Déjà vu

As the shock wears off and the analysis after the fact of what went wrong in Basra is pounded out, I see a microcosm of the whole sorry mess that has unfolded over there brought into sharp focus.

But interviews with a wide range of American and military officials also suggest that Mr. Maliki overestimated his military’s abilities and underestimated the scale of the resistance. The Iraqi prime minister also displayed an impulsive leadership style that did not give his forces or that of his most powerful allies, the American and British military, time to prepare.

“He went in with a stick and he poked a hornet’s nest, and the resistance he got was a little bit more than he bargained for,” said one official in the multinational force in Baghdad who requested anonymity. “They went in with 70 percent of a plan. Sometimes that’s enough. This time it wasn’t.”

As the Iraqi military and civilian casualties grew and the Iraqi planning appeared to be little more than an improvisation, the United States mounted an intensive military and political effort to try to turn around the situation, according to accounts by Mr. Crocker and several American military officials in Baghdad and Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Two senior American military officers — a member of the Navy Seals and a Marine major general — were sent to Basra to help coordinate the Iraqi planning, the military officials said. Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were pressed into service as combat advisers while air controllers were positioned to call in airstrikes on behalf of beleaguered Iraqi units. American transport planes joined the Iraqis in ferrying supplies to Iraqi troops.

In Baghdad, Mr. Crocker lobbied senior officials in the Iraqi government, who complained that they had been excluded from Mr. Maliki’s decision-making on Basra, to back the prime minister’s effort there.

An "impulsive leader" who launches an attack without adequate personnel and equipment? With just part of a plan? Leaving others scrambling to cover your ass? Sounds a lot like the little idiot ordering the inspectors out and the Army in - after firing the guy who told him he was barking mad for trying to do it "lean and mean" the Rumsfeld way.

It's small wonder that aWol is so taken with Maliki - if they aren't the same freakin' guy, they at least share a personality disorder.

Rogered Roundly (Updated)

Note: updated with new information from Juan Cole. Original post appeared last night and was written by Blue Girl...

[Reuters] Residents riding a motorcycle look at a burnt Iraqi armoured vehicle [an American-made HUMVEE] that was destroyed during clashes in Basra, 550 km (340 miles) south of Baghdad, April 2, 2008. Mehdi army fighters burned an Iraqi armoured vehicle during fresh clashes in Basra on Wednesday, a fighter from the Mehdi army said.

The pathetic showing by the Iraqi Army in Basra has drawn a stark and sobering portrait of the security situation in Iraq. If the United States is really and truly not going to stand down until the Iraqi Army can stand up, we might just as well start teaching Arabic too our preschoolers now because children not yet born will be fighting this god-forsaken, unholy clusterfuck.

President Bush last week declared the offensive, which ended Sunday, "a defining moment" in Iraq's history.

That may prove to be true, but in recent days senior U.S. officials have backed away from the operation, which ended with Shiite militias still in place in Basra, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki possibly weakened and a de facto cease-fire brokered by an Iranian general.

"There is no empirical evidence that the Iraqi forces can stand up" on their own, a senior U.S. military official in Washington said, reflecting the frustration of some at the Pentagon. He and other military officials requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak for the record.

Having Iraqi forces take a leadership role in combating militias and Islamic extremists was crucial to U.S. hopes of withdrawing more American forces in Iraq and reducing the severe strains the Iraq war has put on the Army and Marine Corps.

The failure of Iraqi forces to defeat rogue fighters in Basra has some in the military fearing they can no longer predict when it might be possible to reduce the number of troops to pre-surge levels.

"It's more complicated now," said one officer in Iraq whose role has been critical to American planning there.

It remains unclear what the American commanders in Iraq knew about the operation and when they knew it - what is known is that once again, the zeal and confident proclamations of Iraqi commanders boasting about the abilities of the troops in their command were not matched by reality once they came under fire.

Today it was revealed that British forces were involved far deeply in aiding the Iraqi army during the fighting in Basra than was previously reported. Indeed, British defense secretary Des Brown told the House of Commons on Tuesday that the use of British ground troops entry into the fighting was ordered “in extremis,” which means that the deployment of forces from the British base at Basra was a last-ditch measure to save Iraqi troops from being routed. Browne told the House of commons that the Iraqi forces displayed "fragility" under fire (what a euphemism!) He also announced that Britain was halting their drawdown of forces in the wake of the sorry showing by Iraqi forces.

