It's started

Already, the media is second-guessing the Iraq inquiry, with The Times leading the fray.

Of four questions posed by defence editor Michael Evans, however, only one relates to the occupation, confirming that the media is going to be obsessed with the run-up to the war, rather than the occupation. And even then, the single question directed at the occupation is so limited in scope that it indicates nothing more than the narrowness of the perspective. Thus does Evans ask:

Why was the size of the British force in Iraq progressively reduced even though the troops there were coming under daily attack by an increasingly well-armed and well-trained extremist militia?

During 2005, 2006 and 2007 there were never enough troops to protect the Iraqi citizens living in Basra, and control of the city began to fall into the hands of the Iranian-backed Shia hardliners. By September 2007, the 500 remaining troops based inside the city were under such pressure that there was little alternative but to withdraw them to the relative safety of the airbase northwest of the city, leaving Basra to the mercy of the extremists.

What debate was going on in Whitehall at this time? Who, if anyone, was arguing that more, not fewer, troops were needed to safeguard the lives of Iraqis living in Basra, let alone the British soldiers themselves? Was anyone warning that the withdrawal of the last troops inside Basra might lead to a take-over by the Shia extremists and that this would be interpreted — by the Americans and by historians — as a defeatist move by the British, one which did no favours for the reputation of the British Army?

The questions, superficially, look sound enough, but they miss the point. In common with most of his contemporaries, Evans focuses unduly on Basra. Yet, any careful analysis of the campaign will suggest that the rot started not in Basra but with the desertion of al Amarah in August 2006. Arguably, had the base at Abu Naji been held, and the training and support of the 12th Division continued, Iraqi forces backed by the British could eventually have recovered the city.

For the British to have retained their foothold in the Abu Naji, however, two things were needed: the Army had to restore tactical mobility and then had to acquire the capability to deal with the indirect fire which was making that base untenable. Both were essentially equipment issues, reflecting procurement failures and High Command decisions rather than a lack of troops.

In this context, it is germane to note that, when the Iraqi Army subsequently recovered al Amarah in the operation called "promise of peace", starting in May 2008, it was heavily supported by US troops, without which the operation would not have been possible. The total commitment of US troops to Maysan province, however, never exceeded 2,500 – a fraction of the number of troops available to the British.

This demonstrates that troop numbers, although an issue in the early stages of the occupation, was not the decisive factor. What mattered was the equipment, the tactics and the timing, particularly in respect of the political developments which enabled prime minister Maliki to take on the Mahdi Army and defeat it.

You can, of course read the full story in Ministry of Defeat, without waiting for the outcome of the inquiry. This is the book that the media and the military are determined to bury.

Our publicist, appointed by the publisher and highly experienced in marketing books, has never before known such resistance to a book. And before committing his time an effort to the book, he made his own enquiries, sending copies to "senior ministry persons" for comment.

One told us that the book should be "compulsory reading" for all students at Sandhurst. They should be invited to state their reasons why the book was wrong, our source said, but they would find it very difficult to do. Most Army officers, he said, would agree in private with the thesis of the book, but none would admit it publicly. "There is a major cover-up going on," he added.

Although some details may be wrong, the book tells the substantive and hitherto untold story of the Iraqi occupation. That it should be told by an outsider is intolerable to the media, which comprehensively called it wrong, just as Evans is doing now. The inquiry is faced with a difficult job as there are many vested interests keen to see it get the wrong answers.

It will be interesting to see whether they prevail.

COMMENT THREAD

Lost before it started – Part 7

In this final part, where we have explored the reasons for the British failure in Iraq, we turn the tables and speculate on whether they, despite the handicaps, could have succeeded. Reviewing what actually did happen after the British had retreated to their final base at Basra airport, we believe they could.

That is the ultimate tragedy. Instead of attracting the contempt of the Iraqis and the disdain of the Americans – who will never really trust us again – we could truly have walked out of Iraq with our heads held high, without having to pretend we had achieved success. It was that close – and that far.

Could it have been different?

At the start of the occupation in May 2003, the decision to cut back troops levels to 11,000 was disastrous, but not fatal. However, with that, Blair's decision to throw his lot in with the Europeans - compensating, many believe, for his failure to deliver the UK into the embrace of the single currency - seriously hampered the ability of the Army to deal with the insurgency.

And, having pledged the nation's armed forces to the Europeans and Iraq, he offered troops to reinforce the campaign in Afghanistan. That made a tight situation worse.

Even then, defeat was not inevitable. Looking at the campaign in the round, the single most egregious failure was the decision to abandon al Amarah, walking out on a half-trained and poorly equipped 10th Division. That was a major strategic error. Yet that decision itself was not initiated by the politicians but by the military.

Strangely, at the time, there had been very little discussion or debate. Equally, there was virtually no evaluation of the strategic consequences. Then, the "retreat" was an administrative decision. The "road map" had already been revealed by Gen Houghton in March, over three months earlier.

But "repositioning" in order to concentrate on Basra was wrong. Al Amarah was the Mahdi Army's major armoury and it would have made more strategic sense to have cut off the supply of arms at source before dealing with the problem of Basra. It was a "downstream" solution, akin to mopping up a floor after the bath had flooded, without first turning off the taps.

Dealing with the indirect fire

Of course, to have maintained forces at Abu Naji would have required dealing with the indirect fire – one of the main reasons why the base was vacated. Here, the main problems were the lack of suitable equipment, in particular UAVs, helicopters and MRAPs, plus C-RAM for base defence. All three could have been provided. Most were eventually provided, but too late. This was not a problem of money. It was about timing – and commitment.

Even in 2006, at a very late hour, had Gen Dannatt been able to break free of the Army’s obsession with FRES, he could have negotiated a major MRAP package. In exchange for scrapping FRES or putting it on the back-burner, substantially larger numbers of Mastiffs could have been bought, together with other, smaller MRAP vehicles. When this happened anyway in October 2008, it was too late for Iraq – and may be too late for Afghanistan.

As to helicopters, the Army was again partly the author of its own misfortune. Many times, cheaper options than the Future Lynx were offered, and rejected. Had the Army been intent on acquiring tactical helicopters rapidly, it could have had them. It was occasionally able to borrow US Blackhawks and the Americans also provided medivac helicopters, but this was not a reliable foundation on which to carry out planning.

The Army was actually offered a new fleet of Blackhawks off-the-shelf. It turned them down. As for UAVs, the MoD already had in place a replacement programme for the Phoenix, called Watchkeeper, modified Israeli Hermes 450s – with deliveries scheduled for 2010. The modifications, incidentally, were part of the FRES programme. They included fitting extra communications systems fit in with the proposed "network" that was at the heart of the system.

