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Defence Secretary Geoff
Hoon announces that the Black Watch Regiment will be re-deployed
from their "relatively safe" posting near Basra to the
much more fiery environment of Sunni insurgency west of Baghdad
to cover for the US army who are engaged in suppressing the activity
in Falluja. Hoon denies the widely-held suspicion in the UK that
this military decision has a crude political facet to it - to
present evidence to an amnesiac and news-starved US electorate
that there really is a coalition operating in Iraq, not just the
US army, thereby elevating Dubya's electoral chances at this sensitive
time. He claims that the move is entirely based on military strategy
and is not a politically-motivated decision. The troops will be
"home by Christmas".
The Guardian; Friday 22/10/04
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