So let's recap: Not only can the Iraqi forces not stand up, the Iraqi government showed itself for weak and ineffectual, we can't afford to keep propping them up, and if, nay when we leave, we most likely leave a failed state in our wake, and for that we are likely to be viewed by other states as a pariah nation for the foreseeable future.

If you look at what Juan Cole has found in the Arabic language media, you find a rather sobering and devastating account of what happened. The civil war in Iraq is getting worse and the government of Nuri al-Maliki is getting more and more corrupt by the day:

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Tuesday honored the militias of the parties in the United Iraqi Alliance, i.e. the Da'wa (Islamic Call) Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. They were singled out for having fought alongside government security forces, and some 10,000 of them were inducted into the latter.

Al-Zaman points to a double standard, insofar as the government has not similarly honored, or accepted into the state apparatus, most members of the Sunni Awakening Council militias that have been fighting the Qutbist Jihadis.

The induction of Badr Corps fighters (the paramilitary of ISCI) and those of the Da'wa Party into security positions came in the wake of the firing of thousands of officers and troops who had refused to obey orders to fire on the Mahdi Army militiamen in Baghdad and the southern provinces. They were accused of mutiny.

If al-Zaman's reporting is correct, the scale of the mutiny is breathtaking, and helps explain why government troops did so poorly against the Sadrists-- the hearts of the thousands of them were simply not with the fight.

Full scale mutiny, British troops sent in to keep them from collapsing, and armed thugs who fought on the side of the government are now "inducted" in as security forces. The very notion that the legitimization of the Badr Corps has now been accomplished should be of paramount concern to people who pay attention to these things:

Under the tutelage of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), SCIRI established a military wing in 1983, called the Badr Brigade. This force quickly grew into a full-fledged corps and joined regular IRGC forces on the front lines during the Iran-Iraq war. The relationship with the IRCG has persisted and deepened over the past two decades. The main Badr Corps training center, located just west of the Vahdati air force base in Dezful, and most of its other facilities in Western Iran and Tehran are IRGC property. The Badr Corps is believed to have between 10,000-15,000 fighters, though only around 3,000 are professionally trained (many of these being Iraqi army defectors and former POWs).

Will General Petraeus answer any of these questions? I hope to God no one runs an ad in the New York Times before he gets back from Iraq. Wouldn't want to distract anyone from what's really going on...

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

Of course, you can't explain basic COIN to the wingnuts. Here's what Austin Bay has to say:

After his outlaw militiamen raised white flags and skedaddled from their latest round of combat with the Iraqi Army, radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr declared victory.

He always does. He understands media bravado. He wagers that survival bandaged by bombast and swathed in sensational headlines is a short-term triumph. Survive long enough, and Sadr bets he will prevail.

This time, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a contrarian press release, however, calling the Iraqi Army's anti-militia operations in southern Iraq a "success."

A dispute over casualties in the firefights has ensued, as it always does. An Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman alleged that Sadr's militia had been hit hard in six days of fighting, suffering 215 dead, 155 arrested and approximately 600 wounded. The government spokesman gave no casualty figures for Iraqi security forces.

Let's see--we have a "body count" because that's how wingnuts think you win against popular insurgencies. They haven't learned the lesson of Vietnam--body counts don't matter. Support from the indigenous population matters. Thousands of Iraqi government troops mutinied, abandoned their equipment, then had to be bailed out by the Brits and had to call in air strikes from the US (another failed method of fighting insurgents that reveals just how badly we're doing in Iraq), ultimately leaving the Mahdi Army intact--and that means that al-Maliki won?

It's incredible to contemplate how ignorant these people truly are.

Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s increasingly isolated Prime Minister, claimed yesterday his campaign to stamp out illegal armed groups in Basra had been a “success” despite being forced to sue for peace with al-Mahdi Army militia who fought his men to a standstill.

The Prime Minister, whose future is looking uncertain after he staked his reputation on the stalled military offensive, also asked gunmen to return the 50 government cars and armoured vehicles they captured from his forces during a week of fighting that left close to 500 people dead.

