Remember the British were supposed to have control of Basra? Not anymore.

[bigtree]

Daily attacks and abuse - the new reality for British troops

Correspondent goes on patrol with members of Delta company in Basra, dodging the taunts and the missiles

http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,306236,00.jpg

The Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2211182,00.html

{snips}

June 05, 2006 -- Increasingly, a city that was once the success story of post-Saddam Iraq resembles war-torn Baghdad. On Saturday a suicide car bomb tore apart a packed street market, killing 28 people. The attack, one of the worst yet in Iraq’s second city, was seen by many as a pointed message from Basra’s Shia groups to Nuri Maliki, Iraq’s Prime Minister, who last week declared a state of emergency.

It is a far cry from the halcyon days after the invasion, when British forces could patrol without helmets or any ostentatious display of weapons. Now Basra is threatened by gang wars among its Shia factions and attacks on the city’s dwindling Sunni community. Saturday’s suicide bomb “was probably one of the groups here struggling for power, struggling for the ascendancy over control of Basra province. It was probably trying to send a message to the Prime Minister to basically keep your nose out,” said Major Rob Yuill, who trains Basra’s police.

“It’s . . . drifting toward a situation like Bosnia,” he went on, comparing the targeting of Basra’s Sunni minority to the fierce ethnic conflict of the Balkans in the early 1990s. “We’re stuck in the middle. We’re trying to assist the Iraqi police and Army, but we get caught up in it,” said Sergeant Lans Downe, 25, commenting on life on the frontline of Basra’s social meltdown. Nine British soldier were killed in 50 attacks in May.

Every time the men of Sergeant Downe’s Delta company go out in their Warrior armoured personnel carriers, they are tailed by cars or watch men on cell phones marking their movements and passing the information to someone farther down the road.

“You are constantly being watched. They put a name on where you are and what you are doing,” said Sergeant Downe, from Bristol. “Every time you are out (the danger) is a constant. One moment civilians will ask you for water. The next they bomb you . . . It’s worse than it was in Northern Ireland.”

more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2211182,00.html

[Junkdrawer]

1. Mission Accomplished - Really...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=92532&mesg_id=92532

[sweetheart]

2. Wow, war crimes

Wow. I'm disgusted and upset, how dare they.

[Junkdrawer]

3. Consider:

80% of Iraqis want us (and the British) gone.
~50% believe that killing US/British troops is justified in this regard

We are building 14 PERMANENT military base in Iraq to the tune of Billions of dollars.

Now, how else do we stay in Iraq? :shrug:

[acmavm]

4. Sorry, but Condi said that they want us there. I imagine that

welcome would include the Brits too, wouldn' you?

:sarcasm: