Australia Wants Iraq Troops Home by Mid 2008 (New PM Rudd)

[Hissyspit]

Source: Reuters

Australia wants Iraq troops home by mid 2008

CANBERRA (Reuters) - About 550 Australian combat troops in Iraq should be withdrawn by about the middle of next year, Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd said on Friday, setting a broad timetable for the soldiers to return home.

Australia has about 1,500 troops in and around Iraq, but Rudd won power at the Australia's national election on November 24 with a promise to bring frontline forces home.

"The combat force in Iraq we would have home by around the middle of next year," Rudd told Australian radio.

Rudd promised a gradual withdrawal of the troops, but had been coy about setting a timetable for their return to Australia. The troops are based mainly in Iraq's more peaceful south, where they help maintain security and train Iraqi forces.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071130/ts_nm/australia_iraq_dc

[whistle]

1. This is a good thing

[Djinn]

2. Oz involvement in Iraq is nothing more than symbolic

Obviously to the guys over there and their families it's not too symbolic but our troop contingent is so small that it really wont have any effect on anything operationally.

It does further reduce the phony veil of respectability and multilateralism of the Iraq War though and that can't be a bad thing