U.S., Britain have exit strategy: First troops out in late 2005

[truthpusher]

please do not shoot the messanger - thanks

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/05/breaking2453402.0708333333.html

U.S., Britain have exit strategy: First troops out in late 2005

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, January 31, 2005

WASHINGTON – Britain and the United States have agreed on a withdrawal plan that would see the first troops leaving Iraq as early as 2005, according to British press reports and diplomatic sources.

The sources said London and Washington have approved a plan that would replace military troops with civilian advisers to the Iraqi military, police and security forces. The sources said these advisers would train and mentor Iraqi forces in such operations as counter-insurgency and border security, Middle East Newsline reported.

"The agreement is that the first troops would leave in late 2005," a source said. "The number of troops and withdrawal timetable would depend on operational considerations."

(snip)

Earlier, the Pentagon said it planned to maintain about 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq until 2007. But the diplomatic sources said Hoon and Rumsfeld agreed that coalition troop levels would be reduced in late 2005.

more:

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/05/breaking2453402.0708333333.html

[LynnTheDem]

1. 14 permanent bases in IRaq; world's largest US embassy in Iraq...

I'll believe we're leaving when I see it.

[VegasWolf]

10. They won't leave until they are kicked out. n/t

[struggle4progress]

15. (This Just in Dept.) Fit to Print? / New Yorker 2003-09-08

Aficionados of the Drudge Report may have noticed several striking headlines recently linking to stories from the World Tribune, an enterprise with a title as grand and ambitious as it is unfamiliar. One such story last week began, “U.S. intelligence suspects Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction have finally been located.” The apparent scoop—of stop-the-presses significance—was unsigned, and billed as a “special to World Tribune.com.” The Times, the Journal, and the Washington Post, meanwhile, not only got beat but failed even to acknowledge the news in the days that followed. What gives? <snip>

In fact, the World Tribune is not published in the United Kingdom, nor is it, to be precise, a newspaper. It is a Web site produced, more or less as a hobby, in Falls Church, Virginia, and is dedicated to the notion, as its mission statement explains, that “there is a market for news of the world and not just news of the weird.” (Nonetheless, the site includes a prominent feature, Cosmic Tribune, with an extraterrestrial focus, and it links to a Mafia journal called Gang Land News.) Its editor and publisher, Robert Morton, is an assistant managing editor at the Washington Times and a former “corporate editor” for News World Communications, the Times’ owner and the publishing arm of the Unification Church, led by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. (Morton and his wife, Choon Boon, are themselves followers of the Reverend Moon.) Among the World Tribune’s other recent half-ignored scoops are that Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for last month’s blackout and that a North Korean defector stressed, during a meeting in July with White House officials, the need for a preëmptive military strike against Kim Jong Il.

Morton said last week via e-mail that he founded the site as an experiment, back in 1998, while serving as a media fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank. “I didn’t expect World Tribune.com to last for more than a few months,” Morton wrote, but now, despite having no dedicated staff (“Everyone involved with World Tribune.com has a day job”), the site receives more than a million page views per month. And, unlike the Washington Times, which has lost at least a billion dollars in its twenty-one-year existence, World Tribune.com, in concert with the subscription-driven weekly intelligence briefing Geostrategy-Direct.com (a partner site), has paid for itself. <snip>

http://newyorker.com/talk/content/?030908ta_talk_mcgrath

[leesa]

20. A chronic kool-aid drinking Marine I spoke with insists those bases are

for the Iraqi military, and that Israel's only interest is being the spiritual center of the ME when I suggested their lack of oil and water might be part of the problem.
He also SAW WMDs in Iraq...an ice cream truck. When I pointed out to him that the Iraq Task Force in charge of finding WMDs had recently declared there were no WMDs in Iraq, he couldn't stop with his personal experience of his ice cream truck WMD. I suggested he better report it to the Pentagon, because they had obviously overlooked his ice cream truck/WMD. He also personally arrested MANY Taliban there...of course, AFTER the invasion and probably a lie, but...


How can you possibly reason with people who are as deluded as these individuals are???

[LynnTheDem]

24. Taliban...in IRAQ???

Deluded, yes he is. Poor thing.

[murielm99]

2. And when late 2005 comes,

they will come up with an excuse not to reduce troops.

They will say that they never said that.

[DalvaThree]

3. We'll see how long this holds

[twaddler01]

4. So, is it off to Iran then?

:evilgrin:

[w4rma]

5. They are leading you on. Trying to keep you pacified. Buying time. (nt)

[cliss]

11. Absolutely. Haven't we seen enough at this point?

They are absolutely stalling. Desperate, moronic Riverboat Gamblers that they are.

It's because of their roguish nature that they've gotten this far. But Lady Luck is never one's dinner companion all night. At some point, she leaves.

[Krupskaya]

6. What's that rule where you take what's given to you...

...like costs or months, and multiply it by a constant number, X, and that's what it really will be when it happens?

<--- Rambling. In any case, that's what I do with this administration. Bush: "This war will cost $3 billion!" Me: "OK, so that's $3X billion." Etc.

