Basra Update
What's wrong with this picture?
This reminds me of the infamous Hainan Island EP-3 Aries incident back in 2001. My primary military instructor at the time was the executive officer of our unit, who I've referred to on here as Colonel Spook. He emphasized checking the news daily and having a good working knowledge of current events. When that incident was going on, he incorporated some of the political cartoons pertaining to the standoff into his Power Point presentations. One of them, which I've tried repeatedly to find without success, had an "apology" written in "Chinese". When you rotated it ninety degrees, it said "GO FUCK YOUR SELF".
I think that British political cartoons should incorporate the same strategy.
Let's be honest, here. The police are under the authority of the regional governor, this Mohammed al-Waili character. The police screwed the pooch on this one, and British military forces had reason to believe that their men were in immediate and severe danger, so they acted. The Basra governor should be apologizing... Or he should be replaced by the Iraqi authorities.
Obviously, this is a sensitive incident, and it needs to be handled with kid gloves. The Iraqis and the Brits need to reach a point where they can cooperate again, because if they can't get past this incident, the Iraqi police aren't going to get shaped up, and the coalition will be there even longer. Even so, the Basra governor is completely out of line here; this is nothing but showboating on his part.
Should the Brits have stormed the prison? Maybe, maybe not; I can't guarantee that I wouldn't have done the same thing if two of my men had been detained unreasonably by rogue Iraqi police. However, the fact remains that the entire incident wasn't caused by British troops, it was caused by unsavory elements within the Iraqi police forces. The solution is to cooperate, root out these unsavory elements, and establish a legitimate security force so that an incident like this doesn't happen again; in fact, it shouldn't have happened in the first place.
The authorities in Basra will not co-operate with British troops until they get an apology for a raid to free two UK soldiers, its governor has said.
Mohammed al-Waili has also demanded compensation for damage caused by the raid on Monday and a "guarantee that it does not happen again".
Britain has defended its action, saying the soldiers were handed to militiamen by rogue elements in the police.
British troops have reduced their presence on the Iraqi city's streets.
For the second consecutive day British forces were not seen accompanying Iraqi police on patrols around the city, as they routinely had in the past.
This reminds me of the infamous Hainan Island EP-3 Aries incident back in 2001. My primary military instructor at the time was the executive officer of our unit, who I've referred to on here as Colonel Spook. He emphasized checking the news daily and having a good working knowledge of current events. When that incident was going on, he incorporated some of the political cartoons pertaining to the standoff into his Power Point presentations. One of them, which I've tried repeatedly to find without success, had an "apology" written in "Chinese". When you rotated it ninety degrees, it said "GO FUCK YOUR SELF".
I think that British political cartoons should incorporate the same strategy.
Let's be honest, here. The police are under the authority of the regional governor, this Mohammed al-Waili character. The police screwed the pooch on this one, and British military forces had reason to believe that their men were in immediate and severe danger, so they acted. The Basra governor should be apologizing... Or he should be replaced by the Iraqi authorities.
Obviously, this is a sensitive incident, and it needs to be handled with kid gloves. The Iraqis and the Brits need to reach a point where they can cooperate again, because if they can't get past this incident, the Iraqi police aren't going to get shaped up, and the coalition will be there even longer. Even so, the Basra governor is completely out of line here; this is nothing but showboating on his part.
Should the Brits have stormed the prison? Maybe, maybe not; I can't guarantee that I wouldn't have done the same thing if two of my men had been detained unreasonably by rogue Iraqi police. However, the fact remains that the entire incident wasn't caused by British troops, it was caused by unsavory elements within the Iraqi police forces. The solution is to cooperate, root out these unsavory elements, and establish a legitimate security force so that an incident like this doesn't happen again; in fact, it shouldn't have happened in the first place.
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