Richard WarnickThe Myth of British Success in Basra
Has Dick Cheney ever said anything about Iraq that is true? Check this out:
The Vice President says that from his perspective the withdrawal is a positive sign for stability in Iraq, and not the British military running away from a tough fight. Cheney explains, “what I see is an affirmation of the fact that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well.”
Perhaps Cheney is hoping that Americans at least are unaware of the utter failure of the British-led occupation of Iraq’s second-largest city, Basra, and surrounding provinces. Patrick Cockburn in The Independent gives the real story.
The British control of southern Iraq was precarious from the beginning. Its forces had neither experience of the areas in which they were operating nor reliable local allies. Like the Americans in Baghdad, they failed to stop the mass looting of Basra on the fall of Saddam Hussein and never established law and order.
Cockburn cites a study by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington, that says British forces lost control of the situation in and around Basra by the second half of 2005, and another by Michael Knights and Ed Williams, published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy:
“[I]nstead of a stable, united, law-abiding region with a representative government and police primacy, the deep south is unstable, factionalised, lawless, ruled as a kleptocracy and subject to militia primacy”.
Local militias are often not only out of control of the Iraqi government, but of their supposed leaders in Baghdad. The big money earner for local factions is the diversion of oil and oil products, with the profits a continual source of rivalry and a cause of armed clashes. Mr Knights and Mr Williams say that control in the south is with a “well-armed political-criminal Mafiosi [who] have locked both the central government and the people out of power”.
The people of Basra have also suffered a significant loss of personal freedom under the rule of radical Islamist factions. This much was obvious a year and a half ago, according to an article by Timothy Phelps of Newsday:
Shia radicals have imposed their intolerant views on what used to be the Persian Gulf’s freest city, where Kuwaitis were known to flock on the weekends to escape their puritanical society just 100 miles away. Instead, Basra has become like Tehran, where morals are enforced not by family but by religious militias.
This is no aberration, but quite possibly the future of Iraq….
Agents of Iran - quite possibly the U.S. government’s next adversary in the Middle East - have thoroughly infiltrated both the local security police in Basra and the elite paramilitary brigades sent in by the Interior Ministry in Baghdad, according to sources with access to U.S. intelligence. They are also heavily involved in the militias of some of the governing political parties.
What is happening in Basra, until recently little noticed in the international press, is described by one U.S. diplomat as “our dirty little secret… We could have won this battle if we had been able to provide electricity and services in the first 6 or 12 months.”
Just another of Dick Cheney’s enormous successes.
February 24th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
People are waking up, but the terminally stupid are putting up a serious fight.
Cognitive consonance is very hard to overcome. The psychological tendency to believe in your decisions, and making constructs to support the choices one has made. Even if they are horrible, the inability to accept ones mistake, the unmistakeable sign of serious psychological problems. Or stupidity.
February 24th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Tim, did your links kutilize the new quicktags? If so can a brief tutorial be gotten? Thanks
February 25th, 2007 at 7:51 am
This modern worlds latest. The people in the last frame could be my Grandparents in Germany, before Poland 1939.
Go to rense.com today, it is on the home page.
February 25th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Cav,
Click on the Quicktags link above or here. for a tutorial.
To make a hyper link, first you must copy the URL. That is, the web address of the content you want to link to.
First go there. Then highlight and copy ( CNTRL + C ) the address in the address bar at the top of your browser. It always starts with “http://”.
You can also put the cursor over the highlighted address, right-click, and select copy (notice the shortcut key stroke to the right of “copy”).
If you don’t see the address, go to the View menu and play with the tool bar option until you see it.
So, once you have it copied into memory (you won’t know for sure until you paste it)
Come back to your OneUtah comment, and highlight the text that you want to turn into a hyperlink, then click the link button above. That should bring up a box with “http://” already typed in and highlighted in blue.
Now past, CNTRL+V. It will add some funky code. Just ignore it. When you submit, it will all be clear.
I’ll try to add a preview option soon.
Who’s Tim?
February 25th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Tim had the first comment on this article, I do not see it now, but there were three highlit article references including one from crooksandliars.?
Cliff, thanks for the lesson, I’ll test it soon.
February 25th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Again, Cliff, Is this quicktags thingie part of the enhanced server capacity you were looking to pick-up?
Tim has disappeared from the face of the blog! I’m concerned. Tim, call ‘home.’
February 25th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Cav,
No, I did quicktags just for you.
The enhanced server capacity is something entirely different.
OneUtah is hosted by a very inexpensive web hosting service which throttles activity beyond a certain point. You have probably noticed the “CPU capacity exceeded” with increasing frequency.
Upon closer examination however, it appears to be result not of reader traffic, but something much more suspicious. I don’t know how much you know about “feeds”, but OneUtah allows feeds as do many others.
This allows other websites such as Utah Politics to automatically pull posts from here to there. And thats fine. Thats what they are for.
But here’s the scary part. Somebody has begun pulling feeds from OneUtah of every single post and comment several times per day.
Here’s something even more interesting. I may top post this in an effort to find out more.
OneUtah traffic grew steadily until mid January leveling off around 3000 readers per day. Since then it has fluctuated to as high as 5000 but never below about 1600. Thursday, I posted Ed’s impeachment papers. That very same day, traffic dropped by 50%. Then on Friday traffic dropped again by another 50%. Yesterday traffic dropped again to half of Friday’s traffic to 496 readers.
