The Telegraph reports:
Thousands of British troops will return home from Iraq by the end of May, The Daily Telegraph can reveal today.
Tony Blair will announce within the next fortnight that almost 3,000 troops are to be cut from the current total of 7,200, allowing the military to recover from four years of battle that have left it severely overstretched.
In what will be the first substantial cut of British troops serving in southern Iraq, their number will drop to 4,500 on May 31. The announcement will be made by the Prime Minister before he steps down from office as an intended signal of the achievements the British have made in Iraq — albeit at the cost of 128 dead.
[…]
A senior British officer serving in Iraq said yesterday: “The US situation appears to be getting worse because they are sending more troops while the British are getting out of Basra. But the situation is different, with the Americans facing a gargantuan problem of sectarian violence.”
[…]
Military planners are drawing up force levels for when Basra comes under “provincial Iraqi control” at the end of spring, when all security will be handed over to the Iraqi police and army.The British Army will then position its troops at a major base that is being expanded at Basra air station, five miles west of the city, where they will be on standby. A small force of 200 men will be left in central Basra.
The senior British officer is – of course – completely right. The problems the U.S. faces in Iraq is quite different from the ones the British face. For one, the area the British are ‘occupying’ are not torn apart by sect. violence. As such, the withdrawal from 3000 British troops doesn’t have to be bad news. It can also be interpreted as good news (as Gateway Pundit does).
James Forsyth, however, explains:
The British position is about U.K. politics, not Iraq. The long-awaited handover from Tony Blair to the Chancellor Gordon Brown is expected to be announced in May and take effect in June. Both men would like British withdrawal from Iraq to be clearly underway by then—Blair doesn’t want to leave with Iraq unresolved and Brown doesn’t want the war it to tarnish the beginning of his premiership. An opinion poll earlier this week illustrates just how unpopular the mission now is; 60 percent want British troops withdrawn as soon as possible, and more people hold Bush responsible for the continuing violence in Iraq than al Qaeda, Iran, Syria and Saddam combined.
I agree with James’s take on this news.
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