Con Coughlin - no peacenik on the subject of dealing with Saddam - ponders the Dannatt affair:
It is obvious that the time has arrived for the government to start giving serious thought to withdrawing British forces from Iraq, not least because that will make them available for operational duty elsewhere. This is something no one in the Blair government can say publicly for fear of upsetting the Bush administration.But thanks to Sir Richard's timely intervention, it is now an issue the Blairites can no longer ignore.
And I was even more struck by this Telegraph leader. I plead guilty to the "bloody-mindedness" charge:
The truth is that the question of evacuating our servicemen from Iraq is rarely addressed on its own merits; rather, it has become an extension of the earlier debate about whether the invasion was justified. Those who had argued most strongly against the war barely paused to touch up their banners before demanding that the troops be repatriated. Their attitude drove many of the war's supporters into a bloody-minded determination to see things through.
Yet it must now be clear to all sides that the best-case scenario posited by supporters of the war – a pluralist, democratic Iraq, radiating liberty throughout the region – will not be achieved. The question therefore becomes a narrow one: are British soldiers helping to contain a civil war that would be happening anyway, or is their presence in fact exacerbating the insurgency? A bit of both, is the honest answer; but, with each day that passes, the truth tilts toward the latter.
