Cordesman’s description of British defeat in Iraq sparks controversy
September 22, 2007 11:59 am IraqThe Captain’s Journal » The British Flight from Basra, August 20, 2007
In Calamity in Basra and British Rules of Engagement, we pointed out that the British had essentially been militarily defeated in Basra.
Richard Beeston, diplomatic editor of The Times of London recently returned from a visit to Basra, his first since 2003. He says in 2003, British soldiers were on foot patrol, drove through town in unarmored vehicles and fished in the waters of the Shaat al Arab on their days off. He says the changes he saw four years later are enormous.
“Nowadays all troop movement in and out of the city are conducted at night by helicopter because it’s been deemed too dangerous to go on the road and its dangerous to fly choppers during the day,” he says.
Beeston says during his latest visit, he noticed a map of the city in one of the military briefing rooms. About half of the city was marked as no-go areas.
British headquarters are mortared and rocketed almost every night.
In this article we cited Anthony Cordesman (Center for Strategic and International Studies) who began openly discussing the situation by calling it a defeat in a white paper entitled The British Defeat in the South and the Uncertain Bush Strategy in Iraq. In response to Cordesman there is a row in Britain over the idea that there has been a defeat.