And this one:

Now Rumsfeld is quietly moving toward his original goal—three years late. The Pentagon has developed a detailed plan in recent months to scale down the U.S. troop presence in Iraq to about 80,000 by mid-2006 and down to 40,000 to 60,000 troops by the end of that year, according to two Pentagon officials involved in the planning who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of their work. Their account squares with a British memo leaked in mid-July. "Emerging U.S. plans assume that 14 out of 18 provinces could be handed over to Iraqi control by early 2006, allowing a reduction in overall [U.S. and Coalition forces] from 176,000 down to 66,000," says the Ministry of Defense memo.

And this one:

In comments during a visit to Iraq Friday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has says there will be a reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq. Rumsfeld said the number of U.S. combat brigades in Iraq would be brought down from 17 to 15. This affects two Army brigades that had been scheduled to be deployed in Iraq in the coming weeks -- one from Germany, the other from Ft. Riley, Kansas.

And so on and so on . . .

Shockingly (not), the NYTimes story makes NO mention of all of the past troop reduction plans the Bush Administration has floated. This is what you call stenographic journalism.