Rule Britannia

Let me share a little secret with the Iraqi people and their government: When you have about 175,000 foreign troops on your soil you are not a sovereign nation. In fact, it would be a surprise if President Jalal Talabani were allowed to go to the bathroom without permission from US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. However, George Bush and Tony Blair, in their never-ending attempt at political correctness, have allowed Iraq to adopt an Islamic Constitution and reenter the world stage while both our nation’s soldiers are being murdered, daily, by the Iraqi people.

The Iraqi police in Basra seem to be buying into the delusion that Iraq is a sovereign nation. After being trained by American and British coalition forces, they have exerted their imagined police power by arresting, or should I say capturing, two British Soldiers. The Basra Police mustn’t have noticed that their own citizens have turned the city into a shooting gallery or that Iraqi citizens are planting roadside bombs under their watchful eyes. Not to worry about this type of crime when you can kidnap a couple of Brits who, according to Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s spokesman Haydar al-Abadi, were reportedly “arrested for wearing civilian clothes and behaving suspiciously.” A day earlier, the Basra Police lied and claimed that the British Soldiers had shot a local police officer. Personally, I think that is what they should have done when these Iraqi half-wits moved to arrest our boys for their fashion sense.

In the typical manner of British civility, Blair’s government negotiated with the Basra Police and an Iraqi Judge for the release of the kidnapped soldiers, while the two Brits molted in an Iraqi jail cell. In reality, the British government was negotiating with a police force made up almost entirely of terrorists. Reportedly, sixty percent of the police force in Basra is made up of Shiite militiamen from one of three groups: the Mahdi Army; the Badr Brigade, an armed wing of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq; or Hezbollah in Iraq, a small group based in the southern marshlands. Even Iraqi National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie told the BBC that, “Iraqi security forces in general, police in particular, in many parts of Iraq, I have to admit, have been penetrated by some of the insurgents, some of the terrorists as well.”

While Her Majesty’s government negotiated, about 500 gun-waving Iraqi police officers and civilians took to the street to protest what they claimed was “British aggression”, all the while demanding that the soldiers be tried as terrorists for their choice of clothing. When the British learned that Basra’s terrorist police may have moved the prisoners, action was swift.

Monday night the British, who have 8,500 troops stationed in Basra, stormed the police station in an attempt to rescue the kidnapped soldiers. The rescuers worst fears were realized when they learned that the prisoners had been moved and turned over to a terrorist group known as the al-Mahdi Army; a militia controlled by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. British troops quickly learned the location of the kidnapped soldiers and stormed a nearby private home to free them. Five Iraqi terrorists were killed during the rescue, setting off protests by our Iraqi “friends”.

The British Government should be lauded for its effective handling of this situation. However, the troops stationed in Basra will now have to deal will a popular uprising fueled by Basra’s government, that had already voted unanimously to stop dealing with British forces working in the city. Today, one can only hope that the English will deal with any potential rebellion in Basra in the same fashion that they did at the Battle of Gingindlovu, where outnumbered British forces defeated 11,000 Zulus.

It should never be forgotten that, despite our respective politicians’ rhetoric, the Iraqi people are not our friends. We are still at war with Iraq and will be for years. As an American, I am proud that, other than Israel, the only nation on this planet we can truly call our friend is the United Kingdom. Let me be the first to say: Rule Britannia and long live the Queen.

Letters to the editor of The Houston Home Journal may be e-mailed to: rgambill@evansnewspapers.com (Please Include Your Name and Location)

William John Hagan can be contacted directly by e-mail at:William_Hagan@excite.com

Who’s Killing Our Boys
By
William John Hagan
Houston Home Journal
08/10/2005

One third of the 1,402 American Soldiers killed by hostile fire have died as a result of “roadside bombs” or what the US military, euphemistically, refers to as Improvised Explosive Devices (IED). While, at the beginning of the American Occupation of Iraq, the term improvised appeared to describe these devices, this is no longer the case. In the past few months, it has become clear that these IEDs are no longer the makeshift bombs of the early insurgency, but sophisticated factory-manufactured weapons from a deadly source.

On July 24th, one of these new generation IEDs was used to kill four soldiers with the Georgia National Guard's 48th Brigade Combat Team. The bomb contained 600 pounds of explosives buried beneath a roadside in South Baghdad. An additional four soldiers were killed, six days later, by a similar 500 pound bomb that was buried under a Baghdad Street. According to Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, Commander of the Georgia Brigade, his men had discovered about a dozen other bombs in the area. It is clear that these attacks took place with obvious complicity of the residents of South Baghdad. In the densely populated confines of South Baghdad, it would be impossible to bury dozens of half ton explosives under public roads without locals witnessing the events. We’re taking about major road work. The transgressions of these internal assaults become compounded when one realizes that we are not just fighting an internal insurgency but a well-financed foreign campaign to keep Iraq in tatters.

The IEDs, now being used in Iraq, are being supplied by Iran. As recently as last week, a large shipment of IEDs were captured as they entered Iraq from Iran. In direct response, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave a glaring critique about Tehran’s “meddling” in Iraqi affairs.

There are two reasons why Iran wants to keep the Untied States bogged down in Iraq: A successful Iraqi insurgency increases the chance that the United States will be forced into a Vietnam-like withdrawal from Iraq. Such a scenario would leave the Iranian government in a good position to bring Iraq’s Shiite majority into its sphere of influence. More importantly, the success of the insurgency decreases the likelihood that the United States will have the manpower left to expand the War on Terror to Iran.

If the United States plans to leave a democratic Iraq in its wake; then, it is left with no choice but to deal militarily with the Iranian theocracy that is threatening mid-East stability. According to a May 15th article in the Washington Post, the military has a classified contingency plan, known as COMPLAN 8022-22. This strategy is designed to strike Iran in response to "imminent" threats, using both conventional and possibly nuclear weapons against Iranian targets, without involving ground forces in the initial stages. This operation would be similar in nature to President Clinton’s war against Serbia. A source with close ties to the NSA and the former Carter administration also confirmed for me that in June 2004 the United States began preparations for such an attack on Iran with war exercises that included the majority of the US Carrier Fleet and the 6th Marine Expeditionary Unit. Publicly, the operation was know as Summer Pulse’04, which the Navy described as preparation for “a national emergency or crisis”. It seems that Iran’s current meddling in Iraqi affairs may leave the Bush administration with no choice but to take military action against Iran. The Iran Government should be well advised to consider this before assisting in the murder of any future US troops in Iraq.

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