Those Superior British

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com As I have written many times, engaging with the militias was the biggest mistake the British made. It legitimized people like Sayed Youssif and Moqtada al-Sadr. The US has made its share of mistakes as well, but we have always insisted that the only use of force for security had to come from the Iraqi government through the national forces we train, not by attempting to blend militias into a police force. The militias should have been fought and stamped out, as we are trying to do it Baghdad. Now what we have is all of the makings of a real civil war of the kind we see in Gaza now. We will have state-armed groups organizing into armies that will control territories and conduct operations against each other as soon as the British leave. With Teheran pulling the strings, the Shi'ite south could erupt into a new kind of internecine war that could undermine the Shi'ites in the national government.