http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle-EAST/6166624.STM(This was released on Monday the 20th and as I found this link does not take you to a valid page. On the page you get press the BBC Homepage button and search by title...sorry)BBC NEWSPentagon leak hints at US infighting By Adam Brookes
BBC News, Washington
Washington is fizzing with debate over how to proceed in Iraq.
The military may be trying to make sure its views are heard
That debate has been lent new momentum by the victory of the Democratic Party in mid-term elections and the emboldening of the Democratic leadership that has followed.
Every option for Iraq - from immediate withdrawal, to "phased redeployment", to the strengthening of the American presence there, to regional diplomatic initiatives - is being touted as the wise and prescient course.
And those doing the debating come from across the Washington spectrum.
Quiet debates are taking place behind the scenes in the National Security Council, in the Pentagon and in the intelligence agencies.
Public debates are raging in the think tanks and the media and on the floor of Congress.
And the Iraq Study Group of James Baker and Lee Hamilton has taken on a mythic aura. Washington waits for it to pronounce much as the ancients awaited the oracle at Delphi.
When General John Abizaid - the commander of US forces across the Middle East - testified on Iraq policy before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, he found senators demanding his opinion on the full gamut of policy possibilities.
Gen Abizaid was harried this way and that by senators
General Abizaid was forced to say that his "testimony should not be taken to imply approval of shifts in direction".
But he went on to state that he opposed immediate withdrawal from Iraq, and that imposing limits on the number of troops in Iraq or setting timetables for political or military developments would limit the flexibility he needed to prosecute the war.
Gen Abizaid looked at times a little beleaguered - pulled this way and that to respond to the latest idea for Iraq.
And perhaps that explains the leak in the Washington Post of Monday.
The Pentagon has - perhaps - decided that its voice needs to be heard in the cacophony that is the Iraq debate.
The story quotes unnamed officials ruling out precipitate moves in Iraq as much as suggesting substantive ways forward.
It looks and feels like a "Battle of the Beltway" story - one designed to redirect the Washington debate for domestic political purposes.
Indications are that no decisions have been yet been made in Washington, so those players with political and bureaucratic interests at stake may well be struggling for some control of the policy debate.