President Shrub declared the battle in Basra last week a "defining moment".
It was, but not for any of the reasons George W put forward.
The NY Times reports:
"More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.
The desertions in the heat of a major battle cast fresh doubt on the effectiveness of the American-trained Iraqi security forces. The White House has conditioned further withdrawals of American troops on the readiness of the Iraqi military and police.
The crisis created by the desertions and other problems with the Basra operation was serious enough that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki hastily began funneling some 10,000 recruits from local Shiite tribes into his armed forces. That move has already generated anger among Sunni tribesmen whom Mr. Maliki has been much less eager to recruit despite their cooperation with the government in its fight against Sunni insurgents and criminal gangs.
A British military official said that Mr. Maliki had brought 6,600 reinforcements to Basra to join the 30,000 security personnel already stationed there, and a senior American military official said that he understood that 1,000 to 1,500 Iraqi forces had deserted or underperformed. That would represent a little over 4 percent of the total."
AlterNet also "covers" the same subject:
"Truth is, if any group comes out of this looking good, militarily or morally, it's the Mahdi Army and their leader, the fat man himself, "Mookie" as they call him on Free Republic: Moqtada al-Sadr. His people aren't saints; they have their own kidnapping/murder squads, a lot of them connected with the Health Ministry, which is a Sadr stronghold. But the Sadrists have consistently stuck with the urban poor, tried to form alliances with the Sunni (didn't work) and played a cool, calm, long-term game -- just like Hezbollah in Lebanon. In fact, the quickest way to understand Sadr is to think of Hezbollah's leader, Nasrullah. Hezbollah built its power by providing social services to the poorest Lebanese Shi'ites, and the Mahdi Army works the same way. Of course you could argue that they both got the idea from the old master, Mao himself, who consistently downplayed the macho combat stuff and insisted that the guerrillas should work with the civilians, doing the dull peacetime stuff like public health, building projects, food distribution."
It was, but not for any of the reasons George W put forward.
The NY Times reports:
"More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.
The desertions in the heat of a major battle cast fresh doubt on the effectiveness of the American-trained Iraqi security forces. The White House has conditioned further withdrawals of American troops on the readiness of the Iraqi military and police.
The crisis created by the desertions and other problems with the Basra operation was serious enough that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki hastily began funneling some 10,000 recruits from local Shiite tribes into his armed forces. That move has already generated anger among Sunni tribesmen whom Mr. Maliki has been much less eager to recruit despite their cooperation with the government in its fight against Sunni insurgents and criminal gangs.
A British military official said that Mr. Maliki had brought 6,600 reinforcements to Basra to join the 30,000 security personnel already stationed there, and a senior American military official said that he understood that 1,000 to 1,500 Iraqi forces had deserted or underperformed. That would represent a little over 4 percent of the total."
AlterNet also "covers" the same subject:
"Truth is, if any group comes out of this looking good, militarily or morally, it's the Mahdi Army and their leader, the fat man himself, "Mookie" as they call him on Free Republic: Moqtada al-Sadr. His people aren't saints; they have their own kidnapping/murder squads, a lot of them connected with the Health Ministry, which is a Sadr stronghold. But the Sadrists have consistently stuck with the urban poor, tried to form alliances with the Sunni (didn't work) and played a cool, calm, long-term game -- just like Hezbollah in Lebanon. In fact, the quickest way to understand Sadr is to think of Hezbollah's leader, Nasrullah. Hezbollah built its power by providing social services to the poorest Lebanese Shi'ites, and the Mahdi Army works the same way. Of course you could argue that they both got the idea from the old master, Mao himself, who consistently downplayed the macho combat stuff and insisted that the guerrillas should work with the civilians, doing the dull peacetime stuff like public health, building projects, food distribution."
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