Blair, a firm ally of President George W. Bush in the conflict, said he had not set a deadline for withdrawing some 8,500 British soldiers from Iraq...
Blair has faced repeated calls from political opponents to set out a timetable for withdrawing British troops from Iraq. A government memorandum leaked earlier this year shows Britain is considering scaling back its troop presence to 3,000 by the middle of next year.
But Defence Secretary John Reid insisted no date has been set, dismissing a report in The Observer newspaper Sunday that Britain was drawing up detailed plans to begin leaving in May.
The earlier story made it clear that conditions comparable to those discussed by Blair would be set on any withdrawal, making the new statements somewhat less than a complete denial. Even if any timetable is officially subordinate to an evaluation of conditions on the ground (as was already mentioned in the earlier story), the time now being put into withdrawal plans should at least help to shape that evaluation.
Although he does acknowledge in the article that he underestimated the strength of the insurgency, Blair hasn't conceded much yet on Iraq. But timetables and withdrawal plans have been topics for discussion for a good amount of time, and it appears they're well on the way to becoming something more concrete than that. Which means that if Blair wants to ignore them, he'll face an ever-more-difficult task trying to defend his actions.
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