Reply #7: it gets worse in the month since that assessment [View All]

[Lexingtonian]

Poland will be out entirely by the end of the year. Bulgaria also decided two weeks ago that it needs those 400 troops for vital defense needs domestically- they're out sometime this summer. Tonga left in December, Moldova is gone or as good as gone.

El Salvador tried to leave when Nicaragua did (a year ago) but got bludgeoned into not withdrawing behind closed doors. The debate in South Korea and Japan is not whether putting troops into Iraq is a good idea; it's what level will not insult Americans into retaliating- and Japanese troops are only permitted to fight defensively, no patrols. Georgia's troops (with Tonga's) form a UN-identified unit. There has been one addition to the 'Coalition'- Armenia sent in 46 men in January.

Some US deputy assistant secretary of state showed up in Estonia two weeks ago and told all the Eastern European countries involved to 'think long and hard' about withdrawing their troop contingents- if not for that, I think we'd be seeing at least ten more "allies" disappearing on short notice. Which is a surprising level of threat for at most a few thousand troops...but obviously the point for the Bush people is to keep the names of their countries on a list, more than anything else. Poland appears to have been the country telling its various neighbors that it was time to get out too, but no one's talking about or admitting that yet. Poland and Ukraine getting out seems also to have been a tribute or gesture to Moscow to compensate for the upset and allay suspicions about excessive American influence in the region after the Ukraine affair aka Orange Revolution- Bush didn't like it, but he evidently had to let the two walk after they made their case. Evident winner by a walk in all these machinations- Poland. (You don't get to screw both Moscow and Washington almost completely out of large, powerful, and selfish interests in Eastern Europe every year.)

Britain's and Italy's governments have been trial ballooning withdrawal with their electorates, where sticking around in Iraq has 20-30% support and 10-15% support respectively. (Spain's was 10% when theirs were withdrawn.) Support for doing so- staying in- is 40-45% in Australia and somewhere between 40% and 60% in the U.S. (it depends on how you phrase the question).

I'd say Italy is the shakiest of the majors, and when it withdraws (within a couple of months) Britain won't be far behind, and that's the sign for everyone else to run for the door.