How could Dick Cheney ever top "last throes"?
How about Iraq's southern port city of Basra as a place "where things are going pretty well," which he keenly observed earlier this year.
Maybe Dick only meant to say that Basra is in the last throes of things going pretty well, because the less tendentious view is that the city is imploding from "the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors."
That, anyway, is how the International Crisis Group looks at it. And given Mr. Cheney's rather chronic case of the wrongs, I believe I'll go with the ICG.
Up to a point, that is. Because in addition to its above assessment of mayhem and carnage, the ICG, as reported by the Washington Post, "described Iran, Britain and the United States as equally confused about what is happening in Basra."
Now hold it right there. Other nations may possess more resources, others more history, and still others more cultural traditions; but when it comes to confusion, the Bush administration bows to no country.
"For the past four years," continued the WP's Karen DeYoung and Thomas Ricks, "the administration's narrative of the Iraq war has centered on al-Qaeda, Iran and the sectarian violence they have promoted. But in the homogenous south -- where there are virtually no U.S. troops or al-Qaeda fighters, few Sunnis, and by most accounts limited influence by Iran -- Shiite militias fight one another as well as British troops."
The administration's obliviousness to Basra's deteriorating situation reminds me of Inspector Clouseau's analytical powers -- especially the classic scene in which the unobservant detective devotes all his attention to berating a posturing blind man for packing around an "unlicensed minkey," while the cohorts of the imposter -- who's actually a look-out man -- are robbing the nearby bank.
And it's not just Basra, for its implications elsewhere are devastating: "The current U.S. security operation to 'clear, hold and build' in Baghdad and its surroundings is almost a replica of Operation Sinbad, which British and Iraqi forces conducted in Basra from September 2006 to March of this year with a mission of 'clear, hold and civil reconstruction.'"
One can simply fill in the blanks from there:
"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."
Hence our continued presence is merely a waiting game for the bad guys -- a farce being played out with deadly predictability. As one U.S. intelligence official candidly framed it: "The British have basically been defeated in the south."
And this comes after the Brits' oft-touted "victory" in the south, which we'll soon be told we're achieving in Baghdad.