British Army Hands over control to …….. The US ??
Perhaps I’m reading this wrong. If our job in Iraq is done, and a famous victory has been won for the loss of only 179 British lives, why are we not handing over to the Iraqis? Hmmm St C is very confused.
I’ve served there 3 times now, and have a fair grasp of the situation. Basically, in 2003, the baddies were reeling from our invasion. Then they regained strength and influence over the 2004-2005 period, but we were still able to travel about the regions bringing a small level of security & protection to the locals. This was a small window of hope for the locals (and the last as it turned out). Then the British expanded the Afghanistan operation, and the Iraq mission was doomed to fail from that moment on as we are too small a military to do two medium scale operations simultaneously (despite the fact that we are mandated to). When I last went in 2007 we were hunkered down in our bases taking it like men. The locals knew we were on our way out, and were lobbing rockets at us with gay abandon.
Like the politicians the Mahdi army SCIRI et al knew that
a. Brown had no stomach for a fight.
b. There was an election looming in the UK
c. That Brown’s pet “Africa project” would need some resources at some point.
They knew that all these factors would lead to our withdrawal, and lo….. they were right.
They won, we lost. Nice. Sorry Mrs. Gentle.
I’ve served there 3 times now, and have a fair grasp of the situation. Basically, in 2003, the baddies were reeling from our invasion. Then they regained strength and influence over the 2004-2005 period, but we were still able to travel about the regions bringing a small level of security & protection to the locals. This was a small window of hope for the locals (and the last as it turned out). Then the British expanded the Afghanistan operation, and the Iraq mission was doomed to fail from that moment on as we are too small a military to do two medium scale operations simultaneously (despite the fact that we are mandated to). When I last went in 2007 we were hunkered down in our bases taking it like men. The locals knew we were on our way out, and were lobbing rockets at us with gay abandon.
Like the politicians the Mahdi army SCIRI et al knew that
a. Brown had no stomach for a fight.
b. There was an election looming in the UK
c. That Brown’s pet “Africa project” would need some resources at some point.
They knew that all these factors would lead to our withdrawal, and lo….. they were right.
They won, we lost. Nice. Sorry Mrs. Gentle.
St C
A winnable conflict lost due to the cowardice and stingeyness of Nu labaour. Illegally invade Iraq and sod the consequences to the locals.
Presumably our racist mindset socialists could not envisage ‘Johny Iraqui’ ( or WOG, as he used to be known ) having a sophisticated understanding of UK/Labour internal politics.
Isn’t the decision to hand over to the Americans a political one? I thought they were in ‘charge’ of the whole invasion.