[MidwestTransplant]

7. The troops will be home by Christmas

Robert S. McNamara 1965

[Tempest]

8. Civilian advisers = Mercenaries paid for by U.S. taxpayers

This is not going to turn out well.

[54anickel]

14. Yep, that's what I was thinkin'. Rummy's wet-dream, a privatized army.

[daleo]

9. They could reduce troops by as little as 2 per year

And their claim would be technically true. You have to watch for their lies.

[despairing optimist]

12. Bridge for sale! Bridge for sale! I'll throw in a tunnel too.

If you believe this, you'll believe that Santa will be bringing the first troops home on his sleigh later this year.

[struggle4progress]

26. Moonies! Moonies! It's the friggin Moonies!

[Minstrel Boy]

13. First troops are easy. It's the last troops that are the toughest. n/t

[flaminbats]

16. what..no permanent bases?!?

beware the Axis of Freeness..:evilgrin:

[DulceDecorum]

17. And now, a word from the Iraqi Information Minister.

"That bastard the American Minister of Defense Rumsfeld, and I won't say shamelessly, because they don't know what shame means. These are criminals. The whole word can hear the warning sirens. This criminal sitting in the White House is a pathetic criminal and his Defense Minister deserves to be beaten. These criminals lie to the world because they are criminals by nature and conditioning. They consider this a military site! Shame on you! You will forever be shamed! You have ruined the reputation of the American people in the most terrible way! Shame on you! And we will destroy you!"

"They are trapped in Umm Qasr. They are trapped near Basra. They are trapped near Nasiriyah. They are trapped near Najaf. They are trapped everywhere."

"We defeated them yesterday. God willing, I will provide you with more information. I swear by God, I swear by God, those who are staying in Washington and London have thrown these mercenaries in a crematorium."

"We will pursue them as war criminals. We will work with all the free people in the world, and they are many, who want someone to bell the cat , and now we are belling the cat, according to the famous saying so as to rid the UN of those villains. After Iraq aborts the invasion that is being carried out by the American and British villains, the USA will no longer be a superpower. Its deterioration will be rapid. I say to those villains who are meeting in Europe, thinking of launching psychological war and brainwashing: wait. Do not be hasty because your disappointment will be huge. You will reap nothing from this aggressive war, which you launched on Iraq, except for disgrace and defeat. Iraq will continue to exist. Its civilization is 10,000 years old. It will not be changed by villains like the US and British villains."

"W. Bush, this man is a war criminal, and we will see
that he is brought to trial"

"I think the British nation has never been faced with a tragedy like this fellow (Blair)."

"The United Nations....(is) a place for prostitution under the feet of
Americans."

"We're going to drag the drunken junkie nose of Bush through Iraq's desert, him and his follower dog Blair...There are 26 million Saddams in Iraq"
http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com/

[leesa]

18. And tomorrow Bush will say ten years from now. They never say the same

thing from one day to the next. They are totally screwed and they know it.

[Azathoth]

19. They have to start pulling them out before the 2006 midterms n/t

[flaminbats]

23. Another war would have the same effect..always keep the voters distracted

Afghanistan, 9/11, a war on terrorism, Osama bin who?:P

[struggle4progress]

21. Check out their front cover links ...

... called "Drop in on Drudge," "What Rush Said," and "Gangland News."

On the back page, I found the frightening headline "Russian Stakes Claim to World's Clouds."

Clicking "Cartoon" takes you to the Washington Times.

I couldn't find the sometime-alleged link from World Tribune to Cosmic Tribune; maybe I simply didn't look hard enough. But Cosmic Tribune enthusiasts (who may need a break from learning about how our government lies about UFOs) can still easily navigate to World Tribune from this page: http://www.cosmictribune.com/ct/

[wellst0nev0ter]

22. "Mission Accomplished" Flashback

AFTEREFFECTS: THE NEW STRATEGY;
U.S. Plans to Reduce Forces In Iraq, With Help of Allies

By MICHAEL R. GORDON with ERIC SCHMITT

May 3, 2003

The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior allied officials said today.

The United States currently has more than five divisions in Iraq, troops that fought their way into the country and units that were added in an attempt to stabilize it. But the Bush administration is trying to establish a new military structure in which American troops would continue to secure Baghdad while the majority of the forces in Iraq would be from other nations.

Under current planning, there would be three sectors in postwar Iraq. The Americans would keep a division in and around Baghdad; Britain would command a multinational division in the south near Basra; and Poland would command a third division of troops from a variety of nations.

The British are organizing a "force generation" conference next week in London to solicit troops for the effort, and another conference is likely to be held later this month in Warsaw.

The Bush administration's aim is to bring most of the American troops here back to their bases in the United States and Europe so they can prepare for potential crises.

The administration does not want substantial numbers of American forces to be tied down in Iraq. It is eager to avoid the specter of American occupation, and it is hoping to shift much of the peacekeeping burden of stabilizing Iraq to other governments.

If the administration plan is carried out, the effect would be to reduce the number of American troops in Iraq from over 130,000 soldiers and marines at present to 30,000 troops or fewer by the fall.

DU Link

[LynnTheDem]

25. Two years later...

:eyes:

And if we actually had a MSM here, Americans would be wise to the very many ways bush has been and is a total f*ck-up.