Because of the urgency of providing the Army with a UAV capability, in May 2007 the programme was brought forward with the purchase of the basic Hermes system off-the-shelf, direct from Israel. What was done then could have been done earlier, but for the determination to incorporate FRES modifications. Similarly, with C-RAM being ordered by the MoD in 2007, and temporary measures taken to ensure its early deployment, it is not untoward to argue that this equipment too could have been procured earlier.

With suitable equipment, holding the base at Abu Naji could have been tenable, buying time further to train and equip the Iraqi Army 10th Division. That perhaps could have allowed the Army, with existing resources, to back the Iraqis in recovering the city that much earlier, possibly as early as February/March 2008.

A fatal error

Instead of holding the line in al Amarah, the Army committed its main strength to Basra. And there it made a fatal mistake. In September 2006, it launched Operation Sinbad – a last-ditch operation to recover the city. It was well-planned and executed, but the timing was wrong.

Very much later, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Jock Stirrup, complained that the action had been "watered down" and lacked support from the Iraqi politicians, particularly Maliki. That was always going to be the case.

The British had misread the political situation in Iraq and had acted prematurely. Maliki was still in the grip of Muqtada's party and to have openly confronted the Mahdi at that time would have been political suicide. He had not by then secured his political base, weakening the political grip of Muqtada and could not take the same robust line that he took in 2008. The British would have been well advised to have husbanded their resources until a more propitious moment.

There were, though, the dangerous and debilitating attacks on the bases in Basra, but what held for al Amarah could equally have applied to them – with the probability that, without Abu Naji having been abandoned, the pressure on Basra would not have been as strong. Nor indeed would the insurgency in Sadr City been as troublesome, possibly liberating US resources for the fray.

A change in approach

One there had been a change in the balance of political power in Baghdad, things were possible which had previously been impossible. Then, had the British maintained their presence in al Amarah, a joint British/Iraqi move could have been made on the city, cleaning it out as happened with Operation Promise of Peace. This would have made dealing with Basra an easier proposition.

Arguably, with a British presence remaining in Basra, and the indirect fire being dealt with by technology instead of the wasteful use of manpower, the situation would not have deteriorated so far.

Instead of Basra becoming the battlefield in Charge of the Knights and al Amarah being taken without a shot fired, the situation might have been reversed. The battle would have been at al Amarah.

By June 2008, Muqtada was a busted flush and with British support, again using existing resources, the 10th/14th Iraqi Divisions could have walked into the Sadr strongholds in Basra without a shot being fired. The British, instead of skulking in their base in Basra airport, would have been central to the action, with a wholly different outcome to the one that has come to pass.

The tragedy is that this could have been done with existing manpower resources. Through the recovery of first Basra and then al Amarah, the US did not commit more than 2,500 troops – less than the British had available. What they had and the British did not, was the right equipment – and the right mental attitude.

A lack of commitment

To have won would have required the same degree of commitment injected by President Bush, Robert Gates and Gen David Petraeus. Yet, the Army - Dannatt in particular and Jackson before him - was not prepared to sanction what was required to fight a war that he and the rest of the Army no longer believed was winnable.

That was the real problem. Wars are won and lost in the minds of men. Even without the political drag, this war would have been lost because the Army had decided it was not worth winning. More to the point, it had decided that the price it would have to pay in order to win was unacceptable.

In Iraq, therefore, the Army was defeated by its own leaders. Indisputably, the major fault lay with the politicians, in particular, one man – Tony Blair. But the Army was not without fault. Its equipment was wrong, its tactics were wrong and, in the final analysis, it lost faith in its mission and gave up.

Whether Service chiefs could have made a difference lies in the realm of speculation. The indications are that they did not try. They accepted defeat and, in so doing, made it inevitable.

COMMENT THREAD

The spectator sees more of the game

In what may be part of a co-ordinated fight against being forced to acquire protected vehicles, David Axe, freelance journalist extraordinaire, has been given a license by the Army to take a pop at the Mastiff in an article written for World Politics Review. In it, he argues that, "for British forces in Iraq, protection means loss of effectiveness".

No one can deny that the man has had first hand experience, having been embedded with British troops in Iraq – or that he writes well and makes an arguable case. But he is still wrong. Like so many of his ilk – including Michael Yon – he is perhaps too close to the ground and cannot see the bigger picture. A truism it may be, but the spectator sees more of the game.

To lead us into his thesis, Axe acquaints us with a Royal Air Force security troops patrolling the outskirts of Basra air station in southern Iraq on 17 December. The soldiers leap out of their new Mastiff armoured trucks in order to scout out a bridge before the lumbering blast-proof vehicles crossed. One of the soldiers notices something he didn't recall seeing before: a crack in the concrete near the far side of the bridge.

He points this out to his commander, Flight Lt. Edward Cripps, who eyes the idling Mastiffs, their drivers waiting for the all clear. This is what happens, Cripps muses aloud, when you repeatedly drive 30-ton trucks over a bridge designed for much lighter vehicles. "We'll have to keep an eye on this," he says. But for now the bridge was sound, and the officer gestures for the Mastiffs to cross.

This, Axe now develops, noting that, although this may be "a small thing", the over-burdened bridge is "just one consequence of the changing nature of British military operations in southern Iraq." Two years ago, he continues:

… nimble, lightly-equipped British forces pursued a counterinsurgency strategy grounded in decades of operational experience - and with unusual effectiveness. So much so that heavy, aggressive US forces adopted British methods when they launched their much-vaunted "surge" campaign to retake Baghdad from insurgents.

Today, the British counterinsurgency operation has ended - some say prematurely - and the units slated to remain in Iraq as an "overwatch" force have adopted heavier, less agile weapons systems, such as the Mastiffs, and fortified themselves at the air station.

In doing so, they become less effective against low-intensity threats and, ironically, more vulnerable overall. British forces, say some military experts, in essence are making the same mistake their American counterparts did in the first three years of the Iraq war: they have confused "force protection" with effectiveness.

Now working from the particular to the general, Axe uses US military historian Max Boot, writing in the Los Angeles Times in 2005, to bolster his case, with a direct quote from the piece:

Successful counterinsurgency operations require troops to go out among the people, gathering intelligence and building goodwill. But few Iraqis are allowed on these bases, and few Americans are allowed out - and then only in forbidding armored convoys.

We then learn, according to Boot's contention, that troops concentrated at large fortified bases surrendered intelligence-gathering and initiative - that is, the ability to act first and compel your enemy to react - in a bid to minimise soldiers' exposure to attack. And when they did sortie from their castle-like compounds, they were so ignorant of what qualifies for normal in Iraq that they were prone to respond to the most innocuous activity with gunfire.

