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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (454708)	9/8/2003 5:18:06 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

September 8, 2003 Britain to Send 1,200 More Troops to Southern Iraq By ALAN COWELL ONDON, Sept. 8 — Alarmed by deepening disorder in Iraq, Britain announced today that it would reinforce its 10,000 troops in southern Iraq with 1,200 more soldiers and said it could deploy more forces later. The deployment, made public by Defense Minister Geoff Hoon, was more modest than the 5,000 extra troops that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was reported to have been urging in southern Iraq. "We anticipate additional tasks in the near future which will require military resources, in particular the provision of military support to critical infrastructure work," Mr. Hoon said. These would include improving supplies of electric power, fuel and water to the people of southern Iraq. At the height of the invasion of Iraq, British forces in the region numbered some 45,000, but that has been scaled back. The reinforcement was foreshadowed last Friday when Britain said it was sending 120 troops from Cyprus, the Mediterranean island where Britain maintains a substantial garrison. The deployment also came just hours after President Bush said Iraq had become the "central front" in the war on terror. While United States forces in central Iraq have taken the brunt of the casualties since Mr. Bush declared an end to the conventional war on May 1, Britain has lost 49 soldiers since the war began March 20, with 11 of those since May 1. The British government denied that the reinforcements represented what a spokesman termed a "knee-jerk reaction" to attacks on American and British troops in Iraq. Mr. Hoon said the military presence was designed to "help the Iraq people to forge a new, peaceful and secure future for themselves and we will meet this commitment with appropriate forces in Iraq for as long as required and no longer." The reinforcements will remain in Iraq "until around November" and "additional units would deploy to replace them in theater if the requirement remained," he said. The units to be deployed are from the the Light Infantry based in Cyprus and the Royal Green Jackets, based in northwest England, whose mission will be to "increase force protection, accelerate training of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and to improve our information gathering capability." The deployment in Iraq led to a major political crisis for Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has been accused of exaggerating the threat from Baghdad to justify going to war as America's leading ally. But a new opinion survey published today showed his party recovering from a huge slump in popularity inspired in part by allegations that the government over-emphasized Baghdad's ability to deploy weapons of mass destruction. The crisis deepened with the suicide of David Kelly, a British weapons expert, identified as the source of a BBC report claiming that the government "sexed up" a dossier on the Iraqi threat last September. Ian Duncan Smith, the leader of the opposition Conservatives, said today that Mr. Blair should resign if an inquiry into Dr. Kelly's death finds that the prime minister was involved in maneuvers that led to the public identification of Dr. Kelly. Breaking a relative silence among his supporters about the Kelly affair, Mr. Duncan Smith also said Mr. Blair should resign "if he did mislead the country." The government was also challenged in Parliament today over the latest deployment, both from the Conservatives and from Labor. Mr. Duncan Smith, who supported the war in Iraq and the decision to send more troops, said the government was "at sixes and sevens" over its policy toward rebuilding Iraq. And Robin Cook, a former government minister who quit the cabinet to protest the war in Iraq, said, "Those of us who had doubts as to whether it was wise to go into Iraq in the first place do not have those doubts removed by today's announcement." nytimes.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (454708)	9/8/2003 5:28:17 PM
From: SeachRE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

RE:"Time to short the market". You make me comfortable on the long side. Great contrary indicator...