After months of denying that it was even considering plans to withdraw some troops, the Bush Administration last week shed first light on a possible timetable for trimming America's presence in Iraq. Pushed by newly assertive politicians at home as well as an eyebrow-raising statement from Iraq's leaders, and with a view toward congressional elections next fall, senior Bush officials began openly debating just how fast a withdrawal might proceed.U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who tends to carefully calibrate every public utterance, dispensed with Foggy Bottom's typically foggy nostrums. "I do not think that American forces need to be [in Iraq] in the numbers that they are now for very much longer," she told Fox News. Although Pentagon officials bristled at Rice's venturing into military policy, they too have started discussing in public just how steep the drawdown should be from the 160,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq.The Administration's willingness to discuss removing forces from Iraq, where more than 2,100 Americans have died, followed a sharply worded statement from Iraqi leaders at an Arab League meeting in Cairo last week. The gathering of Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds not only demanded a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops but also gave implicit support to the insurgency by calling resistance "a legitimate right," so long as it doesn't involve "terrorism and acts of violence" against civilians, institutions and houses of worship.U.S. military commanders, who have long argued that troop reductions must depend on conditions on the ground, warn against any abrupt cutbacks. "A precipitous pullout would be destabilizing," says Army Lieut. General John Vines, the top ground commander in Iraq. And the Pentagon expects a spike in violence in the run-up to the December 15 election for a new parliament. But the debate over a withdrawal, spurred in part by Democratic Representative John Murtha's call two weeks ago for an accelerated departure, is now out in the open. Here are some of the key questions going forward:How serious is the troop-reduction plan?There isn't one plan, but several, each containing various options for Army General George Casey, the top U.S. military officer in Iraq. Pentagon officials acknowledged last week that the number of U.S. troops could be cut to 100,000 by the end of 2006. But Casey will face two "decision points" next year -- one in March, when he can fully assess the effects of the December 15 election, the other in June, when major U.S. units have to be told if they will deploy.At this stage, almost no one is talking about a rapid, large-scale troop drawdown. Inside the Pentagon, officers privately caution that troop levels could even rise if Iraqi security forces don't shape up as expected, if the insurgency grows more fierce or--of greatest concern--if civil strife evolves into full-fledged civil war. In fact, a senior Pentagon official tells TIME that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked his planners last week to make sure they have a contingency option if things go very badly in Iraq next year.Even if the U.S. does decide to withdraw troops, it won't simply flee. Washington is spending millions on fortifying a few Iraqi bases for the long haul. "The challenge for us is, what is the right balance--not to be too present but also not to be underpresent. This will require constant calibration," U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad tells TIME. Indeed, last August, Army chief of staff Peter Schoomaker said that as many as 100,000 Army troops could remain in Iraq for four years.What conditions need to be met to begin a troop drawdown?First and foremost, the political process -- including significant Sunni participation -- must pass its capstone test during the December 15 election. Beyond that, Pentagon planners are tracking four main issues: enemy strength, the capability of Iraq's own security forces, effective local governance and technical and communication abilities to allow U.S. troops to talk to and support Iraqi forces when they need reinforcement. The U.S. military insists that all those benchmarks are trending in the right direction. For example, the Americans say that despite launching 50 attacks a day, the insurgents have been unable to derail political progress. Even more heartening are signs that locals are turning against the fighters: tips to U.S. forces have increased from 442 in February to 4,700 in September, although it's unclear how many lead to insurgents' being captured or killed.According to the Pentagon, less than half of Iraq's forces are combat ready. But that perception may be based on an unnecessarily strict standard. For instance, the Defense Department doesn't consider an Iraqi unit ready to fight until it can sustain itself with supplies, intelligence and communications -- a combination that takes U.S. forces years to develop. A Pentagon official said last week that 87,000 of the 212,000 Iraqis that the Defense Department classifies as "trained and equipped" are actually "in the fight," meaning fully capable of planning and waging active combat. The Iraqis have taken over from U.S. forces in a few regions, and the Americans have ceded control of 29 of the 110 military bases established by coalition forces. But U.S. troops on the ground have their doubts. "Don't trust anyone in the Iraqi army," a Marine sergeant told TIME last week as his unit moved out on patrol with Iraqi soldiers. And a senior U.S. official estimates that only 35,000 of the 110,000-strong Iraqi police force are effective and reliable.Does anyone support Senator John McCain's call to increase troops?Not many. In a speech in Washington on November 10, McCain countered those calling for a pullout, saying, "Instead of drawing down, we should be ramping up." He wants the military to add 10,000 