Before going too far with this, however, it is useful to step back and examine Axe's first premise, that the heavyweight Mastiff is causing damage, something he refers to later in his article, adding that they tear down city power and telephone lines, damage buildings and parked cars and over-stress dilapidated Iraqi bridges.

Staying with this, we have to examine the very specific use to which the Mastiff is being put, in the very specific context from which Axe draws his inspiration. That use, in fact, is airfield security – one of the main roles of the RAF Regiment – for which purpose they had previously used the WIMIK Land Rover (pictured right).

Yet, it was precisely that vehicle, in precisely that role, which led to the death last August of a British soldier from 51 Squadron RAF Regiment along with a civilian interpreter in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, with two other soldiers receiving minor injuries.

Had these personnel been riding in a Mastiff, it is undoubtedly the case that the whole crew would have escaped uninjured, as indeed did the crew of the Mastiff which was attacked outside Basra Air Base on 22 December, only days after the bridge incident.

Thus do we see a very selective use of evidence from Axe. He offers the downside of the Mastiff, but what message would he have to the parents and relatives of the deceased from the Kandahar incident? And what message would he have for the troops who escaped injury in Basra? Would he tell them that they should have died to protect city power and telephone lines, buildings, parked cars and dilapidated Iraqi bridges?

In fact though, Axe does have a point – although he does not make it. When you compare the Mastiff with the WIMIK, the size of the former highlights the obvious huge disparity in size. It is exactly that which became one of the points of contention when we started our campaign on the Snatch Land Rover - simply that protected vehicles were too big for Basra.

At that time, we were arguing for the RG-31, a very much smaller vehicle and one which, demonstrably, was capable of protecting crews. But the MoD in its wisdom decided upon the Mastiff, bigger than anything we envisaged. Indeed, it is too big for some roles and certainly, as Axe argues, too heavy for some applications.

However, as readers of this blog will be very well aware, the Mastiff is by no means the only protected vehicle available and indeed we have already mentioned the smaller RG-31 which weighs in at just over seven tons. For mine protection (as in Kandahar) probably the RAM 2000 would provide more than adequate protection, which weighs 4.5 tons, a vehicle based on the RBY Mk 1. There is also the RG-32M, with a combat weight of about seven tons, which would be ideal for airfield security.

It is also interesting to note that when the Rhodesians needed a mine-protected vehicle for airfield patrols, they managed with a converted Land Rover, which they called the Cougar.

On this basis, addressing Axe's very specific complaints about the Mastiff, the problem is not protection per se, but the wrong type of protection. We have a situation where the MoD currently only provides one type of vehicle – basically an armoured personnel carrier. It was never designed nor intended for airfield perimeter patrolling and is thus being misused. In due course, we will see lighter vehicles – presumably the 4x4 Cougar (to be named the Ridgeback) – although that in itself is the same height and width as the Mastiff, and is no great improvement.

Nevertheless, weight – and size - is not Axe's only complaint. Quoting General Petraeus' philosophy, he wants troops to get out of their armoured vehicles, move around on foot and engage with the local populace - all concepts, he says, the British had championed since the beginning of the occupation in 2003.

This, we will address later in this piece but even Axe acknowledges that troops will be using vehicles. Here he calls in aid Lieutenant Colonel Labouchere who abandoned the Abu Naji base at al Amarah in 2006, taking to the Maysan desert in lightly armoured WIMIK Land Rovers. The sprightly Land Rovers, writes Axe,

…which are smaller than the standard US Humvee - were vital to Labouchere's desert adventure and even allowed British forces to navigate teeming downtown markets. But for combat operations Land Rovers are being replaced by the new Mastiffs: six-wheeled vehicles that are too tall, too wide and too sluggish to even enter cities. In addition, the soldiers riding inside them are virtually blind: there are only four small windows thickly paned with armored glass.

It is this latter comment that is particularly telling, highlighting an issue we too have addressed, technically known as situational awareness. This is perennially brought up by advocates of light, highly mobile vehicles and currently championed in the latest round of the debate on the suitability of the WIMIK.

Such is the limited breadth of the argument, however, that the champions of the WIMIK cannot seem to grasp that protection and situational awareness – or high mobility, for that matter – are not mutually incompatible. In an earlier post, we illustrated the Dingo armoured scout car (left) and the RBY Mk1, both of which offer situational awareness easily comparable with the WIMIK. It cannot be beyond the wit of man to produce a mine protected vehicle with an open top, to perform the role of a WIMIK.

Thus far, but unfortunately at much greater length, we are able to deal with Axe's arguments on size and weight and on situational awareness but, although he does not labour it, his use of the word "sprightly" implies mobility. This is translated by other advocates as speed and off-road performance, which are at a premium in Afghanistan and which the WIMIK is deemed to offer.

Here, critics of protected vehicles may have a point in that armour does add weight – although not necessarily as much as some think. All things being equal, an unarmoured vehicle is going to be more mobile than its protected counterpart.

However, while some argue that the WIMIK is an unarmoured vehicle, it has some (very limited) armour. But, so vulnerable is it to attack that troops have been applying their own armour in theatre (pictured) and the latest version (the so-called E-WIMIK) has still more. It is now so heavily laden that its mobility is restricted while still affording less protection than a specifically-designed vehicle. And, with all that weight, it is dangerously top-heavy, making it difficult and dangerous to drive. Perversely, this "light gun platform" is now considerably heavier than a Ferret armoured car which weighed less than four tons.

Nevertheless, we still hear that good off-road performance can confer as much or greater protection as armour, simply by allowing more tactical flexibility. It can, for instance, permit drivers to avoid established tracks, where mines and IEDs might be laid. It is better to take a chance with mines than to be weighed down with armour and lose that tactical flexibility, or so it is held.

At several levels, though, this argument is flawed. Firstly, the topography of Afghanistan is such that, while there are the wide open spaces, on many routes to and from operations – and generally – there are so-called "choke points". At these, the terrain naturally channels traffic and there is no alternative but to follow narrow, defined routes, no matter how good the off-road performance.


Three such scenarios are illustrated here, one of the classics being while crossing wadis (dried up river beds) – the first of the sequence (above) showing a wadi crossing. And that, it is understood, is how Jack Sadler died. His patrol was seeking a route out of a wadi, and used a track they had passed over the day before. Only, that time, a mine had been laid by a Taleban which keeps British forces under constant observation.

