Thersites Writes

Here's another article on the murder of Steven Vincent. It not only sums up the problems in Basra, but also the man himself. I shan't say anynore as the article does the job well - and slags off the passive British for good measure too.

That's not to say I'm an out-and-out critic of the British methods in Iraq. There is a lot to be said about the 'softly-softly' pproach: nice occupiers tend to do better in keeping the peace than nasty occupiers, as we can see with the 'hammer-and-tongs' methods employed by a lot of US troops and the ensuing PR disasters and bad blood. (US Special Forces seem so much more diplomatic... But do good manners really have to the reserve of elite troops?)

But 'softly-softly' shouldn't mean supine. The rise of religious fundamentalismn in Basra, and the apparent corruption of the police and local government there, needs to be stopped. Appeasement never works.

A selection of posts from the blog of Steven Vincent, the journalist who was murdered in Basra last week. As the posts show, at times he was too keen to settle scores with his ideological bugbears back home in the States. Nevertheless, you can't fault his eye for detail, his cogent arguments and the grim sense that he was accurately reporting a disaster as it was happening. Basra will come back to haunt us unless the militants there are put in their place.

Meanhile, no news yet from the British Fprces HQ in Basra. I doubt there will, not when propaganda like this and this was getting published a day before Vincent's death. Never let Brute Reality get in the way of the feelgood factor, right?

...And let the religious loonies take over. The author was murdered a few days later, perhaps by the same forces that are taking control of Basra and ho no doubt are getting support and orders from Iran. Why isn't the British government looking into this?