"The United Kingdom, Ma'am. Where England used to be."

One of the more plausible explanations I ever heard for why the US Army and US Marine Corps refused to consider allowing male soldiers and marines to carry an umbrella while in uniform is that, after Chamberlain and Munich and all that, the umbrella became a symbol of appeasement, and so anathema. (In fact, if you ask, the Army says "We will allow it when the Marines do" and the Marine Corps simply says "No.")

Anyway.

I simply did not want to believe this Reuters report when I first heard it.

Secret deal kept British troops out of Basra-report
Tue Aug 5, 2008 10:14am EDT

LONDON, Aug 5 (Reuters) - A British newspaper said on Tuesday British soldiers in Iraq had been prevented from coming to the aid of American and Iraqi allies during battles in Basra because of a deal with the Mehdi Army militia.

The Times said 4,000 British troops were forced to watch from the sidelines for almost a week in March while U.S. and Iraqi forces battled militants in the southern city because of the deal with the Shi'ite group led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Absurd. Ridiculous. The Brits cut a deal with the Mahdi Army and sat back while the Iraqi Army got a bloody nose, so US troops had to be redeployed from hundreds of miles away? And the Brits who were RIGHT F'IN THERE SAT ON THEIR ARSES AND WATCHED?

Alas, according to the Times of London and the BBC, the original British Army denials seem to have been, ah, less than factual.

Did Britain make Mehdi Army pact?

The British in Basra made a secret pact with the Mehdi Army which kept the military out of March's Iraqi-led offensive against the Shia militia for a week, according to the Times newspaper.

Meanwhile... Quoth the Independent:

Deal with Shia prisoner left Basra at mercy of gangs, colonel admits

By James Hanning
Sunday, 3 August 2008

British commanders in Iraq made an astonishing secret deal with a Shia prisoner to withdraw from Basra which left the city at the mercy of criminal gangs, one of the UK's senior military officers serving in Iraq has said.

Colonel Richard Iron said the "understandable but inexcusable" deal was one of several "terrible mistakes" the British have made during their occupation of the south of the country.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent on Sunday, Col Iron, who leads the teams mentoring the Iraqi army in central Basra, said the deal had included the release of 120 prisoners and had the effect of leaving the city in a lawless state.

"We have made some terrible mistakes in Iraq and it is only by talking about them that we will learn from them," said Col Iron, an expert on anti-insurgency. "Last autumn we made a mistake which was understandable but not excusable. A Shia prisoner, Ahmed al-Fartusi, said he could put a stop to the killings. We released 120 of their prisoners and withdrew out of town, but when we moved out, lawlessness took over. As 90 per cent of the attacks were against us, we thought if we moved out we would remove the source of the problem. But actually the Jaish al-Mahdi [the Mahdi army, known to British troops as the Jam] had been fighting us because we were the only obstacle to their total control."

The NY Times weighs in:

August 7, 2008
Britain Debates Army’s Delay at Basra
By JOHN F. BURNS
LONDON — More than four months after American troops were moved hundreds of miles across Iraq to help save a faltering Iraqi Army offensive against Shiite militias in the southern oil city of Basra, a political controversy has erupted here over Britain’s failure to promptly deploy its own troops, stationed only a few miles from the fighting.
...
The charges come as Prime Minister Gordon Brown faces a widening challenge to his leadership within the governing Labor Party, less than 14 months after he succeeded Tony Blair.

Eager to distance himself from a war that hastened Mr. Blair’s downfall, Mr. Brown pledged last fall to halve British troops in Iraq this year. He pulled the British garrison out of the heart of Basra in September, and began a drawdown that left the bulk of the remaining force of about 4,100 troops at a base at the Basra airport, about 10 miles from the city center. But the fighting in the city in March caused him to scrap plans to reduce the British force to 2,500 this year, and the latest government plan, outlined last month, is to aim for substantial cutbacks in 2009.

British military experts say Mr. Brown’s shifting signals have left the British force in Iraq in a no man’s land, still committed in significant numbers but having limited effect because of a determination to limit British casualties. This ambivalence, these experts say, contributed to the confusion in which British troops delayed for six days joining the battle over Basra in March.

The result, as one British military expert with extended experience in Iraq put it, was that British forces stood by for several days while American troops helped Iraqi units regain control of a city that Britain, responsible for the city for nearly five years, had effectively abandoned only six months before.
...
The Times of London, in a front-page article on Monday by the paper’s defense editor, Michael Evans, said the September deal had prevented British commanders from sending troops back into the city during the Iraqi-led offensive in March. The paper said an armored brigade and special forces units based at the airport “watched from the sidelines for six days” until Britain’s defense secretary, Desmond Browne, gave approval to join the fighting. The first American troops were committed to the battle within 48 hours.
...
American commanders have withheld public criticism of the British actions, and have said, when speaking not for publication, that they sympathize with the political problems Mr. Brown faces, because opinion polls indicate strong British opposition to the war within both his own party and the British electorate.

But the March events have sown ill feeling that has been rare between the militaries. One British expert on Iraq who has advised Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, described the chill he encountered among American officers and civilian officials in Baghdad after the Basra offensive. He asked that his name be withheld in exchange for candor in discussing a sensitive topic.

“Having a British passport was a bonus” for advisers visiting Saddam Hussein’s old Republican Palace, the American command center in Baghdad, at earlier stages of the war, he said. “But when I went back in March, it was a distinct disadvantage. There was a strong air of disillusionment.”

I'm guessing it'll be a while before we look to the Brits for "how to do it" tips. After all that "You should take a clue from what we learned in this, that, or the other cesspit", they sell out the Iraqis, and sit by while we bale them out. Literally, there were dozens of articles about how the US Military didn't understand the environment it was operating in in Iraq and they should take a clue from the Brits. Ireland, Cyprus, Aden, Malaya, and so one and so forth, "THEY know how to do it, THEY can show you how it's done!"

Disgusting. Disillusioning.

What would Churchill say? And Mountbatten? Allenby and Kitchener? Kipling must be spinning in his grave! The ghost of Wellington has been seen stalking Horse Guards, and he looks upset. As for Queen Victoria...!

By the way, a tip of the kevlar to Tam for the title of this piece, she used a similar one a year or so ago; I seriously thought I would never have cause to borrow it...