Iraq: Alas in wonderland

By Ashraf Fahim

There is a hallucinatory, Alice in Wonderland quality to recent suggestions that the formation of an elected Iraqi government will allow US and British troops to withdraw from Iraq in large numbers.

No sooner did Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki say that Iraqi troops would take over most of Iraq from the departing "coalition" by year's end, confirming the whisperings of British and US officials, than the United States announced that 3,500 reserves were headed in the other direction, from their bases in Kuwait to Ramadi.

All that is missing from this picture is White House Press Secretary Tony Snow dressed up as the March Hare explaining to the press corps why adding troops is the same as withdrawing them.

Only a few days earlier, US President George W Bush had spoken with preternatural confidence of Iraq's latest "turning point" during a press conference held jointly with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. To anyone who owns a television, on which Iraq is nightly a vision of the Inferno in living color, such optimism would seem misplaced.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HF02Ak01.html