Tom Ricks reports that Gen. O wants to keep a don’t-call-it-a-combat brigade in Kirkuk after August 2010. He says the White House gave Odeirno a “lukewarm” reaction when the general formally requested it. And then he wonders:

If the brigade in northern Iraq is indeed kept in Iraq past the deadline, there will be a fan dance under which it no longer will be called a combat unit, but like the six other combat brigades being kept past the deadline, will be called an advisory unit. I can imagine the press releases that will follow-”Three U.S. Army soldiers were killed last night in an advisory operation . . . .”

This is something that’s crossed my mind as well. Last year I tried and failed to do a piece on whether the Command Formerly Known as MNF-I was reclassifying “combat” deaths as non-combat deaths. It turned out I couldn’t come close to proving it — which is another way of saying MNF-I wasn’t doing that — so I dropped it. But even beyond the Kirkuk question, what will Odierno’s command do post-August 2010 if, say, a Humvee rolls over an IED or a gunman tries to spray up a soldier advising Iraqi security forces during a raid or something? There’s a noncontroversial sense in which such a death is a combat death, even if the mission, strictly speaking, isn’t a combat mission.

Update, 6:34 p.m.: Geoff Morrell said this didn’t happen:

Q Has General Odierno requested a combat brigade remain in Iraq after the August deadline?

MR. MORRELL: General Odierno has made no such — no such proposal; nor has one been approved by this department. It is still very much our plan here in this building to meet the president’s policy guidelines to have our U.S. forces in Iraq down to 50,000 by the end of August.