Tuesday, November 28, 2006

British pledge Iraqi pullout

So is Bush gonna go it alone? Its not much of a coalition if you're the only one in it.
BRITAIN said today it expected to withdraw thousands of its 7100 troops from Iraq by the end of next year, in the clearest pledge yet of a pullout from a country gripped by growing sectarian violence.

Other members of the dwindling US-led coalition echoed those moves as Italy said its 60 to 70 remaining troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of this week and Poland promised to pull its 880 troops out by late next year.

In a key policy speech in London, British Defence Secretary Des Browne said: "I can tell you that by the end of next year, I expect numbers of British forces in Iraq to be significantly lower, by a matter of thousands."

(read more)

So who makes up this coalition? The following from Wikipedia. All are approximate numbers.

United States - 140,000. To stay until hell freezes over.
United Kingdom - 7,200. Most withdrawn by end of 2007.
Republic of Korea - 2,300. No withdrawl timeframe.
Australia - 1,500. No withdrawl timeframe.
Poland - 900. Late 2007.
Romania - 890. No withdrawl timeframe.
Denmark - 515. At least until July 2007.
El Salvador - 380. No withdrawl timeframe.
Georgia - 300. No withdrawl timeframe.
Azerbaijan - 150. No withdrawl timeframe.
Mongolia - 131. No withdrawl timeframe.
Albania - 120. No withdrawl timeframe.
Latvia - 136. No withdrawl timeframe.
Slovakia - 110. Until February 2007.
Czech Republic - 96. No withdrawl timeframe.
Lithuania - 50. End of 2007.
Armenia - 46. Until December 2006.
Bosnia and Herzegovina - 36. No withdrawl timeframe.
Estonia - 35. No withdrawl timeframe.
Macedonia - 33. No withdrawl timeframe.
Kazakhstan - 29. No withdrawl timeframe.
Moldova - 12. No withdrawl timeframe.

Of course many of these troops are support, training, construction troops and not fighters. For instance, all Kazakhstan's troops are military engineers.

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