Spinning the Bloodshed in Basra

"But some analysts warned against oversimplifying the rivalries within Iraq's majority Shiite Muslim community.

"'The current fighting is as much a power struggle for control of the south, and the Shiite parts of Baghdad and the rest of the country, as an effort to establish central government authority and legitimate rule,' military expert Anthony Cordesman said in an analysis for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies."

Darrin Mortenson writes for Time that "many Shi'ites are seeing this not just as an example of the Shi'ite Maliki taking on other Shi'ites (including Sadrists) but of America backing the Prime Minister up in a de facto Shi'a civil war. . . .

"If the U.S. decides to actively go after the Shi'ite forces in the south, it would mean reopening a southern front where American forces once fought some of the Iraq war's fiercest battles against Sadr but now have only a shadow presence. That would involve draining the concentration of surge troops around Baghdad and the Sunni triangle. It might even require more troop extensions or additional deployments to hold ground and maintain modest gains. Moving against the Shi'ite strongholds could then open opportunities for the Sunni fighters of al-Qaeda to strike Iraqi and U.S. targets in the Sunni triangle as the American heat turns south. . . .

"'[T]here has never been a real political settlement,' [Tufts University scholar Vali Nasr] said. 'No, the big battle for Iraq hasn't been fought yet. The future of Iraq has not been determined.' Nasr said the question now remains just how deep U.S. forces will get sucked into a Shi'ite civil war."

Jim Miklaszewski reported on the NBC Nightly News: "There's no question that this current fight in Basra is critical to both Iraq and the US, militarily and politically." He added that "military officials admit that any success there would be timed perfectly for General David Petraeus' Iraq status report that he'll deliver to Congress in two weeks."

Reason to Disbelieve

Particularly when it comes to Basra, we've been spun before.

Last February, when the British announced their pullout from the region and the beginning of their departure from Iraq, the move was hailed by the White House as -- you guessed it -- a sign of progress. Stephen Hadley called it "basically a good-news story." See my February 22, 2007 column, A Ludicrous Attempt at Spin.

Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks wrote in The Washington Post in August: "As British forces pull back from Basra in southern Iraq, Shiite militias there have escalated a violent battle against each other for political supremacy and control over oil resources, deepening concerns among some U.S. officials in Baghdad that elements of Iraq's Shiite-dominated national government will turn on one another once U.S. troops begin to draw down."

And yet, when the British officially transferred security responsibility in Basra Province to the Iraqis in December, Gen. Petraeus declared: "Iraqi Security Forces in Basra have been successfully operating independently, maintaining their own security for the past four months. Working with local government and military officials, they have demonstrated their readiness to assume responsibility for the provincial security. Today this responsibility is theirs.

"The transition of responsibility for security in Basra Province represents the most recent step toward a future of improved security, self-reliance and increasing prosperity that will benefit all Iraqi citizens."

The Speech

Here's some initial coverage of Bush's speech this morning, from The Washington Post's Peter Baker and Reuters's Andy Sullivan.