Well, would you look at that!

Apparently somebody over on Capitol Hill was alert when the last Defense funding bill was passed -- it built in some reporting requirements for the White House about their Iraq plans.

Under a little-noticed provision of the defense spending bill passed by Congress in May, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld has until July 11 to send Capitol Hill a "comprehensive set of performance indicators and measures of stability and security" two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein [...]

. . . It directs Rumsfeld to provide -- either in public or in classified annexes -- an estimate of U.S. military forces needed in Iraq through the end of calendar 2006 and the criteria the administration will use to determine when it is safe to begin withdrawing forces.

Well! That should keep the State office busy between now and Monday!

(via kos)