Britain can't pull out but it might be able to slither away

[spindrifter]

The Times August 23, 2006

Foreign Editor's Briefing by Bronwen Maddox


FROM just over 7,000 soldiers in Iraq to 3,000 or 4,000, within nine months or so. That is Britain’s new notion of how it might get its troops out of the country while still appearing to support the US-led coalition.

You can’t call it a target, Ministry of Defence officials said yesterday. It is something like Plan A, if things go “reasonably well”. Is it plausible? Sort of, although it rests entirely on a “reasonably optimistic” view of the violence in Iraq in the next year, to use one MoD official’s laconic understatement. Britain’s slither out of Iraq (if we can’t call it a pullout) will come down to a political decision rather than a military one: how much the Prime Minister wants the troops out, and how much violence in Iraq can be considered tolerable in pursuit of that goal.

This year Britain has been noisily moving ahead with the “transition” plan — to hand over to the Iraqi Army in the four provinces under British control. This could mean that by mid-2007 Britain would have fewer than 4,000 soldiers in Iraq, consolidated around Basra, three officials said in a joint briefing.

There “might manage to be another 1,000 in the next four to six months”, one said. That would depend on conditions in Maysan province, along the Iranian border, where a group of about 850 soldiers is occupied. And then? “We’ll maintain a sizeable force to protect that investment”, said another.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2324718,00.html

[Jazz2006]

1. Interesting story.

Thanks for posting it.

:hi:

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. An interesting phrase: "protect that investment"

I'd like to know what Iraqis thought of words like that.