Airstrip One

Brits do it better

At least according to Salam Pax who reports from Basra on the way in which the occupation forces deal with potential feuds, none of this trying to bring civilisation rubbish (to Mesopotamia?). Talking of Salam Pax, he has a couple of points on the death of the ugly brothers, which he thinks was totally mishandled "they should have been humiliated in public, images of them handcuffed and being pushed around." He even seems to like Robert Fisk, although whether he will be now allowed back on to blogspot for that crime against the Blog consciousness I don't know.

Samizdata also have some first hand reportage (no, not more pictures of Bond Street) from Basra. Everyone's going. It seems that their soldier thinks that we're not doing that well in that we're helping to set up ethnic mafias. Plus ca change. Of course some anti-war types will say that this is a bad consequence of the war. They seem to forget that Iraq was a bit of a Sunni and Tikriti mafia. It's more a bad consequence of living in the Middle East. No imperial power is going to make it any worse, or any better.