more troops. Lower-level officers on the ground in Iraq tend to agree with the Senator; many complain that there are not enough forces to hold the territory that has been won from insurgents. But many commanders, including Army General John Abizaid, head of Central Command, argue that more U.S. troops would just mean more targets for insurgents. And some defense analysts contend that the war has so strained the U.S. Army--especially the National Guard and Reserve--that the Pentagon could not send more troops even if it wanted to.Will Iraq become safer as the U.S. begins pulling out?That's hard to say. The insurgents have been able to feed off the dislike most Iraqis have for the occupation. "The slow withdrawal of U.S. forces should eat away an important part of the insurgents' support base" and diminish their strength, predicts Seth Jones, an Iraq analyst at the Rand Corp. who advises the Pentagon. Many Sunni Arabs who boycotted Iraq's elections last January appear genuinely interested in participating in the December 15 vote, while Iraqi nationalists and former regime members active in the insurgency are signaling an interest in forming political parties rather than in continuing armed jihad. At the Cairo meeting, Iraqi leaders even indicated a willingness to cut deals with insurgents to bring them into the political process.But the CIA has been pessimistic about the likelihood of peace breaking out as U.S. troops leave. Allies in the region believe that a U.S. withdrawal would suck the steam out of the insurgency, but it may already be too late to prevent the breakup of Iraq. Some Saudi officials don't believe the situation is salvageable, says Nawaf Obaid, director of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project, which has prepared a classified study of Iraq for the Riyadh government. "As much as the Americans are trying to put a positive face on it," says Obaid, "it is highly unlikely that Iraq will emerge as a unified state."Although the U.S. is making progress in training Iraqi units to fight on their own, there is growing evidence that many Iraqi soldiers are more loyal to religious or ethnic factions than to the central government. Sunni Arabs are worried that the new Iraqi army and the Interior Ministry's security forces are infiltrated by partisan Shi'ite and Kurdish militias who target Sunnis for reprisals--a fear that gained credence this month with the discovery of 173 mostly Sunni detainees in an Interior Ministry building who were malnourished and in some cases showed signs of torture. "If the Iraqi security forces the Americans leave behind increasingly are identified as anti-Sunni, we're replacing one occupation with another," says Jeffrey White, a defense analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.Will the region be better off if the U.S. withdraws?Yes -- if the U.S. leaves behind a unified and democratic Iraq (two big ifs). Such an outcome would also improve Washington's tarnished image in the Middle East. Although most of the nearby governments believe toppling Saddam Hussein was good for Iraq and the region, the Arab world has almost universally condemned the U.S. invasion. Beyond that, many local leaders believe that the war has fueled terrorism in the region, as in the recent triple suicide bombing in Amman, Jordan. "You have ended up with a great big area -- from the Jordanian border to the outskirts of Baghdad -- being a lawless and terror-infested territory," says Ali Shukri, a former adviser to Jordan's King Hussein.Iraq's struggle to form a democratic government--with different constituencies competing for political power and votes-- has jolted other authoritarian regimes in the region. And by throwing its weight behind democracy elsewhere, the Bush Administration has helped other freedom movements in the region. In Egypt, for example, President Hosni Mubarak relented and this year allowed the country to hold its first ever multiparty presidential election. But if Iraq ends up in chaos after a U.S. military drawdown, the instability could spread to its neighbors -- and snuff out any hopes of freedom flowering elsewhere in the Arab world.Would a drawdown in Iraq make Americans safer back home?Not necessarily. Although al Qaeda has not mounted another strike against the U.S. on the scale of the 9/11 attack, it has successfully used the Iraq war in its terrorist-recruiting drive. Led by Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian operative who directs many of the foreign jihadists, the Iraqi insurgency has attracted Islamic terrorists from around the world. But even without the provocation of Iraq, there's no reason to assume the terrorist threat to the U.S. would disappear. "Whether we pull out of Iraq or not," says a U.S. counterterrorism official, "al-Qaeda will still want to hit us where it hurts: in the homeland."But a withdrawal could help the U.S. redeploy to fight terrorists elsewhere. Iraq has placed a particular strain on forces belonging to the Pentagon and the CIA. The U.S. Special Operations Command, which Rumsfeld has ordered to lead the Pentagon's part of the war on terrorism, has 88% of its 7,000-odd commandos deployed overseas assigned to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. The CIA's clandestine service has only about 900 to 1,000 operatives, a large number of whom have rotated in and out of its Baghdad station, which has had as many as 500 spies and analysts.Strategically, however, any U.S. withdrawal would have to be conducted "from a position of strength," says Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Rand. Al Qaeda has always believed Americans lack patience and stamina when "the going gets rough," Hoffman says. "If the U.S. is seen as being stampeded out of the violence in Iraq, that will only be waving a red flag at the terrorists." But coming up with an exit strategy for Iraq -- without appearing to run away -- won't be easy.