Basra - Meet The New Boss

As foreshadowed in various places in recent weeks, Basra's army and police chiefs have been given the boot, presumably for the twin crimes of not being signed up to the crushing of the Sadrists and being too close to the British (although the official reason seems to be that they're being blamed for the failure of Maliki's attempts to crush the Sadrists just after Dick Cheney dropped in for tea).  Since we handed the place over to them with fine expressions of goodwill, and after General Mohan in particular had brokered a peace deal where the British got out of town, released prisoners and, in return, the Sadrists stopped bombing them, this is another whack in the face for the whole British approach to Southern Iraq.  Think Mr. Barrowclough being replaced by MacKay and you'll get the picture ('There's going to be a new regime here, based not on lenience and laxity but on discipline, hard work and blind, unquestioning obedience. Feet will not touch the floor. Lives will be made a misery').

Still, we've got 4000 troops out there still with their thumbs up their arses, now apparently out of favour with the Sadrists, the Green Zone Government and the US, with new and doubtless unfriendly faces being parachuted in to turn policy around to fit the current 'Sadrists = Iranians = targets' framing, which we'll doubtless be invited to join in with, one suspects reluctantly.  The big question is 'what's the bloody point?'.