corrente

First Spain, now the Brits?

Puts a different complexion on Blair's love fest with aWol in Hellmouth, TX, what?

[Brigadier General Nick] Carter, of the 20 Armoured Brigade, who has been in Iraq for four months, said British forces would stay in Basra with the consent of local Shia leaders, or not at all.

Last month, 14 British soldiers were injured in Basra, at least three seriously, when they came under attack from demonstrators armed with petrol bombs, rocks and a grenade.

"A crowd of 150,000 people at the gates of this barracks would be the end of this, as far as I'm concerned," Brig Carter said. "There would be absolutely nothing I could do about that."
(via Independent)

Here in the States, we'd call that a trial balloon....

During an interview in Basra last week Brig Carter acknowledged that the Coalition's presence in southern Iraq was entirely dependent on the goodwill of the local Shia Muslim leader, Sayid Ali al-Safi al-Musawi. He represents Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq's leading Shia cleric. "The moment that Sayid Ali says, 'We don't want the Coalition here', we might as well go home," Brig Carter said.

Sistani, Sistani I love you Sistani,
You're always a day away...

So, Sistani has the Brits by the balls, too. So now it's even easier for him; first he squeezes the balls of Bush's poodle, Blair, and then, only if necessary, does he give Bush the treatment. Divide and conquer...

One of the amazing things about Bush's Iraq adventure is how what looked like overheated rhetoric from "unsourced ranters" in the blogosphere—heck, I thought it was overheated myself!—has time and again turned out to be a sober description of the reality Bush created.

Remember "Coalition of the Billing"? With Spain out, if the Brits go ... Well, that will leave only the (PCA/RNC)-funded mercenaries, won't it? They would then move up from being the third largest foreign presence to the second.

Eesh.