Italy Does What It Does Best

Retreat.

Italy will start to withdraw its troops from Iraq this September, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Tuesday.

"We will begin to reduce our contingent even before the end of the year, starting in September, in agreement with our allies," he said in an interview on state television RAI.

Guess we know what the rest of the ransom was.

Might not matter all that much, since the bulk of the "heavy lifting" has already been done. Still, it's galling in that Giuliana Sgrena, in the end, got what she wanted: her country's surrender.

To the extent that the United States is "going it alone" in the GWOT, it's only because the rest of the targeted world is a collective sea of cowardice.