Secondly, the need for vehicle mobility is very much overstated. Axe, as a fan of Labouchere, offers us two video reports (here and here) eulogising his hero, the latter sequence showing one of his "sprightly Land Rovers" trying to negotiate truly impossible terrain, getting totally bogged down and very nearly overturning. "Sprightly" that vehicle was not. In such terrain, even superb performers are slow, noisy and vulnerable, and therefore of limited value. Commanders need to recognise that there are other ways of doing things.

Where reconnaissance is involved, much of what is carried out by ground forces can be as well done – if not better – by airborne assets, either helicopters, fixed wing aircraft or UAVs, more so if working in very close co-operation with ground forces. And, under certain circumstances – if they are available – vehicles can be lifted by helicopters to be inserted and extracted when needed, by-passing difficult or dangerous terrain. When it comes to cross-country performance, there is nothing better than an aircraft.

As to the role of "air", we can cite our own expert, Maj Gen Charles J. Dunlap Jr., USAF, who argues cogently that the Army does not understand and is thus not able to exploit the full potential of airpower in counter-insurgency operations. Thus, in many respects, the Army makes its own grief.

Then, in terms of mobility, there are the other uses to which these vehicles are put, not least convoy escorts, urban patrols and, in the case of the "Snatch", personnel transport. In these roles, the scope for enhanced mobility is very limited. And where mobility cannot be relied on to ensure safety, other means of protection are essential.

The third point, however, brings in the bigger picture. Axe glibly quotes Dakota Wood from the US-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, using him to tell us that the deployment of "highly protected but operationally dubious armored trucks such as Mastiff" is the result of "an emotional debate" over casualties.

While indeed, there are emotional overtones to that debate - witness the piece is today's Sunday Mirror - these are underwritten by cold, hard, political calculations, again on several levels. The most immediate concern is for troop morale.

While soldiers are realistic about the hazards of their trade, they are more sanguine about being killed in a "fair" fight involving direct combat. But the seeming randomness, unpredictability, and persistence of IED and mine attacks – especially with their potential to maim as well as kill – are feared and detested. If troops do not feel they have protection against them, their morale suffers. And, as well as affecting operational efficiency, this has an influence on recruitment and retention rates, and on the perception of operations on the "home front".

It is at this "home front" level though that the political calculations are most acute. While the Army may see its objective as winning engagements, the Taleban are fighting the "attrition" phase of a long-term guerrilla war. Their objective is not to win the military battle but to kill soldiers in an attempt to erode the political will of the nations who send them.

Guerrilla war does not allow the simplistic military reckoning of "exchange rates". That much, VietNam taught us. Each death or serious injury is a victory for the Taleban - a step closer to undermining the home front, leading eventually to the withdrawal of troops who have not been defeated militarily. Thus, whatever willingness there might be of the Army, collectively or individually, to take risks and accept losses, this is not their choice to make. To win the war, they must do everything realistically possible to minimise their own casualties - especially when so many deaths and injuries are avoidable. The politicians realise this, but it is not clear that the military – and certainly not David Axe – fully understand it.

Now, so far, we have only addressed part of Axe's thesis. Starting with his slender argument that we should not be using protected vehicles, he relies heavily on Labouchere's "strategy" as an alternative. However, this amounted to abandoning the Abu Naji base in al Amarah under fire in order to spearhead "a drive to make British troops lighter, faster and closer to the local populace."

Writes Axe, after a particularly intensive mortar attack on his base, Labouchere persuaded his bosses to let him shutter the base completely, jettison his heavy weapons and armor and take to the desert with just his soldiers, his interpreters and a handful of reconnaissance vehicles and Land Rovers. Axe goes on:

The Maysan battle group moved constantly, zipping across the desert province on a mission to intercept criminals and militia fighters. Labouchere said that with his "lighter is better" approach, he was trying to prevent what he called the "self-licking lollipop" effect. That is, he wanted to avoid the heavily armored equipment - and associated logistical requirements - that can quickly distract a military unit from its actual mission.

What this narrative neglects, however, is the earlier history of the campaign and subsequent events and thus how Labouchere's retreat from Abu Naji set the seal on what this blog – and many others - regards as the British failure in southern Iraq.

A more rounded account would take in the relative calm in the southern sector immediately after the invasion in 2003, but then noted the Mehdi uprising in August 2003, which effectively marked the start of a full-blown Shia insurgency. As we recall in one of our posts, the situation rapidly deteriorated to the point that, by November of that year, the Army was being forced to patrol in protected (but still dangerously vulnerable) "Snatch" Land Rovers.

The following year saw what amounted to all-out war with the siege of Cimic House starting on 5th of August 2004 in the centre of al Amarah and lasting 23 days. And, while the situation was stabilised, British forces were later pulled out of Cimic House and troops were concentrated in Abu Naji base outside the town, from which patrols were mounted into the town.

After multiple attacks, ranging from street gunfights and RPG ambushes, to IED ambushes, by September 2005 it was no longer safe to use "Snatch" Land Rovers on the streets of al Amarah. For want of protected vehicles, patrolling was being conducted with tracked Warrior MICVs and Challenger II main battle tanks. At the same time, the base had come under sustained assault from rockets and mortars, against which the troops were powerless, partly because there were unable to police the areas from which they were being fired.

And that surely is the point. While the advocates of light vehicles talk so freely about "mobility", commanders in al Amarah were given the choice of "Snatch" Land Rovers, Warriors at 35 tons or Challengers at 60 tons plus, both of the latter being tracked vehicles. When the Land Rovers proved too vulnerable to use, they had no option but to resort to vehicles far heavier than the Mastiffs of which Axe so volubly complains.

Nevertheless, it was in that context that, in the following year, Labouchere evacuated the base, whereupon it was handled to the Iraqi Army but immediately taken over by Mehdi supporters and ransacked. The leader of the militias, Moqtada al-Sadr, declared this a great victory and claimed to have driven the British "occupiers" out of town. All Labouchere had done was send out a signal that, if the British were attacked heavily and often enough, they would run away.

Predictably, therefore, far from quelling the insurgency, Labouchere's action fuelled it. The action moved to Basra, where bases started coming under increasingly heavy attack. And, in each case, the Army responded not by seeking out and destroying the attackers but by repeating the Labouchere strategy of "running away". Progressively, the bases at the Old State Building, the Shaat al Arab Hotel, the Joint Provincial Coordination Centre and Shaiba were vacated, leaving only the outpost at Basra Palace and the air base outside the city.

It cannot therefore have been a surprise that Basra Palace then came under sustained siege, with resupply missions becoming more and more hazardous. Without the wherewithal to deal with the attacks, the British forces conceded defeat and evacuated their last base in the city.

