdrawal of combat brigades but the size of the residual force.

In a teleconference with reporters Friday afternoon, Gates appeared to confirm indirectly that he and field commanders have discussed either keeping combat brigades in Iraq but calling them “non-combat” forces or actually sending new combat brigades to Iraq from the United States during the drawdown of the brigades now in Iraq.

CBS News Pentagon correspondent David Martin, reflecting the leaks from Pentagon officials, reported Feb. 24 that the residual force would be organized in “training and assistance brigades” that would be capable of conducting combat operations and calling air strikes from carrier or land-based aircraft. In a comment to CBS News Political Hotsheet, Martin said the units would be “fully combat capable”, suggesting that they would be drawn from combat brigades.

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