Wash. Post: U.S. Official Says British Forces Failed in Basra (or, how to win friends)

[babylonsister]

I'm glad the US has no culpability whatsoever, it's always someone else's fault.


As British Leave, Basra Deteriorates
Violence Rises in Shiite City Once Called a Success Story

By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 7, 2007; Page A01

As British forces pull back from Basra in southern Iraq, Shiite militias there have escalated a violent battle against each other for political supremacy and control over oil resources, deepening concerns among some U.S. officials in Baghdad that elements of Iraq's Shiite-dominated national government will turn on one another once U.S. troops begin to draw down.

Three major Shiite political groups are locked in a bloody conflict that has left the city in the hands of militias and criminal gangs, whose control extends to municipal offices and neighborhood streets. The city is plagued by "the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors," a recent report by the International Crisis Group said.

After Saddam Hussein was overthrown in April 2003, British forces took control of the region, and the cosmopolitan port city of Basra thrived with trade, arts and universities. As recently as February, Vice President Cheney hailed Basra as a part of Iraq "where things are going pretty well."

But "it's hard now to paint Basra as a success story," said a senior U.S. official in Baghdad with long experience in the south. Instead, it has become a different model, one that U.S. officials with experience in the region are concerned will be replicated throughout the Iraqi Shiite homeland from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. A recent series of war games commissioned by the Pentagon also warned of civil war among Shiites after a reduction in U.S. forces.

For the past four years, the administration's narrative of the Iraq war has centered on al-Qaeda, Iran and the sectarian violence they have promoted. But in the homogenous south -- where there are virtually no U.S. troops or al-Qaeda fighters, few Sunnis, and by most accounts limited influence by Iran -- Shiite militias fight one another as well as British troops. A British strategy launched last fall to reclaim Basra neighborhoods from violent actors -- similar to the current U.S. strategy in Baghdad -- brought no lasting success.

"The British have basically been defeated in the south," a senior U.S. intelligence official said recently in Baghdad. They are abandoning their former headquarters at Basra Palace, where a recent official visitor from London described them as "surrounded like cowboys and Indians" by militia fighters. An airport base outside the city, where a regional U.S. Embassy office and Britain's remaining 5,500 troops are barricaded behind building-high sandbags, has been attacked with mortars or rockets nearly 600 times over the past four months.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/06/AR2007080601401.html?hpid=topnews

[rodeodance]

1. Britain's remaining 5,500 troops are barricaded behind building-high sandbags

[DavidDvorkin]

2. Just as the U.S. has been defeated

The British are admitting it.

[texanshatingbush]

3. And aren't most of our troops....

.....barricaded behind sandbags and/or holed up in the Green Zone and taking mortar fire--just like the British who supposedly "failed", according to this "senior U.S. intelligence official"?

I'm pretty sure the same yardstick used by this "senior U.S. intelligence official" to measure the Brits, should be used to evaluate the US situation, as well. The neocon war planners in Washington created a failure in Iraq because they knew NOTHING about the culture they were going into.

I could have predicted this outcome based on having watched "Lawrence of Arabia" nine times. In fact, I DID predict this outcome !

[JohnyCanuck]

4. Remember how the blowhard Tommy generals

used to tell the press how it was unfortunate that the shoot-first-ask-questions-later Yanks didn't know shit about running an occupation, but Her Majesty's forces knew exactly how to do it so as the natives would soon be hoisting the Union Jack, putting up pictures of Queen Liz in their living rooms, inviting them over for tea and crumpets and wanting them to marry their daughters. I wonder what happened?

[TwilightGardener]

5. Outnumbered as we are in Baghdad, we're very lucky this hasn't happened

to our troops...yet. But if they don't fix the water/electricity situation, and fast, things might get ugly.