A Ludicrous Attempt at Spin

"Now, the Bush administration is under even more pressure to answer the question -- when will our own troops be coming home?

"It's a question they still can't answer."

David Gregory reported for the NBC Nightly News: "Administration officials scrambled today to put the best face on the British withdrawal. . . . But the good spin masks a darker reality. Just as the U.S. is putting more troops into Iraq to secure Baghdad, America's staunchest ally in the war is beginning to pull up stakes."

On the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric asked Bob Schieffer: "Bob, the Bush administration is characterizing the British drawdown as a sign of success. Is anyone buying that?"

Schieffer's response: "Well, if that's the claim, it's going to be a very hard sell to a country and a public that has already turned against this war, and especially a hard sell with the Congress. . . . I think it's going to make the president even more isolated than perhaps he is now."

Mary Jordan and Joshua Partlow write in The Washington Post: "Even though Britain has only 7,100 troops in Iraq, compared with the 135,000-strong U.S. contingent, they carry symbolic importance as the largest allied presence. British forces make up half of the roughly 14,000 non-U.S. troops in the coalition in Iraq. . . .

"[T]he Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, announced in Denmark that its 460 troops under British command in Iraq will return home by August. In Lithuania, a Defense Ministry spokeswoman said the country is 'seriously considering' withdrawing its 53 troops from Iraq in August. . . .

"Besides the United States and Britain, only five countries have 500 or more troops in Iraq: South Korea has 2,300, Poland and Georgia each have 900, Romania has 600 and Australia has 550, according to the Associated Press."

The Situation on the Ground

Blair said withdrawal was made possible by the situation on the ground.

But Jordan and Partlow write that "military and political analysts disputed Blair's upbeat description of the situation in the Basra area. They also said they believed the timing of the British drawdown may have more to do with plunging polls for Blair's Labor Party, pressure from British military officials and Blair's desire to begin an endgame for Iraq before he leaves office. . . .

"'While the British zone is much quieter,' [said Michael Williams, head of the transatlantic program at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies,] the Basra area 'still has a number of security issues' and it 'is foolhardy' to believe that Iraqi forces are ready to assume total control of the area. He also noted that if Blair had the political will, he could deploy some troops to help out the Americans in Baghdad instead of sending them home."

Ian Black and Richard Norton-Taylor write in the Guardian: "Behind Tony Blair's claim of relative success in Basra there remains deep uncertainty about the capabilities of the Iraqi security forces, the risk of intensified violence in the southern city, UK military overstretch - and a political imperative to pull out without an open rift with the US."