It is thus fair to say that, far from a failure to get "closer to the local populace", this strategy of progressive retreat under fire represented a sustained failure to deal with the attacks on the bases. As to the Mastiffs, the real problem was that they arrived too late and in insufficent numbers to affect the outcome. There was a desperate need to restore mobility to the streets, allowing the troops to get to various locations (then to patrol on foot) without unsustainable casualty levels.

That is where Axe has it so wrong. He argues that American leaders abandoned the firepower-heavy approach for time-honoured counterinsurgency tactics adopted by the British. He claims that was the basis for General David Petraeus' "surge" campaign which has significantly reduced sectarian violence in Baghdad since January 2007. But he fails to understand that the surge itself was underwritten by the restoration of mobility, brought about by the rapid programme of introducing protected vehicles. Protection is not about firepower – it is about stopping troops getting killed by insurgents in order that they can then do their work.

This is also where Michael Yon goes wrong. Totally reliable on the detail of the conduct of day-to-day operations – and much respected for his accounts - he accepts the current Army narrative that a retreat from Basra was the best option as the Army had now become part of the problem.

Last August, though, before the retreat, Colonel Bob Stewart - styled as "former UN commander of British troops in Bosnia" - was interviewed by the BBC. Paraphrased, his view was that the reason why we were taking the casualties – which eventually forced our evacuation – was because we "cannot dominate the ground". The options, he said, were to retake and dominate the ground, or abandon it.

In the final analysis, we could not do the former without sustaining unacceptable casualties - a chicken and egg sitation - so we had to do the latter. But it was not a "victory" or even a success.

While it is all very well, therefore, for Axe to pontificate about the shortcomings of protected vehicles now that we have finally retreated from Basra Palace (pictured) and hunkered down in the last bastion at Basra Air Station, one of the reasons why we could not dominate the ground was because our troops had not been issued with vehicles like the Mastiff, in which they could move around safely. Contrary to Axe's assertions, it was the absence of protected vehicles early in the campaign, rather then their limited presence now, that has been instrumental in the defeat of the British Army.

And, although Axe was confining his remarks to Iraq, much of what applied (or should have applied) to Iraq also applies to Afghanistan. There, at least, the Army has not made all the mistakes that it so egregiously made in the Iraqi campaign, but its continued used of the WIMIK and the equally vulnerable Pinzgauers (both the unarmoured versions and the Vector), suggests it still has a great deal to learn.

COMMENT THREAD

How we got it wrong

Predictably, the heavyweight Sundays have devoted considerable space to the hand over today of security responsibility to the Iraqi forces, making the formal acknowledgement of our retreat from Basra and the failure of our military adventure there.

That it is a failure is itself disputed but anyone reading the constant flow of reports coming out of Basra can reach no other conclusion. Not least, there is the testimony from the incredibly brave Marie Colvin, the first unembedded reporter to visit Basra for two years, writing today in The Sunday Times.

Her report – and many others – can leave us in no doubt that we have walked away from providing security in the southern Iraqi province, leaving ill-prepared and largely inadequate Iraqi security forces – themselves riddled with militias – to deal with a situation which Colvin describes as "a new terror".

Where the water gets muddied though – and invites a defensive reaction from the military – is that the failure cannot be attributed to the actions of the soldiers in the field. By common accord, they acted bravely, professionally and did all that could have been expected of them, and much more. The failure, therefore, was at the strategic level – which created a situation which was beyond the means of the Army to deal with.

In and amongst the reports today, it is the Sunday Times defence correspondent, Mick Smith, who attempts to explore the reasons for the failure. He put it down to the "failure to provide enough troops", pointing to the "classic error" of allowing political pressure at home to shape operations.

However, to give him due credit, Smith does not confine his criticism to the politicians. Using an unnamed "senior officer" who served in Iraq in 2003, he tells us, "At the top end our own chiefs failed to press home the need for more troops to remain in southern Iraq after the battle".

Undoubtedly, Smith and his military source are right – or, at least, partially so. Even with all the technology in the world, counter-insurgency comes down to "boots on the ground" – men with rifles and light weapons mixing it with the insurgents, taking the war to the enemy and dominating the ground.

That said, it is the contention of this blog that more troops alone would not have made any difference and, in the grander scheme of things, might have made matters worse. More troops, with more presence on the ground would, without other changes, simply have provided more targets and more casualties. And, in the casualty averse climate of the time, greater losses would have intensified the pressure for troops withdrawals.

On the other hand, with judicious changes, we would argue that the military could have dominated the ground and, in their dealings with the insurgents, could have improved their productivity (or "effects" as it is known in the military jargon) to the extent that the actual need for troops would have been less than is imagined.

Understanding why this should be is not easy and it is therefore no surprise that the media have not addressed the issues and that even the Army got it wrong. Not only that, the Army is still getting it wrong to this day.

To develop this theme, though, we must turn not to the past and Iraq but to recent events in that other theatre – Afghanistan – and a singular event in the run-up to the operation to retake Musa Qala. That event was the death of Sergeant Lee "Jono" Johnson (and the injury of two other soldiers) from a mine explosion – of which we get one crucial detail only today in The Sunday Times.

That detail – the importance of which was entirely missed by the journalist who reported on the event – was that "Jonno and three others were travelling in a Vector, a new six-wheeled armoured vehicle" (pictured - lead vehicle).

Now, this has to be examined at several different levels, the first of which is simply that, had Sergeant Johnson been riding in a properly protected vehicle, he would almost certainly still be alive. Furthermore this is the third Vector fatality that we know about, the others being Major Alexis Roberts and the other a soldier from 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment.

That, by any measure, its three wholly avoidable deaths and a number of injuries, the latter unknown. The MoD does not publish any details of incidents where only injuries – however serious – are caused, but we have had a number of reports where soldiers have lost their legs while riding in these "coffins on wheels".

The first of the broader points to emerge from this, though, is that the Pinzgauer Vector was the Army choice of "protected" patrol vehicle. There was no political intervention here. The Army was allowed to make its own choice as to the vehicle it wanted and this is what it came up with. The officers and officials involved, and the experts who advised them, got it wrong.

From this emerges an even broader point, which relates not only to Afghanistan but Iraq, and must be closely argued as it brings in other considerations.

The Vector debacle actually signifies the wider failure of the Army to understand the effects of, and take the necessary precautions against what turned out to be one the insurgents' weapons of choice – the IED. Thus, in Iraq, where the Vector was not deployed, troops were being equipped with the "Snatch" Land Rover (pictured), an equally ill-protected vehicle.

