Obama Backs Down On Iraq Troop Pledge

Obama loving liberal Americans have been sent in a tizz as the shine starts to fade on their Chosen One and his election pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq has turned out to be a damp squib. War-mongering Bush is being replaced by Obama and his shameful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That leaves a bitter taste for those taken in by the hype. 

Over here, C4 News, the BBC and Guardian must be having kittens trying to justify the watered down turnaround. No doubt they'll swallow the line from the White House spin.

Obama has announced the withdrawal of some US troops in Iraq by August 2010, leaving a massive army of around 50,000 Marines and soldiers out of the 142,000 troops at present occupying the country and calling the shots. 

The occupation army will stay in Iraq after that date to "advise Iraqi forces and protect American interests." They will remain until December 31, 2011, the date on which the Bush administration had already agreed to withdraw all troops under a pact with Iraq.

And that sits very uneasy with Obama's election promise that he would completely pull out troops within 16 months of taking the job.

Democrats are not happy that the troop withdrawal is being watered down. Even speaker Nancy Pelosi said 50,000 troops seemed too many for a residual force and needed to be justified.

Yet in the crazy world of Obama hype and doublespeak, the Republicans are lovin' it and McCain is Obama's new best friend. 

Here our own foreign secretary, David Miliband, who has been visiting Iraq, said he found a "real yearning... for Iraqis to run their own affairs, to make their own mistakes but also to make their own progress". 

For once the Orange Party completely agrees with this overgrown schoolboy.

Iraq is being kept under the thumb by a multi billion pound private army of security 'consultants' and massive US bribes to militia groups to switch sides in return for the Yankee dollar. 

50,000 is a hell of a lot of US troops to be fighting an illegal war in a country desperately wanting to make a start on its own destiny, regardless of the fractious in-fighting that's bound to happen as Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds align, realign and square up to each other. 

Earlier this month, Obama ordered  up to 17,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan to support a new surge in that bloody, hopeless and unwinnable war. That's all starting to sound suspiciously like the despised foreign policies of the Bush years. 

Obama has now taken ownership of these wars. Afghanistan is his new Vietnam.

Here the government never had the guts to stand up to Bush and Blair will be forever branded as his poodle. 

As the timetable in Iraq and Afghanistan continues to be dictated by the White House, it's looking increasingly likely Brown will just become the poodle in Obama's wars. But just because Obama thinks it's right, doesn't make it right.

The dreadful lessons and legacies of that Bush and Blair partnership are set to repeat themselves, unless Brown can stop himself firmly embroiling this country in shameful US foreign policy.