The US Undersecretary for Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns, has been meeting senior ministers in Canberra. The talk has turned to the Rudd Government’s plan to withdraw Australian troops from southern Iraq (all 570 of them) by mid next year:

What all those Australian men and women have done in the Iraq effort, as well as Australia is doing in Afghanistan, we’re grateful for it. But we understand that Australia has a right to make its own decisions, we respect that. I think what we want to do now is find a way to work with Australia to see how we can both, with a lot of other countries, help to stabilise Iraq politically.

It seems the sky has failed to fall in.