The effect of this, in terms of the number of casualties, is well recorded, but there was also another important effect – the restriction on tactical mobility. Commanders on the ground regarded vehicle patrols as an essential part of their armoury, to which effect they has basically three options – the Snatch, the Warrior and the Challenger Main Battle Tank. Clearly, the workhorse was the Snatch but, once – as appears to be the case – the insurgents started targeting this vehicle – it changed the tactical dimensions.

One of the responses was to provide Warrior escorts for the Snatches, tying up equipment and manpower simply to get the patrols to the area where they could carry out their tasks. Then, as the attacks intensified and casualties mounted, the vehicles were withdrawn altogether, limiting the options of commanders and severely restricting their ability to commit forces where needed.

In other words, through the lack of an effective protected vehicle, the Army found it need more men to do the same job (routine patrols) and, in addition, was less able to dominate the ground as the mobility of its patrols was hindered.

This, as one would expect, had knock-on effects. One of the main purposes of sending out patrols was to deter and, where possible, interdict the indirect fire attacks on the Army's bases, no more so than in al Amarah where the volume of fire eventually led to the camp at Abu Naji being abandoned. In other words, by using IEDs against vulnerable vehicles, the insurgents scored an easy tactical victory in their own campaign of harassing Army bases – a tactic which was to spread to Basra as the bases there also came under fire.

However, it was not only the lack of suitable vehicles which limited the Army responses. As we pointed out many times, there was also a lack of UAVs to maintain persistent surveillance and a similar lack of helicopters to launch quick response teams to act against indirect fire attacks. Nor was there persistent air cover or even armed UAVs which could have been used in its absence.

In effect, therefore, the Army was lacking the essential equipment which could have allowed it to take the war to the enemy.

These issues, of course, we have rehearsed many times on this blog, yet in terms of a wider recognition of the military's failings we are not much further forward than we were when we started pointing them out.

For sure, the Army has at last begun to recognise the value of properly protected vehicles – with the introduction of the Mastiff into theatre, and the promise of 4x4 protected vehicles, to be called the Ridgeback – but it was political intervention that forced this issue rather than any Damascene conversion on the part of the Army. Only now is it being admitted, grudgingly, how much of a lifesaver the Mastiffs really are.

But there is still no recognition of the need for persistent air cover (rather than the "visiting fireman" provision currently available through short-endurance fast-jets) or any understanding of the tactical role of light helicopters, so effectively honed in the "fire force" concept devised by the Rhodesians.

Overall though, the other central failing in the Army is its total inability to understand that, in the campaigns in which it is involved, the main currency is the bodies of dead soldiers. Not only have we three soldiers killed quite unnecessarily in Vectors, but there is a continual haemorrhage of casualties in WIMIK Land Rovers and other lightly protected vehicles. Add all these up and the number of avoidable (and thus unnecessary) deaths probably exceed fifty – a very substantial proportion of the total.

So far, the media have not picked up on the Vector – with the exception of Booker – in the way that they were eventually led to take note of the death toll from the "Snatch" Land Rover, but, as the Taliban are progressively defeated in open combat, they are expected to resort increasingly to asymmetric tactics (as indeed they have been), including the wider use of IEDs.

With 170 or so Vectors on the Army inventory (less those which have been destroyed), there are still plenty of opportunities for the Taliban to strike and, if the casualties start mounting once again, the Army will be forced into withdrawing them, leaving a gaping hole in its capabilities.

To that extent, the Army seems incapable of learning all the lessons that it should. And when it does react, it often does so too slowly, without acknowledging its original errors or taking measures to resolve the problems of its own making. And if this seems harsh, the criticism can nevertheless be justified. Looking at the picture of the Vector shown above, we see this highly vulnerable vehicle leading a convoy, which includes a WIMIK and several Vikings. Yet, it was the British Army's own experience in Bosnia and elsewhere that led it to the conclusion that routes must be checked by mine-protected vehicles (a process known as "proving") before unprotected traffic is allowed through.

It was that very experience which led the Canadians to purchase their Nyala vehicles, shown here doing exactly what they had learned from the British, leading a convoy of less protected Merecedes G-wagons. Thus, the very lesson learned by our own Army, it ignores.

It is those failures, in the final analysis, that explains how we got it wrong in Iraq, and how we are continuing to get it wrong in Afghanistan.

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Military incompetence?

A short passage from a recent conference on IEDs, held at College Park Maryland, screams off the page, so apposite is it to the general conduct of counter-insurgency operations and, in particular, the response to the continuing threat of improvised explosive devices.

The words uttered came from Robin L. Keesee, deputy director of the Joint IED Defeat Organization, who noted that, in dealing with the IED threat:

Speed is critical in an environment where insurgents, unrestricted by any formal hierarchy, are able to quickly alter their tactics, techniques and procedures … They are watching what works and doesn't in a neighborhood and are adapting on that basis.

This sentiment is so self-evidently true (and borne out by experiences in both Iraq and Afghanistan) that one could almost suggest that it should form the core of any vade mecum in dealing with insurgents. Any military organisation (and others) must be wedded to rapid change in a deadly game of measure, and counter-measure, as each side adapts to the tactics and equipment of the other.

If indeed that premise is accepted, then in assessing the performance of any counter-insurgency campaign, one crucial measure would be the ability of the military to adapt rapidly. Another measure might be its ability to pre-empt tactics which might be adopted by the enemy, in response counter-measures, and the ability to adjust before, rather than after, the event.

Turning this round, one could posit that failure to adapt quickly (or pre-empt changes in tactics) might constitute military failure and even, at its most extreme, military incompetence.

This question arises, most notably, in the context of the apparent failure by the British (and to a very great extent) the American Armies to provide adequate armoured vehicles for their troops in the Iraqi campaign, and their continued failure so to do in Afghanistan.

In addressing this issue – which has been something of a preoccupation of this blog – we are informed by the continued probing of Sue Smith, the mother of Phillip Hewett. He (pictured), as we will recall, was one of the soldiers who was killed by an IED while driving a "Snatch" Land Rover, in al Amarah in July 2005.

As more information becomes available, we see that the Army was well aware that this vehicle provided inadequate protection from an IED attack and thus that troops so equipped were extremely vulnerable. Further, it was readily acknowledged by the Army that the town of al Amarah was a "high-risk environment" and that the intensity of hostile activity in the early months of 2005 had been increasing.

On that basis alone, it could be judged that the troops should have been issued with better armour, or that the fleet of better armoured Warrior MICVs – which we know were available – should have been used.

