Who Won In Basra?

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
FNC
April 7, 2008
Special Report With Brit Hume (FNC), 6:00 PM
BRIT HUME: Last week, commentators of many stripes were saying that Shiite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr had come out ahead in the fighting between his forces and the Iraqi military in Basra and elsewhere. Now, though it seems a re-appraisal is occurring, with Sadr not acting at all like a man who had just had a big political win.
National security correspondent Jennifer Griffin reports.
JENNIFER GRIFFIN: On March 25th, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered 15,000 troops south to Basra. This weekend, more Iraqi forces were sent into Sadr City in Baghdad. The reaction from most media to the Basra operation was that Maliki lost credibility because the Iraqi army performed poorly against the Shiite militias.
One thousand Iraqi soldiers were reported to have fled – most it turned out, were police; few reported 14,000 Iraqi troops stayed and fought. They now control the all-important Basra ports where Iraqi sizable oil revenues pass. Many pundits pronounced the Shiite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr the winner. But was he?
LT. COL. RALPH PETERS [U.S. Army (Ret.)]: No, there’s no sign whatsoever that Sadr won. He asked for a ceasefire. Now, you don’t do that when you’re winning. But the Iranians pressed him to do it because they don’t want their militias, the militias they’re backing, to be destroyed.
GRIFFIN: Today, Sadr said he would consider disbanding his Mahdi militia after Maliki threatened to stop them from participating in upcoming elections. Maliki, not Sadr, appeared to have the upper hand in an interview he gave to CNN just prior to Gen. Petraeus’ Capitol Hill testimony.
IRAQI PRIME MINISTER NOURI AL-MALIKI: We have opened the door for confrontation, a real confrontation with these gangs and we will not stop until we have full control of these areas. Politically we have managed to gather a wide national front to politically confront these issues.
GRIFFIN: Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, a former intelligence officer, says the Iraqis are doing things right now they never could have done a year ago.
PETERS: The Iraqi government are much maligned and often incompetent in the past, nonetheless has found the determination, the strength of will to go after the militias, the gangs, and above all the Mahdi Army and that is bad news for Sadr, and Sadr is looking for a way out.
GRIFFIN: Still other myths have emerged about the Basra operation. Myth number one: The U.S. was caught off guard. Actually, U.S. military commanders say they were given 36 hours advanced notice and had been negotiating with Maliki to carry out this operation for months.
Myth number two: The Iranians negotiated a ceasefire between Sadr with Maliki’s representatives, who met Sadr in Iraq. But there were never any confirmed reports that Maliki sent his representatives to Iran to meet Sadr. The reports came from Maliki’s opponents, but no senior government officials ever confirmed the meeting. No U.S. troops were killed in the Basra fighting. They remained out of sight and performed the over-watch and supporting role that so many war critics have been demanding.
Gen. Petraeus is likely to highlight the positive decision made by Prime Minister Maliki to go after the Shia militias. He will also urge a pause in further troop withdrawals after July, given the tenuous nature of stability in Iraq right now.
At the Pentagon, Jennifer Griffin, Fox News.
 
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