President Bush, dropping ever lower in public opinion polls and looking and sounding tired, again conceded yesterday that there were problems in Iraq and again vowed to stay the course. But in a significant departure, he announced an important deadline after refusing for months to be held to any kind of timetable.
The president, in the first of several speeches this week to rally support for the war as its third anniversary approaches, said that U.S. forces would turn over most of Iraq over to newly-trained Iraqi troops by the end of the year. Attaining that goal would seem to be difficult considering that most observers think the Iraqi Army is far from being prepared, let alone at a time when there has been a significant upsurge of sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis, including the reprisal killings of at least 85 people in Baghdad alone today and yesterday.
The Washington Post has more here, while here's the text of the president's speech.
Meanwhile, the British have said for some time that they will begin drawing down their Iraq contingent. The immediate goal is 800 troops, or about 10 percent of the force in Southern Iraq, which has escaped most of the violence because the population is predominately Shiite and the British, with their long history as a colonial power, seemed better prepared for the post-invasion occupation.
The Guardian has the details here.
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