Italy has announced today that it will start withdrawing its 3,000 troops from Iraq beginning in September. Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said on Tuesday his country will begin a “progressive reduction” of troops.
I think this is a good choice by Italy to begin the process of handing Iraq back to the Iraqis.
Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said on March 8th during a news conference at the pentagon that “Today there are more than 140,000 trained and equipped Iraqi troops and more than 90 operational combat battalions engaged across Iraq, both with coalition forces and, in some cases, independently.”
If this statement is true, why wouldn’t the Italians leave Iraq? It sounds like the US has the situation under control with the Iraqis trained to protect themselves. On top of that, they have implanted a whole new government to run the country! It only makes sense for Italy to leave the country. What a great success for the US to have stabilized Iraq to a point where there are 140,000 trained and equipped Iraqi troops.
PS: There’s no sarcasm in this posting whatsoever 
I don’t know what their definition of “trained and equipped”, but I’d like to see it first hand. Maybe they meant to say “Potty trained and equipped with utensils”, they just accidentally removed a couple key words. Whatever keeps GW happy.