Nah , UK troop strength in NI peaked at 30,000 in july 1972 (up from 11,000 in 1971) and then dropped to around 22,000 for the rest of the seventies and then down to an average of around 16,000 or so in the 80's. And around 30% of those uk troops were actually part time locals in the UDR.

So the highest ratio in NI would been around 1:12 for a few months in 1972 and nearer 1:18- 1:20 for the rest.

As Northern Ireland has been mentioned I think its worth remembering that throughout the 70s and 80s British Army troop levels were in or around 50,000. That was to police a male catholic population (their area of operations for the most part) of under 350,000, if my math is correct that works out at one soldier per 7 civilians, and still it took over thirty years to reach a stalemate.

The equivalent in Iraq is 2.7 million male sunni Iraqis and an American troop presence of, say, 150,000, that's a 1 to 18 ratio, without taking in Al Qaeda or the Shia militias.

James Joyner:Staying in Iraq will mean continued American casualties in a war the public clearly no longer supports and will require several more years of such commitment to achieve victory, however that’s defined, with no guarantee that said victory...

This is a classic No Win scenario for which there are no easy answers.

Brought to you by... hmm, can't quite recall the guy's name. Oh, yeah, "mistakes were made."

BTW, the automatic play on the blog radio thingy is quite annoying.

Staying is going to cost blood and money. Leaving is going to cost blood and money. The question is as much whose blood, whose money and ripple effects.