Juan Cole: America's solitary confinement in Iraq

[ozymandius]

http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/italians-to-begin-withdrawal-roadside.html

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced Saturday morning that the three thousand Italian troops would begin pulling out of Iraq in September. Some 300 will leave that month. The Italians have been stationed at Nasiriyyah, a Shiite area in the south that has been relatively quiet since the Sadrist uprisings of spring and summer, 2004. Italian commanders appear to be thinking as British ones are, that the Shiite south in Iraq simply no longer needs foreign troops to see to its security. Instead, the new, majority-Shiite government and the elected provincial councils should be able to maintain order, even if they have to rely on party militias.

And his conclusion...

Many members of Bush's ad hoc coalition in Iraq are planning to leave Iraq by December, when the current United Nations authorization for their presence ends. It appears that by next year this time, the US will be in Iraq virtually alone, still in all likelihood facing the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement.

In another year, the "coalition" will look more like Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines.