Iraq: A sovereign nation? (pics)

[sabra]

Violent scenes unfolded in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Monday, after Iraqi police arrested two British soldiers.



The British troops are reported to have exchanged gunfire with Iraqi police after failing to stop at a checkpoint.



British troops were sent to the police station where the two men, reportedly working under cover, were held.



Iraqi protesters encircled British armoured vehicles and attacked them with stones and petrol bombs.



A number of civilians were reported killed and injured in the demonstrations.



A British armoured vehicle then crashed through the walls of the police station in search of the two British soldiers, but the men had been handed over to local militia. They were later rescued from a house in Basra.

* image source BBC

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/BAK046777.htm


The larger context is the very poor situation in Basra, where the British are not really in control of things," Toby Dodge, an Iraq analyst at Queen Mary College, University of London, said in reaction to Monday's military operation.

"A myth had been perpetrated that the Brits are great and everything's okay in Basra. But the softly-softly approach was not nation-building."

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ALI043847.htm

"It is a very unfortunate development that the British forces should try to release their forces the way it happened," Haider al-Ebadi, an adviser to Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, told a news conference in Baghdad.

...

Residents of Basra, in a region with Iraq's biggest oil reserves, called on British troops to leave the country.

"It is unappropriate for any Iraqi to be insulted by a British or an American or any other occupier, we reject the occupying forces," said Abbas Jassim.

"The British violated the government, police and the sons of this country, which we all reject."

[BlueJac]

1. Progress is being made.....

Democracy is on the march!


:sarcasm::sarcasm::sarcasm::sarcasm::sarcasm::sarcasm::sarcasm:

[Tight_rope]

2. Sovereignity?...Bush doesn't know what that means...

Just ask the Native Americans.

[JohnyCanuck]

3. Too bad Basra is turning into another Charlie Foxtrot,

but Tony Poodle apparently get his rocks off by ordering troops into battle, so no doubt another Prime Ministerial orgasm will be deemed well worth some more spilled blood and guts.

Ex-No 10 spin doctor Lance Price has enraged Mr Blair by publishing the first-ever first-hand account of the inner workings of New Labour.

<snip>

But there are further claims which Price was told to remove from the book after intervention by the Government and which we can now reveal, including:

* That Blair appeared privately to "relish" sending British troops to war in Iraq as his "first blooding", while publicly claiming he did it "with a heavy heart".
* That the Government promised media mogul Rupert Murdoch it would not change its policy on Europe without telling him first.
* That the Prime Minister repeatedly bawled out in rage 'f****** Welsh' when an election in the principality was going against Labour.

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=362725&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=&ct=5