We will withdraw from Afghanistan but we won't leave and all the troops will be home by 2015 but this is not a strict deadline

Of course, a withdrawal was never going to begin in July 2011 or at least not any real withdrawal and today in the 'Huffington Post'  we can read that the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, more or less confirmed this when she said on NBC's 'Meet the Press' last sunday; "We're not talking about an exit strategy or a drop dead deadline. What we're talking about is an assessment that in January, 2011, we can begin a transition." Right, right, we are talking about an "assessment" that a "transition" can begin and the Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates , who also appeared on the programme adds, "We're not talking about an abrupt withdrawal. We're talking about something that will take place over a period of time...Because we will have a significant--we will have 100,000 forces--troops there. And they are not leaving--in July of 2011. Some handful or small number or whatever the conditions permit, we'll begin to withdraw at that time".

Of course, what this means is that we are going to have token "withdrawals" in order to boost the administrations's credibility as it comes up for re-election. In the meantime Obama has been chatting to a fellow "double speaker" at the Toronto G8 summit and the 'Guardian' tells us that David Cameron wants all British troops home before the next election but that he, like the American administration, tries to bamboozle us with Orwellian "newspeak", saying, that "he preferred not to "deal in too strict timetables." Therefore, his is what we know; the withdrawal will begin in July 2011 but only a handful of troops will be withdrawn and all British troops will be home before the 2015 General Election but this is not a strict deadline. Well, we can only suspect that London and Washington know just a little bit more.