WASHINGTON - Pentagon planners have been working twenty-four hours a day to devise a way to maintain order in Iraq if Spain makes good on its threat to pull out its 1,300 troops. "We only have just over a hundred thousand troops there now, so if they really do yank their boys, we'd be down to, well, I guess it would still come in at just over a hundred thousand. But we'd rather they didn't," said Pentagon spokesman Major Michael Shavers.

"The five provinces in the mid-southern section of Iraq are currently secured by the Polish," said Lieutenant Colonel Rose-Ann Lynch, "And the Spaniards are helping with that effort. We'll need to augment the 8,000 troops that Poland has provided."

"Actually, we've all pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact that the U.S. will need to put more boots on the ground in Iraq," said a senior Pentagon official who asked to remain anonymous, "So if we put in 50,000 troops, or 51,300, it doesn't make all that much difference."

"It does matter," Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said in a Madrid interview, "We are a significant force in Iraq. Our pull-out sends a message to the international community that cannot be ignored."

"There are Spanish troops here?" asked US Lieutenant Colonel Peter Jones, stationed in Baghdad, "Huh. Ok." When it was pointed out that they are serving with the Polish troops, Jones responded, "There are Polish troops here?"
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