Country Again Requested Removal from Iraq List

To the U.S.White House: Please don’t say we support your war in Iraq. From: Costa Rica’s Foreign Minister, Bruno Stagno, his predecessor, Roberto Tovar, the 2006-2010 Legislative Assembly and the 2004 Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court (Sala IV).

In 2003, then-President Abel Pacheco put Costa Rica in “The Coalition of the Willing,” a 49-country list of supporters for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In a country without an army, this didn’t sit well with certain citizens, courts and legislators. Tovar and Stagno each requested Costa Rica’s removal from the list, most recently in May of this year.

In June, the United States said they got the message, but the list is a historical document rather than an actual list – tough luck if you can still Google a 2003 White House press release that has Costa Rica between Colombia and the CzechRepublic in the coalition to “disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.”

El Salvador is the only country in the region that supports the United States with troops in Iraq. As of early December more than 2,100 Salvadoran soldiers had been to Iraq, five of whom were killed there, according to the online journal Elfaro.net.