Its too strange. Its very strange. The last time traffic was that low was early summer 6 months into our existence. Traffic has never fluctuated by more than 20% on a day to day or week to week basis.
I am not a paranoid person. But this makes no sense. Its not a technical glitch because I have 4 different kinds of meters measuring traffic in very different ways and they all say the same thing.
If anyone has been shut out of OneUtah suddenly, please let me know.
Tks
Cliff
February 26th, 2007 at 5:47 am
Interesting. Seems a coupla weeks back ‘vigilance’ was keyed here a time or two. Given the mysterious and murky ways our shadow government seeks to defend itself from its more left-leaning constituents, there may be something to your fears. I’m likely to be the last to know, but I’ll say one thing for sure, I ain’t getting on the train. Big Brother would have us believe it’s just a test drive to the stockyard.
February 26th, 2007 at 7:05 am
It’s Presidents’ Week, everyone is off screwing around maybe. Or maybe we are being watched. I hope so. FUCK YOU CONSTITUTION HATING BASTARDS!
Maybe the site is being attacked by some milblog that has a skilled hacker in their midst. It won’t matter, the infection is spreading, they have not a prayer.
Post everywhere, make new friends, have no fear….
UNDERDOG IS HERE!! There are a multiplicity of alternatives, use them.
February 26th, 2007 at 7:08 am
Sadly Cliff, people don’t READ Ed! Maybe that has something to do with it. The minute a conservative Utahn sees his face and name, they don’t come back. Ed should start posting in multiplicities.
February 26th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Cav,
Thats very odd Tim had the first comment? Are you sure was on this post?
I only delete comments that refer to anal penetration and hate in the first person.
Help!
February 26th, 2007 at 9:08 am
Glenn, while you’re here, I want you to know that I had a dream about OneUtah the other nite. You know how we sometimes conclude posts with our moniker. You followed such an occurence, posting that to do so changed the whole thing into something different, something less of an ‘chat-out’ and more of an authored manifesto, and that that would be looked at through an entirely different legal prism.
Ha. I did say that I was a dreamer.
Confirm for me if you please. Multiplicities are fun. Right? What that means to me and to this spooky post is that, given the relatively few commenters from the outset, should two or even three of us be in actuality the same person, then, I may in fact be the sole commenter and… may in fact be only figment of my own dream or Cliffs technical abilities! Or not.
Point me to the deep end…I’m goin over.
February 26th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Cliff, sadly, Tim is as real as any other virtual poster to this wild, wacky and wonderful contraption of yours.
February 26th, 2007 at 9:23 am
Cliff– Note that the Utah Bloghive links to every post and comment here. That might be the source of the activity you’re seeing.
February 26th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Just flotsam in the torrent of water Caveat. It’s all a dream, and reality is just behind it. I am the egg man, I am the Walrus.
I have been some ? characters here, it does change the nature of the post. The whole thing has been a sociological experiment for me, and I know for certain, I am getting better at it. The adoption of a persona, especially a historical one is very liberating. It can also suggest available minds.
Then there is me, glenn. I am he, as you are he, as you are me, as we are all together…
Recently, I gave mommabird her new moniker, bossy. Why are cows bossy? Well they tell you when they need to eat, be milked, be cared for, be mated, be calved, this in turn tells you when to get up, what your day will be like, and when to go to bed. Bossy indeed, are dairy cows, if you have ever had to care for them.
I have verify Tim having been here, I followed his links.
February 26th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
He was the first post. There were 3 links. They were all about controversy.
February 28th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Yeah, I posted. And then it was gone. I assumed censorship, so I didn’t bother coming back. I jump from the KVNU For the People Blog.
February 28th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
I’ll try again???? Although off topic, I believe there is evidence of these wars being pre-planned (pre 9/11)
Afghansistan:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/preplanned.html
Iraq:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/10/oneill.bush/
Iran:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Iran_The_Road_to_Confrontation_0123.html
I hope these stick.
February 28th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Tim–
Afghanistan: I would not give the Bush administration that much credit for knowing what to do about Al Qaeda. Bin Laden declared war on the USA in 1998, and the Clinton administration took him seriously. The Bush administration did not, as Richard Clarke has testified.
Iraq: O’Neill is a good guy, but I’ve read his NSC meeting agenda that some say proves a plan to attack Iraq pre-9/11. It refers to ongoing efforts to contain Saddam, not to invasion plans. You can see the papers on Ron Suskind’s website.
Iran: Nobody likes Iran (Axis of Evil and all that), and the U.S. government has appeared to coddle MEK even though the State Department lists them as a terrorist group. But the article you link to is a stew of different half-baked plots that do not add up to a coherent plan of attack. The Pentagon knows darn well Iran can do more to us than we can do to them.
February 28th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
This is the only evidence of OBLs complicity in 9/11:
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/response/investigation/011213.binladen.tape.html
There are defintely other questions surrounding 9/11:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT8LSwBrk1s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lCbVeSD5ms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwOKm9-c2ls
There are alot of coincidences that happened on that day whether you want to brush it off or not. It just seems odd to me that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, disintigration of arch enemy Soviet Union, talk of dispersing the “peace dividend” within a decade we are faced with a new global threat complete with OBL toilet paper and dartboards.
February 28th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
How long does a comment await moderation?
February 28th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
It doesn’t, except mine, when I expose something uncomfortable, to certain people.
February 28th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Does it eventually go thru? I mean it is not porn or hate anything. Who is the moderator censor? I dont want to offend, I assumed this was an open exhange of ideas.