We saw the “finest troops in the world” surrender like little girls to the Iranians (losing one of the most important games of chicken in the WOT) and the Admirals patted them on the backs for it.

The British and the French deserve each other.

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Why is that Gregory?
Why has Britain disarmed?

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The British have been downsizing for awhile. One of the local jokes is the British Navy is now smaller than Norway’s. This is going on all over Europe and even Russia. The British have 30,000 deployed while the French have 36,000 deployed. Obviously they are just shadows of their former selves.

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The Brit soldiers had their beefs and problems way before Basra, Curt. Back in Aug 2007, I blogged on the British military being quite disgruntled that Brown was “withdrawing” them from various locales and stashing them all in the base outside Basra to await formal withdrawal. What I posted then was with the theme that the jihad movement would claim this a victory… as they did. (just as they did when Rudd followed suit with Aussie troops in Jan of this year)

Charged with the battle against the anti-free-Iraq forces (including all stripes of human scum… foreigners, Saddam loyalists, and general all purpose Al Qaeda’esqe philosophists) in the south, “British officers believe they are facing a “humiliating” retreat under fire to Kuwait or the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr.

It appears that while new Brit PM Gordon agrees with Bush in that no withdrawal should take place before the Sept Petraeus accounting, the British soldiers are being pulled back to a single base in Basra to wait out the order for withdrawal.

Good going, guys…. it appears the terrorists are using this as a sign of victory. And the British officers are not one bit happy about it.

“I regret to say that the Basra experience is set to become a major blunder in terms of military history,” said a senior officer. “The insurgents are calling the shots . . . and in a worst-case scenario will chase us out of southern Iraq.”

Not only are the officers dismayed at this prospect, Steven Biddle (Council to CFR and an advisor to the US commander in Iraq) says this will exploited by Iran and the Mahdi Army.

“It will be a hard withdrawal. They want the image of a British defeat . . . It will be ugly and embarrassing,” he said.

By October, Brown was saying by spring (and the time of the Basra offense by Maliki) there would only be 2500 British troops left to withdraw. At that time there were 5000 at the base, and 1000 to come home over Christmas. Brown’s withdrawal strategy, and the troops tasks while still here were in two phases (as outlined in a BBC article Sept 3rd, 2007)

The symbolic transfer to Iraqi forces of the province of Basra is set to be implemented in “two distinct stages”, said Mr Brown. Initially, British troops will train and oversee security forces in Iraq, obtaining routes by which supplies can be transported to the Iraqi/Iranian border. At the next level, “guided as always by advice from military commanders”, British troops in Iraq will possess a more restricted role, on which terms they will act with force only when called upon.

Obviously, if the agreement was with the Sadr forces in the area, they were not apt to call on the British to fight against the US and Maliki. Were the Brit soldiers trapped by PM Brown’s piss poor judgment? I’d say yes.

PM Brown (not to be confused with Defence Secy Browne) already had them on “inactive” duty in the area with merely training tasks. However per an Asian Times report in Mar 30th, when Sadr ordered the fighters off the Basra streets, there is a quote from British military spokesman Major Tom Holloway that they had no plans for troops entering the city. However the British were lending air support from Tuesday on… that’s just a few days after the inception.

So it seems the troops were not allowed to engage, however they did provide air cover.

I guess my point is…the Brit soldiers themselves were royally pissed about being sidelined by PM Brown 9 months earlier. They had already yielded the palace headquarters and had no structure in the city to do mentoring and training… and that seemed way okay with UK’s leadership. That they were constrained by some training agreement done under PM Brown’s cabinet put them in a difficult position as a military force.

So I really can’t blame the British troops here. But I can blame Gordon Brown, and his withdrawal plans…. evidently NOT “conditions based” or they could have lent a hand with ground troops.

But what a good example the Brits gave of negotiations thugs like Sadr and his mafia.

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While the Brits do have some fine troops, their leadership is sh*t.

Let the real men get in there and handle their beat.

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The British are some of the finest troops in the world, trained as well or better than any other nation’s, and their SAS taught the rest of the world how to do special ops. And the British people have proven time and again that they are not easily cowed.

Such a shame that all that skill and spirit is wasted when put under the command of such a worthless POS as Gordon Brown.

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