Portugal may withdraw troops from Iraq if situation worsens: minister

[NewJerseyDem]

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040416/1/3jjxx.html

Portugal may withdraw its national guard contingent from Iraq if the security situation in the country continues to deteriorate, Interior Minister Antonio Figueiredo Lopes said.

"If the conflict were to deteriorate and the GNR (national guard) did not have what it required to carry out its mission, the only solution would be to withdraw," he told Antena 1 public radio.

Portugal's centre-right Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso in November dispatched 128 national guards to southern Iraq to back the US-led coalition in the war-torn country, where they operate under British command.

Figueiredo Lopes had said on Wednesday that Lisbon would stand by its pledge to keep its contingent in Iraq despite growing unrest in the country and calls to bring them home.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Spain leaving

Portugal leaving

one nordic nation leaving

El Salvador and Nicaragua are not sending replacements

Ok these are not very large contingents all on their own... but the numbers are starting to add up to a brigade,which we do not have.

[cliss]

2. A paper-thin veneer of support.

that's all this "Coalition of the Willing" is. My opinion: let one pull up its stakes and leave, and they all leave.

They all went under duress, anyway. Those arm-twisters in Washington got their way and finagled 24,000 foreign into troops into the burning flames of Dante's Inferno.

I believe the foreign troops never really contributed that much. It was much more for a symbolic support for Bush's war. So if Portugal leaves, the symbolic rejection is going to be much more damaging than the actual troops leaving.