Yesterday, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that the British presence in Iraq would be scaled back significantly, and implied that a full withdrawal of U.K. forces wouldn’t be far behind. Reaction from Washington was swift - from Vice President Cheney saying that Blair’s decision was an “affirmation of the fact that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well” to House leader Nancy Pelosi wondering “Why are thousands of additional American troops being sent to Iraq at the same time that British troops are planning to leave?”

It doesn’t matter how the Bush regime is spinning the U.K.’s withdrawal from Iraq - Blair’s announcement is a huge blow to the White House. There is absolutely no spinning the fact that the U.K. is, in essence, cutting their losses and bailing out of a losing situation. I’d really like to see a Bush regime official try to spin an unspinable NPR report about the British withdrawal:

“The problem is, in most of these four provinces, the British essentially gave up,” says Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Cordesman says U.K. forces lost control of two key provinces — Basra and Maisan — after elections in early 2005 and 2006 that brought a Shiite majority to power.

“Once they came under control, the Shiites firmly were in charge of virtually the entire area and there was little the British could do about it,” Cordesman says.

Richard Beeston, diplomatic editor of The Times of London recently returned from a visit to Basra, his first since 2003. He says in 2003, British soldiers were on foot patrol, drove through town in unarmored vehicles and fished in the waters of the Shaat al Arab on their days off. He says the changes he saw four years later are enormous.

“Nowadays all troop movement in and out of the city are conducted at night by helicopter because it’s been deemed too dangerous to go on the road and its dangerous to fly choppers during the day,” he says.

Beeston says during his latest visit, he noticed a map of the city in one of the military briefing rooms. About half of the city was marked as no-go areas.

British headquarters are mortared and rocketed almost every night…

The excerpt above is just a snapshot of a very depressing NPR report. Who’s going to have to pick up the ball when the Brits cut and run? You already know the answer to that question.

Dick Cheney’s protestations to the contrary, essentially, the Brits are “declaring victory” and getting the hell out of the quagmire that even their generals have largely given up on.