Rarely does the victor have to "beg" for his vehicles to be returned from the people that he "defeated."

I Started Something I Couldn't Finish

All of the weapons, all of the training, all of the money--and THIS is what we get for it?

Col. Abbas al-Tamimi, media officer for the 14th Iraqi Army Division operating in the city, said he expected the fighting to escalate. “The gunmen have heavier and more sophisticated weapons than we have,” he said.

You have GOT to be kidding me. The Iraqi Army--with al-Maliki calling the shots and in the ceremonial lead of it--starts a confrontation in Basra with the Mahdi Army and they're outgunned?

Not only does Robert Gates need to stand down and account for every piece of American nuclear material and equipment, he needs to order the US military in Iraq to do the same--and account for every weapon we've given the Iraqi Army.

The NY Times says:

BAGHDAD — An assault by thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police officers to regain control of the southern port city of Basra stalled Wednesday as Shiite militiamen in the Mahdi Army fought daylong hit-and-run battles and refused to withdraw from the neighborhoods that form their base of power there.

American officials have presented the Iraqi Army’s attempts to secure the port city as an example of its ability to carry out a major operation against the insurgency on its own. A failure there would be a serious embarrassment for the Iraqi government and for the army, as well as for American forces eager to demonstrate that the Iraqi units they have trained can fight effectively on their own.

During a briefing in Baghdad on Wednesday, a British military official said that of the nearly 30,000 Iraqi security forces involved in the assault, almost 16,000 were Basra police forces, which have long been suspected of being infiltrated by the same militias the assault was intended to root out.

The operation is a significant political test for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who traveled to Basra to oversee the beginning of the assault. It is also a gamble for both the Iraqi and American governments. The Americans distrust the renegade cleric Moktada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia, who consider the Americans occupiers.

The dominant Shiite groups in Mr. Maliki’s government are political and military rivals of Mr. Sadr, and Mr. Maliki is freer now to move against him because Mr. Sadr’s party is no longer a crucial part of his coalition.

But if the Mahdi Army breaks completely with the cease-fire that has helped to tamp down attacks in Iraq during the past year, there is a risk of replaying 2004, when the militia fought intense battles with American forces that destabilized the entire country and ushered in years of escalating violence. Renewed attacks, in turn, would make it more difficult to begin sending home large numbers of American troops.

Mr. Maliki issued an ultimatum on Wednesday for Shiite militias in Basra to put down their weapons within 72 hours. Yet battles continued, killing at least 40 people and wounding 200 others, hospital officials said.

Though American and Iraqi officials have insisted that the operation was not singling out a particular group, fighting appeared to focus on Mahdi-controlled neighborhoods. In fact, some witnesses said, neighborhoods controlled by rival political groups seemed to be giving government forces safe passage, as if they were helping them to strike at the Mahdi Army.

Even so, the Mahdi fighters seemed to hold their ground. Witnesses said that from the worn, closely packed brick buildings of one Mahdi stronghold, the Hayaniya neighborhood, Mahdi fighters fired mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, automatic weapons and sniper rifles at seemingly helpless Iraqi Army units pinned on a main road outside, their armored vehicles unable to enter the narrow streets.

The assault has also sparked continuing violence by outraged Mahdi commanders in other major cities, including Baghdad, where the sprawling urban slum called Sadr City forms the militia’s power center in Iraq.

Most casualties in Basra were civilians caught in the cross-fire, hospital officials said. The heaviest fighting outside Basra appeared to be taking place in Kut, where officials said 10 people had been killed and 31 wounded, mostly by mortar shells.

There were also deadly clashes in Diwaniya, Hilla and Amara, and the booms of rocket fire rattled Baghdad all day. The American military said in a statement that 16 rockets had been fired into the fortified Green Zone alone, wounding one American soldier, two American civilians and an Iraqi Army soldier.

Unbelievable. I just don't have words for this anymore. The unravelling of Iraq has been so quick and so definitive so far, I just hope and pray they can stop this before it gets worse.

The problem is this--there are no US troops to send. The well has run dry. And that is a screaming indictment of the Bush Administration and the abject failure they have become.

How Do You Like Your Surge Now?

