U.S. Under Pressure to Sustain Coalition in Iraq: “Four nations have left while four more prepare to leave international force; others quietly planning to depart.” (Washington Post)

And The Nation‘s Tom Englehardt describes how the US is increasingly scraping the bottom of the barrel to get international contributions to the ‘multinational’ effort (TomDispatch)

And among other recent observations of note in his column, Englehardt remarks that US troop deaths in Afghanistan/Iraq recently passed the one thousand milestone with almost no media notice. He also comments, “In the thirteen days before the surprise early “transition” non-ceremonies, there were 19 American military deaths in Iraq. In the thirteen days since, there have been 31.” And he notes that, in all the talk about possible ‘July-‘ or ‘October-surprises’ (and the most recent conspiracy theories about Republicans scenarios for a government-of-national-unity type refusal to hand over power by postponing the elections citing a terrorist threat), no one seems to be thinking about what Bush-Cheney might do in the period between an election defeat in November and Kerry’s inauguration in Jan., ’05.