Building the Monolition...

I've been remiss in updating the list. No excuse really. Since it seems to get shorter all the time, it should be easy to track. Here's an update from the New York Times, via the Toronto Star...

Ukraine became the latest dropout from the "coalition of the willing" when President Leonid Kuchma formally ordered his generals to start pulling his country's roughly 1,600 troops out of Iraq.

That was not a surprise because Ukraine has been heading for the door for some time. Still, given that Ukraine has been much in the news and that its contingent was the fifth-largest in Iraq (after the United States, Britain, Italy and Poland), the exit is worth noting.

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Ukraine's withdrawal punches a major and potentially fatal hole in the much-ballyhooed multinational division that Poland volunteered to lead in Iraq. Spain was the first to drop out, and Ukraine had the second-largest contingent after Poland itself.

The coalition has also lost Hungary, the Philippines and Honduras, among others, while Poland itself, long regarded as second only to Britain in its fealty to the United States, is talking of cutting back. Several other countries intend to reduce their participation in the next few months.

...and so goes the Coalition of the Coerced.