Standing Up as They Stand Down

One of the many mantras of the Bush administration regarding U.S. withdrawal from Iraq has been that as Iraq forces stand up, we will stand down. Now it seems that the opposite is applicable to the British and other members of the coalition of the fools. Tony Blair this week announced a plan to withdraw about 1,600 troops from southern Iraq in the coming months and to reduce Britain's 7,100 force further by late summer. At the same time, Denmark announced that it intends to withdraw most of its 460 troops by August. This comes, of course, as the U.S. is sending more troops into the meat grinder that is Iraq. We are standing up as the they stand down.

Despite typical administration efforts to spin this as somehow showing our great progress in Iraq, the fact is that the coalition is spinning apart. Even Blair was only half heartedly positive when he said that the southern city of Basra is not "how we want it to be." Michael Williams, head of the trans-Atlantic program at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, said that the Basra area still has security issues and that it is "foolhardy" to believe that the Iraqis can assume control of the area.

Fat Man Cheney sidestepped the obvious question of why the British simply don’t re-deploy their troops to the north to help the Americans. The simply answer, Mr. Delusional, is that Blair does not want to simply redeploy, he wants out of the quagmire before he leaves office. At least he does not want to leave with this mess in place and blame his successor for "losing Iraq" like Bush is intent on doing.

Bush and (thanks to him) the United States are now simply alone. Alone in the world, alone in Iraq. Are Laura and Barney still with him? Or have they decided to stand down as well?

- Jeff Bloomfield