Here is everything you wanted to know about the British jailbreak in Basra.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.
The worst democrat is better than the best republican.
Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.
I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.
Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.
Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.
When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson
Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.
Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.
When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.
People are weird.
If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.
America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.
Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.
Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.
You cannot love your country only when you win.
JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?
Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.
Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.
We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.
Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.
No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.
Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.
This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.
Blue Neponset
Streiff did a great job on that article. It is a good read.
Lines
I’d say that Juan Cole has a much better rundown of the events, without all the chest thumping and mouth breathing that the red-staters bring with them:
Juan Cole
srv
Well, except for what the Brits were doing in the first place.
And that the Brits success in the past doesn’t impress RedState, because we really are smarter than them in the first place.
Obviously, arresting al-Sadrs aides has been demonstrated not to go over very well in the past. But the Brits are much more likely to deal with the Iranian connections than we are. Best of luck to them.
Lines
Is this more evidence of a corner turning or of freedom being on the march?
Steve S
We see the light at the end of the tunnel!
Only problem is it’s the train bearing down on us.
Tim F
The RedState diary makes it sound like events are about to land on the British like a binging opera star. If Juan Cole’s assesment is worse than that I don’t even want to read it.
Darrell
That was a good read John. I wasn’t tuned in previously to the level of British arrogance though.. that was a bit of an eye opener. Let’s hope the British can handle Sadr themselves without too much intervention from those trigger happy un-nuanced Americans
stickler
As always, the careful reader should be very wary of anything that appears on RedState.
Streiff’s jingoism nearly obscures the really crappy situation in Basra. We’re on the verge of civil war in Iraq, our troop strength is too low to match total chaos, and Streiff spends half that post airing his schadenfreude about those pompous Brits getting a comeuppance?
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. If we lose control of the Shia south (perhaps unlikely — something I learned from Juan Cole, not Streiff), how do we resupply Baghdad? How do we get our troops out?
And what, seriously, does Streiff suggest we do about the obvious Iranian influence in the south? Invade Iran? Great strategery that would be.
Darrell
We need hizzoner Mayor Nagin to go straighten things out down there in Basra
Tim F
Insightful as always, sir Darrell.
Com Con
Sometimes I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off without their “assistance”. It seems like they just screw up every city they go into.
Bob
What about that story of fighters taking over neighborhoods in Baghdad in broad daylight? What about the billion bucks that were supposed to go to arming the Iraqis apparently swindled right out of the country?
We had liars and crooks in the White House that got us into the war, were aided by Iraqi liars and crooks, and now we have a country falling apart.
Forget Pottery Barn, let’s break for the door and hope no one tries to stop us on the way out.
Aaron
It’s nice to see that non-American troops act like cowboys when they need to.
p.lukasiak
its difficult to not see this as a potential watershed event in Iraq (and I’m frankly appalled at the relative dearth of coverage by the US corporate media.)
The critical point here is that British troops attacked an Iraqi police station in a manner that is going to have broad repercussions. One wonders what kind of information these British soldiers (actually spies with military cover) that the Brits were so afraid would be disclosed that they pulled this stupid stunt.
A couple of points of note — the Iraqis clearly have excellent intelligence on what the British are planning on doing. The two spies were not in the jail, but had been removed and handed over to “militia elements” —a fact the Brits found out only after they’d attacked the jail.
RedState doesn’t even bother to mention that the British attack on the jail lead to the reported escape of 150 people being held there. Whether these people were “common criminals” or “terrorists”, their release does not bode well for maintaining the security of Basra.
RedState goes to great lengths to try and blame Sadr and the Mahdi Army—then to attempt to connect them to Iran. But the claims of Sadr responsibility are belied by the fact that “Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia joined in the fighting late in the day, witnesses said.” And Redstate offers nothing more than the usual right-wing paranoia to connect this incident to Iran.
In other words, not only is the RedState piece not “everything you wanted to know“, it presents a wholly speculative interpretation of the events for which there is little or no factual basis. (Both SCIRI and DAWA are much more closely connected to Iran than is Sadr and his Mahdi army…..)
Vlad
Myself, I’m still curious/concerned about these reports of the British soldiers/spies having a car full of explosives.
Darrell
p.lukisiak: “RedState goes to great lengths to try and blame Sadr and the Mahdi Army—-then to attempt to connect them to Iran…And Redstate offers nothing more than the usual right-wing paranoia to connect this incident to Iran”
Red State: Sadr’s ties to Iran are “hugely overblown”. It is Juan Cole (left wing paranoia?) who is claiming Sadr is in the pocket of Iran
p.lukisiak: “But the claims of Sadr responsibility are belied by the fact that “Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia joined in the fighting late in the day, witnesses said.”
Verbatim quote from Red State article: “Witnesses said they saw Basra police exchanging fire with British forces. Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia joined in the fighting late in the day, witnesses said.”
p.lukisiak: “I’m frankly appalled at the relative dearth of coverage by the US corporate media.)”
Red State: linked to headline articles in the Washington Post and UK Guardian. From the “Latest Headlines” section of Fox news website, “Britain: Iraqi Police Placed Commandos in Danger”. Lead Headline on CNN World: “Iraq’s national security adviser has raised sharp questions about the way British forces handled the rescue of two of its undercover troops in the southeastern city of Basra”.. No doubt similar “dearths of coverage” at other major news ‘corporate media’ sites.
Thanks for the insightful, perceptive commentary lukisiak. Come again soon
Darrell
Why would you be concerned that British troops had explosives? That piece of information, in and of itself, even if true doesn’t mean a thing… that is, it doesn’t mean a thing unless you’re a drooling paranoid lunatic
Vlad
“Why would you be concerned that British troops had explosives?”
There are Chinese and Turkish wire reports saying that the British soldiers/spies in question were driving a civilian car full of explosives, and that the conflict escalated after they were caught planting a bomb.
We’re talking about sketchy foreign-language press reports that’ve been translated at least once, but even so, it’s clearly something that should be looked into to make sure nothing hinky’s going on.