The adviser told Rogin:
In the dynamic of a debate when you follow someone, you kind of play off of them, and what Gov. Perry wanted to do was to express a similar sentiment to Gov. Huntsman that he very much wants to bring the troops home, we all do, but he wasn’t saying, “I want to bring the troops home now.”
He went on:
Gov. Perry is not confident in the Obama policy, which seems to be driven largely by politics, and he’s not confident in the 100,000 troops number. He’d like to know if it’s possible at 40,000.
But asked what Perry’s target number would be — not just a hypothetical — the adviser was short on specifics: “We’re not in a position to answer that question, we’re not in those briefings.”
Speaking to Time Magazine this week, Perry was equally vague:
I think we need to try to move our men and women home as soon as we can. Not just in Afghanistan, but in Iraq as well. And we’ve got to continually reassess our objectives. We need to make strategic decisions based on consultation with our military leaders on the ground, rather than just some arbitrary political promises.
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