Iraq: Top British general wants to ‘cut and run’

The British Army “could break” if it’s kept too long in Iraq, according to the top military officer in Britain. Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt made his comments after an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, under the front-page banner headline, “We must quit Iraq says new head of the army.” British troops, he said, should “get ourselves out some time soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems.”

The statement was a stunning blow to the Tony Blair government and set off alarm bells in Washington. According to the British Observer, a few hours after the general’s interview was made public the U.K. Ministry of Defense received a phone call from the U.S. Embassy. “‘As you Brits say, what the f—k is going on?’ hissed the diplomat.”

Britain has 7,200 troops in Iraq and is the only significant enlistee in Washington’s ridiculously named “coalition of the willing.” If British forces were to pull out of Iraq it would be a huge political blow to Bush’s push to “stay the course.”

The day after the Mail interview, both the White House and Downing Street were in full damage control, claiming in unison that the general’s words had been “taken out of context.” Even Sir Richard himself backed off some by stating that his comments did not represent a split with the government.

But the British capitalist press has been near unanimous that the episode is a huge political crisis for the Blair administration. A commentary in The Observer speculates that “This crisis could change our relationship with the U.S.”

The general, a veteran of British missions in Ireland, Bosnia, and Afghanistan, was, of course, not speaking out of sympathy for the Iraqi people or remorse for the more than half a million Iraqi civilians who have died since the onset of the U.S.-British invasion. His concern is for British imperialist interests and his fear is that the British military is overstretched and so bogged down in Iraq as to threaten its “commitments” elsewhere.

For instance, just one day after the general’s interview it was reported by The Independent that British forces in Afghanistan are so short of helicopters that the Ministry of Defense is “being forced to scour the world for civilian aircraft to support its troops. ... When U.K. commanders asked for temporary deployment of U.S. helicopters in Afghanistan, they were told there were none to spare.”

Class truth with regard to the general’s message was poetically expressed by a British solider stationed in southern Iraq. As told by Britain’s Guardian: “Inside the army base yesterday, a tall, thin, 20-something private was preparing his Warrior for a patrol into the city centre. His camouflaged uniform has long since faded under the scorching sun, and his flak jacket was covered with grease. The private, who has been in Iraq for five months, and has a few weeks to go before being relieved, was unimpressed by the general’s comments. ‘He’s just saying this because he wants to take us to another f—king war, in Afghanistan or somewhere else,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t care.’”

British readers also learned last week that a coroner in London ruled that U.S. forces unlawfully killed a popular British television journalist in the opening days of the Iraq war. Veteran ITN reporter Terry Lloyd died, according to the coroner, “following a gunshot wound to the head. The evidence this bullet was fired by the Americans is overwhelming.”

Witnesses testified during the week-long inquest that Lloyd, who was interviewing civilians about their reaction to the invasion, was first shot in the back by Iraqi soldiers when caught in crossfire between Iraqi and U.S. troops. A ballistics expert said he could have survived with rapid medical treatment. But U.S. troops then started firing at the clearly marked TV buses driven by the ITN team. Lloyd was killed when he was hit in the head by a U.S. bullet as he was being taken for medical treatment by an Iraqi civilian.

“I have no doubt,” said the coroner, “it was the fact that the vehicle stopped to pick up survivors that prompted the Americans to fire on that vehicle.”

The National Union of Journalists said Lloyd’s killing was a “war crime.” This was echoed by Lloyd’s window, Lynn Lloyd, who called the killing “a despicable, deliberate, vengeful act.”

Lloyd was one of the few Western journalists covering the Iraq war as a “unilateral” reporter rather than being “embedded” with U.K. or U.S. forces and subject to military censorship.

The Pentagon responded to the London coroner’s inquest by stating that its own investigation exonerating U.S. forces “was completed in May 2003” and offering that it was “an unfortunate reality that journalists have died in Iraq.”