Apparently, the Iraqis in Basra are not willing to let their corrupt government in Baghdad try to stop their lucrative siphoning of oil supplies.

(CBS/AP) A bomb blast destroyed an oil pipeline in the southern Iraqi city of Basra Thursday and rockets continued falling on the U.S.-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad, as suspected Shiite militants continued to defy an order by the country's prime minister to surrender.

Despite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's ultimatum for militia members to lay down their arms and sign an agreement to abandon violence by Friday, government troops in Basra were having trouble making inroads into neighborhoods that the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army has controlled for years.

Residents spoke of militiamen using mortar shells, sniper fire, roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades to fight off security forces.

That's right--al-Maliki gives them a "Bring 'Em On" wannabe tough guy ultimatum and forgets to make sure he has people adequately guarding both of the main pipe lines, and the insurgents against his government decide to blow one of them up. That's what this was all about--the bureaucrats in Baghdad thought their Shia brothers in Basra were stealing too much oil, so they decided to try to put a stop to it. And, like every schoolyard taunt, everyone's got a fat lip and a ripped pair of corduroys and nobody gets a cupcake for lunch.

What caused all of this? The Christian Science Monitor has this excellent article from September of last year--and in it, you can see that what al-Maliki is doing is driven by corruption and greed, nothing more.

At the entrance to the headquarters of the South Oil Company (SOC) in Basra, a sign dating from when Saddam Hussein nationalized the oil industry in 1972 reads: "Our oil is ours."

Inside, an exasperated senior official, who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution, describes the onslaught by parties and militias intent on controlling the company by forcing their loyalists into key management positions. Some are beholden to the Ministry of Oil in Baghdad, which is controlled by the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the dominant Shiite coalition to which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki belongs.

"There is an invasion by parties and militias … we are a mouthwatering prize," he says, adding that recently 8,000 people, most of them illiterate, were pushed on to the company's payrolls.

The power plays extend to Basra's ports, too, often contributing to anger and a sense of injustice among the province's estimated 3 million people. In the town of Abu Al-Khaseeb, south of the city, the newly rich are building palatial homes next to mud huts. The mansions often belong to those who have been able to cash in on the brisk business in the town's Abu Flous port, which is one the province's main four ports and is widely considered to be controlled by the mafialike family, Bayet Ashour, and certain militias.

"You can only work at the port if you join a militia. I thought about it, but then my two cousins who had joined were badly wounded in a clash. So now we just sit home and shut up," says resident Jalal Ali.

Last month, armed tribesmen forcefully brought oil production to a standstill at the Majnoon oil field, 38 miles north of Basra city, after the SOC refused to meet their demands for jobs in the area. An official at the company, which controls oil exploration and production throughout southern Iraq, confirmed the incident.

Many are also profiting off the oil by tapping right into the pipelines.

SOC's oil pipelines are regularly sabotaged and drilled into to steal crude and smuggle it outside Iraq, says the unnamed official at the company. Many in the province even accuse Gov. Muhammad Mosabeh Waeli's Fadhila Party, whose partisans dominate the oil protection force, of colluding with the smugglers. Mr. Waeli has vehemently denied the charges, calling them "a smear campaign orchestrated by pro-Iranian parties."

Now that the pipeline has been blown up, nobody gets to tap into it. That's how that works. When one faction moves in Basra, others emerge and begin striking out. Remember--it's farther from Baghdad to Basra than it is from Washington D.C. to New York City. Events in one area shouldn't really affect the other, except that the opposite seems to be happening. Shia militias are suddenly reforming and resuming their old ways. The power struggle is apparently starting anew after a brief respite.

CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan reports the Green Zone, not long ago one of the safest areas of Baghdad, has become in recent days one of the deadliest.

In a visit to one of the foreign embassies inside the area, Logan says she and her crew had to quickly move into protective bunkers four times within one hour due to the relentless rocket fire. She says all non-essential movement of personnel within the Green Zone has been restricted.

The U.S. military said Wednesday that 16 rockets had slammed into the U.S.-protected Green Zone. One soldier with the U.S.-led coalition, two American civilians and an Iraqi soldier were wounded in the attacks, it said. At least 11 Iraqis were killed elsewhere in the capital by rounds that apparently fell short, police said.

