IN THE NEWS
Articles in The Daily Mail and The Washington Post contain excerpts from the most recently leaked British Cabinet memos. This time, the subject is not how Great Britain got into Iraq, but how it plans to get out of there.
Undoubtedly, the timing of the leak is not coincidental, but the source isn't obvious. It could be an attempt by someone in the government to add momentum to the argument, What are we doing in Iraq at all if we couldn't stop an attack on London? Or, it could be the very top of the British government, leaking this memo to propel itself away from its open-ended commitment to the Bush Administration. The real target might be the leaders of the current Iraqi government (see below). It's all just speculation, but the contents of the memo, entitled Options for future UK force posture in Iraq, are actually far more interesting.
According to the proposal, the British would hand over responsibility for security to the Iraqi government in two provinces by October, and another two by April. In the process, the United Kingdom would cut its troop commitment from 8,500 to 3,000. Meanwhile, the United States would hand over security responsibilities in 14 out of 18 provinces to the Iraqis by early next year, cutting its own deployment to 66,000 personnel.
This white paper is one of the following:
- A serious proposal, based on a much more successful program of recruiting, training, and equipping Iraqi security forces than the one in place today.
- An optimistic benchmark from which one can measure the real timetable for troop deployments.
- A blueprint for a hasty withdrawal under fire.
- A threat to the Iraqi government that, if it doesn't get its act together, its two strongest backers will back out of the war.
- Complete fantasy.
It is not, unfortunately, realistic, if the goal is the defeat of the Iraqi insurgent groups before a US/UK withdrawal.
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