Monday, September 3, 2007

IRAQ Guardian: "British troops began pulling out of Basra Palace last night and expect to hand control of the base to Iraqi forces within days, amid new Anglo-American recriminations about the aftermath of the Iraq war. Their withdrawal will be followed by the handover of the city itself to the Iraqi authorities in the autumn, the Ministry of Defence said. The symbolic withdrawal marks the latest phase of Britain's disengagement from the conflict and will be seen as significant given the recent discord between the UK and US on Iraq." So Brown means business after all. Still some way to go. Reuters: "U.S. plans for handling Iraq after the 2003 invasion were 'fatally flawed', a retired British general said, adding that the U.S. administration had refused to listen to British concerns about postwar planning. Major General Tim Cross said he had talked to former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before the invasion about the need to have international support and enough troops on the ground to reconstruct Iraq. 'He didn't want to hear that message. The U.S. had already convinced themselves that Iraq would emerge reasonably quickly as a stable democracy,' Cross told the Sunday Mirror." RawStory: "The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the leaked draft of a Governmental Accountability Office progress report on Iraq concludes that 'Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks'." 12:13:45 PM

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