A Pentagon official said reports from the Basra area indicate that militiamen had overrun a number of police stations and that it was unclear how well the Iraqi security forces were performing overall. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Al-Maliki, a Shiite, remained in Basra to supervise a crackdown against the spiraling violence between militia factions vying for control of the center of Iraq's vast oil industry, located near the Iranian border. The events threatened to unravel a Mahdi Army cease-fire and spark a dramatic escalation in violence after a monthslong period of relative calm.

You're darned right al-Maliki is in Basra--he wants to escalate this into full-scale civil war.

Yes, but what the likes of John McCain, Uncle Bimbo, Michael O'Hanlon and the rest of the peanut gallery doesn't understand is that the surge--which was intended to provide the Iraqi government a respite from the violence so that it could get its act together and govern more effectively by reconciling political differences--was a fucked up strategy to begin with. Political pressure forced us to make a deal with the devil and kick the can down the road. Well, before we could get to the fall elections, al-Maliki decided he needed to hit his enemies in Basra in order to squeeze more money out of the exportation of oil. Couldn't they sit on this guy until the fall election? Because if there's one person who deserves the blame for blowing McCain's chances this fall it's al-Maliki. I guess their little visit didn't go so well.

This is one of those times when it would be nice if the pundit media could drop any pretense that the surge is working and explain to everyone how Shia on Shia violence is now a real factor in what we do. All they have to do is start looking at what the working media is telling us from Iraq and start dealing with reality. Forget the Sunnis and AQI--this is going to get deadly. By the time they're through, Iraq's oil producing infrastructure might collapse completely, and all because no one could figure out how to distribute the spoils so that everyone could get a taste of the action.

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

Noticed this a little while ago. Calling them "outlaws" is what? The new strategy for unifying the country? How pathetic.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Forty-two people were killed Thursday in Kut, southeast of Baghdad, Iraq's Interior Ministry said, the latest casualties in three days of clashes between militias and Iraqi security forces.

Iraq's offensive against what it characterizes as "outlaws" of hard-line Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia began Tuesday in Basra, Iraq's second largest city.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who has been overseeing the operation in southern Iraq, has given militants an ultimatum to surrender their weapons by Saturday.

The fighting, which also saw Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone -- home to the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi government -- come under fire, has threatened to unravel a delicate al-Sadr cease-fire credited with reducing bloodshed between Sunnis and Shiites.

I just don't think they're giving up their guns on Saturday, or any other day.

Basra is Burning

The security situation in Iraq is more unstable than it has been in months as the oil-rich region around Basra disintegrates into chaos in the wake of a massive operation by the Iraqi Security Forces that sparked an uprising of local Shiite militias. The situation has deteriorated so severely that Iranian figurehead Nuri Kemal al-Maliki issued a dire warning: Lay down your arms within 72 hours, "or face the consequences."

The fierce battles, along with indications in recent weeks that militia and insurgent attacks had already been creeping up, raised fears across Iraq that Mr. Sadr could pull out of a cease-fire he declared last summer. If his Mahdi Army militia does step up attacks, that could in turn slow American troop withdrawals.

There were also serious clashes reported Tuesday in the southern cities of Kut and Hilla, and Major Bergner said Wednesday that fighting involving the Mahdi Army was continuing around the country.

In Basra on Tuesday, American and British jets roared through the skies, providing air support for the Iraqi military. A British Army spokesman for southern Iraq, Maj. Tom Holloway, said that while Western forces had not entered Basra, the operation already involved nearly 30,000 Iraqi troops and police forces, with more arriving. “They are clearing the city block by block,” Major Holloway said.

The scale and intensity of the clashes in Baghdad kept many residents home. Schools and shops were closed in many neighborhoods and hundreds of checkpoints appeared; in some neighborhoods they were controlled by the government and in others by militia members.

Also on Tuesday, barrages of rockets and mortar shells pounded the fortified Green Zone area. An American military spokesman said there were two minor injuries to civilians in the Green Zone.

That there is fighting among the Shi'ites should surprise exactly no one. There is no love lost between the Hakim's and the Sadr's - they both represent remnants of a past in which Ayatollahs ran the show in that part of the world. The Badr Brigade and Jaish al Mahdi represented the "muscle" requisite of any successful crime family. Duh.