However, there were other factors which the Army had to consider, which were articulated by Major General Peter Wall, giving evidence last year to the Coroner’s inquest into Phillip Hewett's death. He told the Coroner:

...if we … had decided that we were going to put the armour protection of specific vehicles as our highest priority and we had conducted all of our patrolling in Challenger tanks and Warrior fighting vehicles in urban areas where there is quite a lot of support and sympathy for our presence, it was our expectation that this would have generated a wholesale adverse reaction, which would have greatly increased the span of threats to our presence in southern Iraq.

This is an issue which we have rehearsed on this blog – a difficult issue for the military engaged in counter-insurgency operations – where the use of better protection can distance troops from the population, to the extent that alienation is increased, thereby leading to a drying up of the intelligence needed to fight insurgents, and to an increase in support for the insurgents.

Thus it was that we have learned that, while Warriors were available, local commanders had decided to deploy "Snatch" Land Rovers for routine patrols in the centre of al Amarah, to avoid disturbing the inhabitants – and thereby alienating them – with the noisier and larger MICVs.

If that was all there was to the equation, however, it would be difficult to argue with the choice, when all that was available to commanders was the small Land Rover and the highly intrusive tracked vehicle. This would have been a matter of judgement, the correctness of which would be impossible to prove and one, in any event, best left to the men (and women) on the spot.

Needless to say, though, this is not the whole extent of the matter. From more recent (unpublished) documents and witness statements, we are able to piece together a more comprehensive picture which adds other dimensions to the incident.

Firstly, we now know that there had been a number of bomb attacks (one fatal) on Land Rovers – which the insurgents had been particularly targeting – on their way from the camp Abu Naji outside the town, on the road into the centre. As a result, the practice had been adopted of providing Warriors to escort Land Rover patrols to the edge of town, where the escorts would remain, ready to shepherd the Land Rovers back to the camp on completion of their patrols.

A second factor which also emerges is that, immediately prior to the fatal attack on Private Hewett's vehicle, while they were carrying out their patrol, there was an explosion in the distance, which his patrol was ordered to investigate. And it was as they were on their way that the second "more powerful bomb" exploded, killing three of the crew of the Land Rover.

In deconstructing these events, we must turn back to the words of Keesee, cited at the beginning of this piece. Of the insurgents, he said: "They are watching what works and doesn't in a neighborhood and are adapting on that basis".

On that basis, if previous attacks on Land Rover patrols had been outside the town limits, and the Army had responded by providing escorts, then one can reasonably surmise that the next attack would be inside the limits, where the patrols were vulnerable. And, indeed, that was the case.

Then, as to the first bomb, this was subsequently deemed to have been a "decoy", detonated specifically to draw in the patrols to investigate. With patrols taking known routes, and with no choice as to the route to take rapidly to investigate an explosion, they had been set up for an ambush.

The point here is that the technique used is hardly new. The Army met decoy bombs in Northern Ireland and their use has been a standard tactic for terrorists throughout the world (and indeed conventional forces). Thus, the detonation of a bomb, in the context of a counter-insurgency patrol should, almost automatically, signal a highly elevated threat and the possibility of an ambush.

Putting this all together, arguably, we have three main elements. Firstly, there is the use of vehicles known to be vulnerable, deployed in preference to other, better-protected vehicles into a high-risk environment. Secondly, there is an apparent failure to recognise and pre-empt the likelihood that the enemy would adapt their tactics to overcome counter-measures. Thirdly, there was an apparent failure to appreciate that a quite predictable ambush situation was in the making, to deal with which the vehicles involved were completely unsuitable.

In putting together these elements, we have to note that they were not brought up in the Coroner's inquest, and neither was there a Board of Inquiry. At a very early stage after the incident, the Army unilaterally decided this was an "accident" that could not have been prevented.

As a penultimate word, therefore, I refer to the admirable book by Norman Dixon, first published in 1976, called: "On the Psychology of Military Incompetence". It was there, some years ago, that I first came across this passage, which I marked at the time:

It is a sad feature of authoritarian organisations that their nature inevitably militates against the possibility of learning from experience through the apportioning of blame. The reason is not hard to find. Since authoritarianism is itself the product of psychological defences, authoritarian organisations are past masters at deflecting blame. They do so by denial, by rationalisation, by making scapegoats, or by some mixture of the three. However it is achieved, the net result is no real admission of failure or incompetence is made by those who are really responsible; hence nothing can be done about preventing a recurrence.

Strangely, while the actual events of this incident are capable of interpretation, what seems to point to the distinct possibility of incompetence is the very fact that the Army seems to have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid examining coherently the facts which were known to them, but are only now emerging, that might possibly attach some blame to the organisation.

The tragedy of this is not only personal. As Dixon points out, if there is no real admission of failure or incompetence, "nothing can be done about preventing a recurrence".

COMMENT THREAD

The road to defeat

Four military deaths in southern Iraq in 48 hours, reports Reuters, two of them Irish Guards in the early hours of yesterday, killed by an IED when their convoy was hit near the Rumaila oil fields, west of Basra. Two other soldiers were seriously injured.

One member of the RAF Regiment was shot dead during a foot patrol on Tuesday, a patrol mounted to deter indirect fire on Basra Air Station. Another soldier was shot while driving a Warrior on Monday night, the gunman apparently shooting him as he sat exposed, with his hatch open.

Says Reuters, simply repeating what was widely predicted, "British-patrolled southern Iraq has become more dangerous for British troops since the government announced in February that London would cut back its force during the course of 2007."

In the April-July period, it adds, 30 British soldiers died in Iraq, making it the deadliest period since the 2003 invasion when Britain had nine times as many troops as the 5,500-strong contingent it has deployed now. We are told that this is in part due to Shi'ite militants stepping up attacks to create the impression they are pushing the British out.

In our view, the rot started when the Army let itself be run out of Camp Abu Naji in al Amarah, just short of a year ago, after sustaining continuous mortar and rocket attacks from local militias.

This has been compounded by the failure then to deal robustly with indirect fire attacks on bases at Shaiba, the Old State Building and the Shatt al Arab Hotel. All of these bases have since been abandoned, adding to the carefully cultivated militia legend that, if they intensify their attacks, the British will run away.

We commented on this in November last year, before that (follow the links on that post), in particular chronicling the humiliating withdrawal of civilian staff from the Basra Palace complex, after sustained attacks on the base.

Time and again, we have pointed out that the weapons, technology and tactics are available to defeat these attacks, most recently in late July, but with our seminal post last November, in which we set what was needed to defeat the attacks on our bases.

Furthermore, the issue has been raised repeatedly in Parliament, and through direct and indirect lobbying - but to little avail.

Although belatedly the MoD has improved defences, and more is planned, it is proving too little, too late. Shortly, under the increasing weight of indirect fire attacks, the British Army is to evacuate Basra Palace, under conditions which will offer the militias the perfect opportunity to take the propaganda high ground, claiming, once again, that they have run the British out of town.

