American troops/taxpayers left holding the "Coalition" bag.

[TexasLawyer]

Has anyone else noticed the slow, inexorable departure of all our "Coalition of the Willing" partners? At this rate US troops will soon be lone occupiers of Iraq.

For example, our good buddies, the British, had 26,000 troops on the ground in 2003 initially going into Iraq. That number has slowly dwindled to a current 8,000. AND there was a recent announcement that Britain will make a further significant reduction of 800 troops. Which will bring them down to 7,200.

So the Brits will have have reduced troop strength by 72%.

Here is an article about it:

Monday, 13 March 2006, 19:22 GMT

Reducing troops, changing views
By Frank Gardner
BBC News security correspondent

The planned reduction of 800 British troops serving in Iraq announced by the UK Defence Secretary John Reid is not the first such withdrawal nor the biggest. The Ministry of Defence says there have now been five such reductions and this is the largest since 2004. But it is significant.

The number of troops leaving Iraq amounts to a reinforced battalion, or 10% of UK forces deployed there on what the Army calls Operation Telic.

Officially, the reason given for this reduction is progress in Security Sector Reform (SSR), the process of training up Iraqi military units to maintain law and order and tackle any insurgents. In recent months this process has been proceeding rapidly, with Mr Reid telling the House of Commons that Iraqi government forces numbering 230,000 are now trained and equipped, with a further 5,000 <Iraqi forces> being added every month.

<snip>

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4803334.stm

Hello-- I think the same reasoning would support withdrawing US troops! But no-- the US has greatly added to its original forces attacking Iraq . The US appears to have around 150,000 troops currently on the ground in Iraq. Perhaps more, since "Special Forces" are not counted in the troop totals.

So we have increased our troop presence by 50% from the initial 2003 attack. Is this any way to run a coalition??!!?

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_orbat.htm



Some history rom Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq

United States military operations were conducted under the codename Operation Iraqi Freedom <26>. The United Kingdom military operation was named Operation Telic, and Australia's Operation Falconer. Approximately 100,000 United States soldiers and marines, 26,000 British soldiers and marines, and smaller forces from other nations, collectively called the "Coalition of the Willing," were deployed prior to the invasion primarily to several staging areas in Kuwait. (The numbers when naval, logistics, intelligence, and air force personnel are included were 214,000 Americans, 45,000 British, 2,000 Australians and 2,400 Polish.)

[TexasLawyer]

1. pathetic self-kick

whaaah! I spent a lot of time looking this stuff up and plugging numbers into my calculator.

It's interesting. Any readers? Commenters? Kickers?

[TexasLawyer]

2. oooh-- tough crowd!

one more time.

[nonconformist]

3. The "coalition of the willing" meme was always a joke

A feel-good soundbite created to make us feel superior - as if we were doing the "right thing" while those who didn't jump on board were enemies.

What it really meant was that it was OUR war, more than anything, and that we were going to be left holding the bag when it really went to pot.

Good post!

:kick: