Great Use of Quotation Marks
From the New York Times account of the British army's use of armored vehicles to blow a hole in the side of a Basra jail, in order to free two soldiers held by the police there (in an operation that apparently also allowed many other prisoners to flee):
A British military spokesman in Basra confirmed that "two U.K. military personnel" had been detained early on Monday "in a shooting incident" and that troops had used an armored fighting vehicle "to gain entry" to the police station to release them. He said that more than one vehicle had been in the area and that the police inside the station had refused to obey orders from the Interior Ministry to release the men.
I have got to see how this one will be spun. For the record, this means that America's closest ally in the Iraq War opened fire on the police they themselves had ostensibly been training. It will be a while before we get a more complete picture of what happened here, though the outlines are becoming a bit clearer. The British army has long known that the Basra police were infiltrated by militia, and it appears that two special forces soldiers (my guess, SAS members) were undercover, either tracking militia members or planning for some "wet work" (more quotation marks!) before ending up in a stand-off with police officers. They were captured, the British army quickly determined that it couldn't secure their release through negotations, and they burst in.
I'm not assessing blame here, since I don't know what happened. But I am very curious as to how the war's advocates will spin this one. I mean, I've got a pretty feverish imagination, and even I can't figure out a way to sell this one as evidence that freedom is on the march.