Goalposts, Updated

The latest set, as reported by the AP:

British troops could leave Iraq by the end of 2006, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said in a television interview to be broadcast on Sunday. Britain's top soldier said this timetable was well within the realm of possibility.

Talabani said Iraqi troops should be ready to take over from British forces in the southern provinces around Basra by the end of next year, adding no Iraqis wanted foreign troops to remain indefinitely in their country.

But he warned that an immediate withdrawal of U.S.-led forces would be a catastrophe for Iraq and would lead to civil war, with harmful consequences for the entire Middle East.

"We don't want British forces forever in Iraq. Within one year I think at the end of 2006 Iraqi troops will be ready to replace British forces in the south," Talabani said in the interview with Jonathan Dimbleby for Independent Television. The station released details from the interview before it aired.

British army chief of staff Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, said Sunday that this timetable was "well within the range of what is realistically possible."

"The president has said that we could leave within year or so. I would agree we most certainly could. But it's a question of achieving the right conditions," Jackson told the British Broadcasting Corp.'s Sunday A.M. program.

So after a bad week for Blair, Talabani runs interference for him and hangs a carrot about a mile in front of the horse's nose. Gen. Jackson chimes in and helps the ruse, of course adding that "it's a question of achieving the right conditions" lest anyone remind him of this a year from now and ask whatever happened to that possible 2006 withdrawal.

This has been and will continue to be the pattern, both in the U.S. and the U.K. Take a look at some more goalposts here, and here as well. When public pressure builds after a particularly bad stretch of days either politically or militarily, the carrots and sugar cubes come out and "strong possibilities" are fed to the press---always with caveats about security, of course. Politicians playing politics with soldiers' lives? Perish the thought.

Anyone want to guess when "the right conditions" will exist and Iraq will be insurgent-free?