On Wed, 22 Aug 2007, The Financial Times was quoted explaining:
> How the British army lost Basra
> By Stephen Fidler
This is a very good article, IMHO. But the headline is a little misleading, since two of the three big explanations -- the lack of reconstruction funds and the lack of international political backing -- were mostly the US's fault. And even the third -- the astonishingly quick drawdown of 80% of the British force -- was largely beyond British control. As the article points out, Britain only has a total army of 100,000. They couldn't keep half their men in combat long-term even if they had no other commitments. They were given an assignment too big for them because we went in with too few troops. And they banked on immediate success because that sort of bubble self-delusion was the only kind of reasoning that could convince them to go in in the first place.
Furthermore, all this counterfactual military success -- establishing security and passing it on to a capable and legitimate Iraqi national force -- pressupposes a doable national political solution that met with US approval, which was never in the cards in the first place.
So the "Brits" basically lost Basra when they were stupid enough to join us.
Michael