By Luke Baker in London
Thursday March 20 2008
 A peace protester, wearing a ghostly ‘death-mask’, taking part in a demonstration in the US capital in Washington, which marked the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq |
Five years after declaring it stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States in sending troops to invade Iraq, Britain is now quietly easing its way out.
Some 150,000 US troops remain in Iraq, but just 4,100 Britons — a tenth of the British invasion force — are left, hunkered down in one base. Even those could be withdrawn by the end of this year, British officials have said.