Be honest - have you even thought about the Badr Brigade in the last two years? You haven't have you? Well, think about it now - where do you think all those militiamen disappeared to? They sure as hell didn't go back into their lamps, you know. But the average American has about that level of understanding about just what the hell has been done in their name. Nimrods. (Not you guys, everyone else. Especially the idiots who still support this mess.)

The Badr Brigade is the ISF. They are still militia thugs, they just have uniforms and sanction now, thanks to the backing of Iraqi president Jalal Talibani. But frankly, anyone who really, truly knows anything about the players in this game (Pat Lang, Marc Lynch, Scott Ritter) has seen this coming down the pike since SCIRI won the recognition battle.

Does anyone else find it even slightly ironic that the security forces the United States is determined to prop up, by any means necessary, has it's roots in Iran, opposing Iraq? And simultaneously they are sabre-rattling at Iran.

Our ignorance of what has been brewing in Basra has been because the Brits, god bless them, really didn't try to piss off the locals by insisting everyone disarm.

Now, was it smart of them? Of course--they suffered less while occupying Basra. They dealt with the locals, and the locals quietly accumulated weaponry, strengthened their power base, and built their militias.

When you then go in with a different philosophy--al Maliki saying "surrender or be killed--" you're asking for a shitstorm.

Basra is an example of what is probably going to happen when former allies or people we've bought off decide it's worth their while to start killing again. It's a microcosm of what will happen when the Sunnis get wind of where Iraq is likely to go.

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

Of course, Juan Cole had this all figured out a year ago:

Feb. 23, 2007 | Tony Blair's announcement that Britain would withdraw 1,600 troops from southern Iraq by May, and aim for further significant withdrawals by the end of 2007, drew praise from U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. "What I see," said Cheney, "is an affirmation of the fact that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well."

In reality, southern Iraq is a quagmire that has defeated all British efforts to impose order, and Blair was pressed by his military commanders to get out altogether -- and quickly. The departure has only been slowed, for the moment, by the pleas of Bush administration officials like Cheney. And far from the disingenuously upbeat prognosis offered by the vice president, the British withdrawal could spell severe trouble for both the Iraqi government and for U.S. troops in that country.

The British helped provide the security that allowed private supply convoys bearing fuel, food and ammunition to travel from Kuwait up through Shiite-held territory to the U.S. military's forward operating bases in and around Baghdad and in Anbar province. Col. Pat Lang, a retired senior officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency, has pointed out that if Shiite militias began attacking those trucks, American troops in the center-north of the country would become sitting ducks for the Sunni Arab guerrillas.

The other danger posed by the British withdrawal is to Iraq's economy. The southern port city of Basra is the country's primary economic window on the world. Exports of the 1.6 million barrels a day of petroleum it managed to produce in January all went out of Basra. The pipeline that used to take Iraqi exports from the northern oil city of Kirkuk to Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast has been subject to constant sabotage. The Iraqi state depends on the revenue realized from Basra's exports for its survival. As it is, it has been charged that militias siphon off $2 billion a year in petroleum revenues through smuggling operations. Were the central government to lose control of even more of those revenues, it could be starved to death.

And the danger is imminent. Although it is often alleged that Basra is relatively calm because it lacks Sunnis, neither claim is true. Though heavily Shiite, Basra also has tens of thousands of Sunnis -- even, perhaps, the odd al-Qaida operative. Sunni spokesmen such as Qatar-based Yusuf al-Qaradawi maintain that thousands of Sunnis have been driven out of the city and that a hundred Sunni mosques have been confiscated by Shiites. The Shiite-dominated Iraqi government denies these allegations.

And Basra is certainly not calm. The British have faced a difficult situation in the city during the past two years in particular, which has not been helped by the recent deterioration in relations throughout Iraq between Coalition troops and the Mahdi army of nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. In largely Shiite southern Iraq, the British have lost 132 troops to attacks by militiamen, many of them involving roadside bombs. British bases and headquarters are constantly targeted with mortar fire and Katyusha rockets, and often nearby Iraqis are killed by accident in these attacks. Last Oct. 30, the British were forced to relocate most of the staff at the British consulate in Basra out to the airport because the consulate kept coming under mortar fire. When the British consulate cannot even function in the heart of a city, it is a sign of poor security.