Yet, as late as last October, we had the delusional Mrs Beckett claiming that the Army was close to reaching the "tipping point" in defeating the insurgents but, no matter what self-serving tripe that now comes out of Whitehall and Downing street, the retreat from Basra Palace will be seen on the "arab street" as a defeat of the British.

Even the Americans, who have hitherto been diplomatically silent on our performance, are now openly saying that, "The British have basically been defeated in the south."

As to the most recent deaths, we note that the MoD has not specified the vehicle type in the patrol hit by an IED. Was it another Snatch Land Rover? If not, why isn't the MoD telling us? It quite often does give details, but not this time.

Then there is the unfortunate Warrior driver. He is by no means the first Warrior crew to be murdered by gunman yet, as we noted in a long, ruminating post at the end of last year, the Warrior type of vehicle is entirely unsuitable for counter-insurgency operations – an issue we were to rehearse again and again.

Built for the wide-open spaces of the conventional battlefields of Northern Europe, it lacks visibility for the type of fighting currently undertaken when closed down.

Perforce, the driver (and commander) must fight from open hatches, when they are highly vulnerable to direct fire. And, if they are closed down for any length in the sweltering heat of the Iraqi summer, lacking air conditioning, the crews would suffer massive discomfort, to the point of heat exhaustion.

The alternative, of course, is the mine and blast protected vehicle, such as the Mastiff, which affords the driver good visibility from behind bullet-proof glass, in the comfort of a well-protected, air conditioned vehicle.

This rather points up one of the major problems affecting not only the Iraqi but the Afghanistani campaigns – the chronic lack of adequate equipment. Despite the obvious need for specialist vehicles for counter-insurgency operations, there are too few in theatre, yet the Army persists with its dreams for vehicles designed for high-end warfare, then adapting them for purposes from which they were never designed.

This tendency, of course, is not confined to the Army. Only yesterday, we read in The Telegraph a puff for the RAF's latest and most expensive "toy", the £80 million Eurofighter, which is being converted from an air superiority fighter to a ground attack aircraft for use in Afghanistan.

We are told that, "being able to achieve speeds of more than 1,500mph and carrying a probable payload of two 1,000lb, laser guided Paveway bombs," these aircraft "will be able to deliver devastating firepower".

Less than two weeks ago, however, we were reading reports of the effects of that "devastating firepower" on the civilian population in Afghanistan. The last thing we need is yet more fast jets screaming into combat dropping huge bombs on the innocent. We are using these aircraft, built for another war, simply because we have them. And, because we have these grotesquely expensive hi-tech "toys", we cannot afford the equipment we really need.

Nevertheless, Wing Commander Gavin Parker, officer commanding XI Squadron, which has taken delivery of the latest aircraft, gushes that the Eurofighter, "…is already an exceptional air-to-air fighter and is demonstrating excellent potential in the air-to-surface role. It will make it a fantastic close air support machine."

There is the problem in a nutshell, and one that seems unsolvable – one of many – and which prompted my post of 1 July when I got from a senior officer that the Services cannot afford to focus on the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as that would leave them unprepared to fight future wars. The effort in our current theatres must, therefore – I was told - be tempered by the need to maintain balanced forces, capable of dealing with future (unknown) commitments.

So it is that men (and women) must die, sent into danger with inadequate equipment, poor tactics and insufficient numbers. In Iraq, they will soon be hunkered down in their last remaining redoubt at Basra Air Base, where they will provide unending target practice for the militias until, at last, the public pressure becomes politically unsustainable, and Brown is forced to bring them home.

That day cannot be far away as the latest deaths bring the total number of British service personnel who have died in the Iraq since the 2003 invasion to 168. In the grisly arithmetic of media reporting, there are 32 more deaths needed to reach the "magic" figure of 200, when we can expect an orgy of recriminations.

At the current rate of deaths, this could well be sometime in the autumn, at the height of the political season when it will have maximum impact on Brown. Under the sustained weight of political and media pressure, it could well be that he will be unable to resist calls to pull the troops out.

On the road to defeat, there will be many views on what went wrong. But, in the final analysis, it will not have been any one thing. At the very top, is a lack of political will to see the job through. But we also have a failure of the opposition and even the Army brass cannot escape some blame.

But, with a hostile media, an indifferent population and a general anti-militaristic climate – compounded by the increasing rejection of "Bush's war" – it was perhaps inevitable that, when the going got tough, this nation of ours was never going to rise to the challenge. The defeat, however – when it is finally recognised – will diminish us all, and the political effects will be profound. The only question is – how many more troops are going to have to die before we do recognise that we have allowed ourselves to be defeated?

UPDATE: Since writing this post last night (and making some amendments to it this morning), I listened to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. Colonel Bob Stewart - styled as "former UN commander of British troops in Bosnia" - was interviewed. Paraphrased, his view was that the reason why we are taking the casualties is because we "cannot dominate the ground". The options, he said, were to retake and dominate the ground, or abandon it.

Clearly, since there is no political will - or capability - to do the former, the logical conclusion is that we must do the latter.

The Telegraph, incidentally, ran the casualty story on its front page, with two full pages further into the "book", printing mug shots of all the recent casualties. All the national papers are running the story "big" - a harbinger for the "perfect storm" that is going to erupt when the deaths reach that magic number of 200.

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Then there were two

Now it is the turn of massive Shaibah logistics base, south of Basra, to see the Union Jack lowered for the last time. It was handed over in a ceremony to the Iraqi Army yesterday, for use as a training base.

First it was The Old State Building and then, following in short order was Shatt al Arab Hotel and now Shaibah. That leaves two bases in southern Iraq under British control, the Basra Palace complex – under almost daily attack – and Basra Air Station (BAS), formerly Basra International Airport.

Shaibah is the base the Americans did not want the British to relinquish. From here, patrols were mounted to protect the road from Kuwait to Baghdad, the vital artery through which the bulk of US (and British) supplies flow. Basra Palace is in no position to supply patrols and troops in BAS are the wrong side of town – vulnerable to attack as there are few roads which can be used.

However, the deed is done. The Danish contingent also joins the exodus, having acquitted itself well (although getting little recognition in the British press), leaving Iraqi troops to celebrate. One hopes that, unlike Abu Naji in Al Amarah, they can keep hold of it. Many millions of British taxpayer's funds have been invested in the infrastructure.

Needless to say, this is not a retreat. It is a tactical repositioning – or so it is claimed. Time will tell whether it is also a dreadful mistake. Certainly, the Pizza Hut staff will be regretting the move.

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