Will Bush pull out of Iraq in January?

Robert Novak says the answer is yes in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Inside the Bush administration policymaking apparatus, there is strong feeling that U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year. This determination is not predicated on success in implanting Iraqi democracy and internal stability. Rather, the officials are saying: Ready or not, here we go. This prospective policy is based on Iraq’s national elections in late January, but not predicated on ending the insurgency or reaching a national political settlement. Getting out of Iraq would end the neoconservative dream of building democracy in the Arab world…. Well-placed sources in the administration are confident Bush’s decision will be to get out. They believe that is the recommendation of his national security team and would be the recommendation of second-term officials. An informed guess might have Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, Paul Wolfowitz as defense secretary and Stephen Hadley as national security adviser. According to my sources, all would opt for a withdrawal…. Abandonment of building democracy in Iraq would be a terrible blow to the neoconservative dream. The Bush administration’s drift from that idea is shown in restrained reaction to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seizure of power. While Bush officials would prefer a democratic Russia, they appreciate that Putin is determined to prevent his country from disintegrating as the Soviet Union did before it. A fragmented Russia, prey to terrorists, is not in the U.S. interest. The Kerry campaign, realizing that its only hope is to attack Bush for his Iraq policy, is not equipped to make sober evaluations of Iraq. When I asked a Kerry political aide what his candidate would do in Iraq, he could do no better than repeat the old saw that help is on the way from European troops. Kerry’s foreign policy advisers know there will be no release from that quarter. (emphasis added)

Reactions from Andrew Sullivan, Josh Marshall, Robert Tagorda,and Greg Djerejian. They all boil down to the credibility of Novak’s sources. The bolded portion of the piece provides me with the greatest skepticism on this subject. On what planet is Paul Wolfowitz going to get confirmed by the Senate, even a Senate with a slight Republican majority? Only this June, the Los Angeles Times had a piece on how this was a non-starter. Naturally, that piece is no longer availably for free, but Robert Tagorda excerpted it in this post:

[W]here neoconservatives were once seen as having a future in Republican administrations, the setbacks in Iraq could make it difficult for the group’s leading members to win Senate confirmation for top posts in the future…. [P]roblems in Iraq have made administration neocons lightning rods for criticism. Without significant improvements in U.S. efforts there, many of them would be unlikely to remain for a second Bush term, neoconservatives and congressional Republicans said. Last year, Wolfowitz, a former senior State Department official, was frequently mentioned as a leading candidate to replace Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in a second Bush term. Now, congressional officials and neoconservatives agree there is little chance that Wolfowitz, seen as a primary advocate of the war, could survive a Senate confirmation. “No way,” said a senior Republican congressional aide.

OK, so Novak is talking about Wolfowitz for DoD rather than State, but I don’t see anything that’s changed since June. Which means either Novak’s source is not as plugged in as Novak thinks — or that Novak’s source is plugged in but highly delusional. BELATED UPDATE: I’ve had a few conversations with people who have much better administration sources than I. Their collective assessment is that the speculation in the Novak article is — to use the technical term — “bulls**t”