The Most Dangerous War Ever For Journalists?

Uh oh...

Two CBS News journalists were missing in the predominantly Shiite southern city of Basra, the network said Monday.

CBS said all efforts were under way to find the journalists, who were not identified by the network. It requested "that others do not speculate on the identities of those involved" until more information was available.

"CBS News has been in touch with the families and asks that their privacy be respected," the network added in a brief statement from its headquarters in New York.

Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, has seen fierce fighting between rival Shiite militias as part of a power struggle in the oil-rich south.

The British military turned over responsibility for the province to Iraqis in December, but maintains forces near Basra, about 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.

How's that surge working out for ya?

And, yes, I thought about making a crass joke at the expense of American's #1 Idiot, the always smarmy, cute and perky Katie Couric, but gentlemanly discretion has gotten the better of me this afternoon...

Brown Announces Further Drawdown of British Forces

Gordon Brown made his first major foreign policy speech to Parliament today, and while he had everyones attention, he basically told George Bush to "bugger off."

As if we needed more evidence that aWol Bush is indeed the worst president ever, he has managed to alienate Britain, our closest historic ally.

About a week ago, Gordon Brown announced that he would be cutting the British presence in Iraq to 5000. The White House responded predictably - that is to say - petulantly. A Bush aid announced that Britain was no longer Bush's greatest ally, and then slandered the British forces. “Operationally, British forces have performed poorly in Basra,” said the official. “Maybe it’s best that they leave. Now we will have a clear field in southern Iraq.”

"Well, fine then." Was apparently what Gordon Brown had to say about that.

Today, Gordon Brown announced that the British presence will be cut further, to a total troop strength of 2500 by spring. Those 2500 will be serving in a support role.

Later on, after Brown's appearance before Parliament, one of his top aids told a reporter that he would not be surprised if all british forces are out of Iraq before the end of 2008.

The White House response to being told to get buggered was more measured today than it was last week. "This is consistent with previously announced plans by the British to reduce their troop presence in southern Iraq as the Iraqi security forces are able to take lead responsibility in the southern provinces," Said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council. What accounts for the more reticent response today is anyones guess.

A Battle for Basra

Yet again, the so-called liberal media with it’s anti-war bias soft-soaped a story that should be screaming from the front pages.

The way the WaPo tells it, it sounds almost like a routine operation.

BAGHDAD, May 26 -- U.S. and British troops battled Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra on Friday and Saturday, killing about a dozen fighters shortly after the influential Shiite cleric demanded a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

But Reuters gives a tad more detail. (but not much)

BASRA, Iraq, May 26 (Reuters) - British forces used an airstrike as they fought off attacks in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, military officials said on Saturday, but angry residents said the strike killed eight civilians.

British and Iraqi forces came under a series of attacks for more than two hours overnight in Basra, a gateway to the Gulf and Iraq's rich southern oilfields, by insurgents using small arms and rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

The attacks against British and Iraqi posts came hours after Wissam Abdul Qader, also known as Abu Qader, the head of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army in Basra, was killed by Iraqi special forces on Friday.

Angry crowds carried the coffins of eight people in a funeral procession through the streets of Basra on Saturday. They said the eight were civilians killed in the airstrike.

Yes. Once again an airstrike was necessary to quell the fighting. Airstrikes are a last resort when a force is pretending to care about civilian casualties. I have noticed a significant uptick in the necessity of overwhelming airpower to save coalition forces. (When you have the only Air Force, you of course win every battle. But at what cost?)

It only stands to reason that as the war grinds on, the desert takes its toll on man and materiel alike, and as coalition forces feel the strain, those they are fighting are learning to develop tactics, and are strategizing to employ them effectively. They have are now attacking fortified positions.

None of this bodes well for the occupying forces.

Professor Cole is more diplomatic in his assessment than I – he says “[Y]ou have the sense that both politically and militarily, the British are hanging on in Basra by their fingernails.”

Unlike the esteemed Professor Cole, I have no possible future as a diplomat. I will be more blunt.

The Brits are losing Basra. Period.