In Defence of John Abizaid or
Matthew Yglesias seems to have a bad case of amnesia.

Matthew Yglesias is rather hard on the general here

General Abizaid seems to have a bad case of doublethink:

Because the American presence itself provokes antagonism, he said, Americans would need to "reduce our military footprint in the region," but could do so only after stabilizing Afghanistan and Iraq, deterring Syria and Iran, and protecting the flow of oil.

Obviously, the extent to which the American military presence in the Middle East does more to provoke violence than to prevent it is controversial. Indeed, in some ways Abizaid is to be congratulated for breaking the taboo on discussions of this point in mainstream circles. On the other hand, if you do think it's provocative, then surely you can't think we should start doing something about it after we stabilize Iraq, deter Iran and Syria is some unspecified way, and complete the amorphous mission of "protecting the flow of oil." Especially if our deployments themselves are terrorgenic, then this is a set of things we're going to be finished doing a week or so after never.

Abizaid is an army officer and is not allowed to speak freely. In particular he can't explain what mistake he is arguing against. I would say it is reasonably clear that he is basically saying that it would be useful to convince Iraqis that the US does not seek a permanent pressence in Iraq and that one necessary step to achieving that goal is to "you know not seek permanent military bases in Iraq."

This reasonable argument is perfectly consistent with all of Abizaid's statement. Thus Abizaid is not contradicting himself or engaging in double think. His position appears to be "counterinsurgency yes, permanent bases in Iraq no, permanent bases somewhere else to protect the oil lanes yes."

Now I think the bit in quotation marks is a quote of someone making exactly the same argument that I think Abizaid made. I tried to google here, but there were too many hits of Matthew Yglesias saying more or less exactly the same thing that Abizaid said for me to be willing to spend the time to find the exact quote even assuming it was at TPM cafe and not one of his three or four or whatever other blogs.