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Defence Policy

It would be nice to think that we could talk about that in the past tense, but we gave a commitment to the people of Iraq that we would not leave until the job was done and we had produced a sustainable security situation within which a civil society could properly flourish. When that has been achieved, that will be the time for the international coalition to leave Iraq. Exactly when that will occur is a very difficult thing to assess, but anyone who believes that we have already reached that position does not fully understand the reality of what is happening on the ground in Iraq.