You have to wonder what exactly is going on inside Blair's head as he tries to spin the withdrawal as a sign of success. His generals wanted a much larger and faster removal from Iraq, citing security problems associated with the presence of British troops. As Blair rolls out his plan for limited withdrawal and a time line, nobody other than the White House believes that he is leaving Iraq with any success and hardly any "peace with honor" or whatever that new spin is. The hard truth is that Blair contributed greatly to the catastrophe that is the new Iraq.
It is an admission of defeat. Iraq is turning into one of the world's bloodiest battlefields in which nobody is safe. Blind to this reality, Tony Blair said yesterday that Britain could safely cut its forces in Iraq because the apparatus of the Iraqi government is growing stronger.
In fact the civil war is getting worse by the day. Food is short in parts of the country. A quarter of the population would starve without government rations. Many Iraqis are ill because their only drinking water comes from the highly polluted Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Nowhere in Mr Blair's statement was any admission of regret for reducing Iraq to a wasteland from which 2 million people have fled and 1.5 million are displaced internally.
