Ripping the veil off Basra and finding another Fallujah

"Tread Softly by Jo Barry"












Steven Vincent called it and then lost his life because of it.

Iraqi forces in Basra have been taken over/infiltrated by radical elements of the Badr Brigades. That wack job Moqtada al Sadr is mixing it up there and our mullah pals in Iran have jumped into the fray as well.

Violence has been escalating. A stringer for the NY Times was killed in Basra. Some high-ups in the Shia Mehdi had been picked up for violent terror acts and that made the natives restless.

Then the Iraqi police nabbed two SAS guys. They were out of uniform and it sounds like something was going down as they shot one Iraqi police guy and wounded another. The Iraqi police held the Brits and were not cooperating with the British authorities in their release. When the Brits got word that their chaps had been handed over to the Shia militia and moved to a new location they didn't like it. Calls were made up the Basra chain of command and the diplomatic food chain without appropriate response.

So they called in the 12th Mechanized Brigade to storm the station. At the point of a 30mm cannon, the Iraqi police told the Brits where the men were and in a daring and well-timed raid the Brits got them out. Three soldiers were injured and they lost an armored vehicle.

This woke somebody up at the BBC and finally they get the memo here:

'Police infiltrated'
The BBC's Paul Wood said none of Basra's 20,000 police officers had helped the UK troops "partly because of reticence by their commanders, partly because, I am afraid, they have been infiltrated by these militants".


Now, don't get me wrong. I love the Brits. But a lot of the Brits have questioned our military approach and dissed our style, claiming that their "Softly, softly" approach was the right way to win the war on terror.

"...in Basra it's all a bit different. We stop here and there, and get out, and talk to people. Out on patrol the British soldiers sling their helmets from their belts and wear soft hats and buy cans of Coke from street stalls. Softly, softly.

British troops have adopted a "softly, softly" approach in Basra and since the Moqtada al-Sadr uprising in August was suppressed, Basra has been pretty quiet. Brigadier Andrew Kennet believes that "softly, softly" pays off.

He told me "I did not raze Basra to the ground, but I could have done."

I wonder what Brigadier Kennet is thinking now.

Patrols have been resumed. According to the Times of London.

British soldiers have been resuming duties in the centre of Basra despite a vow from local politicians to withdraw co-operation if the British Government refuses to apologise for mounting an armed rescue raid. Mohammed al-Waili, the Basra governor, has threatened to sever ties with UK troops unless Prime Minister Tony Blair pledges not to repeat Monday's operation, which left five Iraqis dead and saw armoured vehicles break down the walls of a jail. But the Ministry of Defence said they are now stepping up patrols in Basra "progressively" following days of tension and protests.