As you probably all know by now, British troops are withdrawing from Basra. The BBC reports the following opinion of a prominent British officer;
[i][…]he [Lt Col Patrick Sanders] says it was time to leave the city. “90% of the violence was directed at us, so it made sense to hand over to the Iraqi security forces”
He says violence has been dropping in recent weeks, in the run-up to the handover.[/i]
The guy is predicting calm will return after foreign troops withdraw. Here are his own words: “By and large, and I’m reasonably optimistic here, I hope that by removing ourselves from Basra quite a lot of the focus of violence, which is directed at us - over 90 per cent of the attacks are against British forces - then Basra will become a calmer, less violent place.”
Why is the Bush administration resistant to reason?