UK Defense Documents: Britain planning Iraq deployments through 2012

A smiling Iraqi holds up the helmet of a British soldier after a roadside bomb killed four British soldiers on Thursday. Reports from the scene say local men gathered 'souvenirs' and cheered afterwards.

Britain's "overstretched" armed forces will fight in Iraq for at least another five years.

A confidential planning document drawn up by defence chiefs called the Operational Tour Plot, parts of which have been disclosed to this newspaper, reveals that troops will be serving on operations in the Gulf until at least 2012...

The Operational Tour Plot, which lists the units to be sent on operations, reveals that 12 Mechanised Brigade, which saw service in Iraq in 2005 and which is about to embark on a six-month tour to Afghanistan in May, will return to Iraq in 2012 on Operation Telic 19, the codename for the war in Iraq.

Troops in Iraq are currently serving on Operation Telic 9.

Read the rest at the Telegraph

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