9.5 |
June 2006 to 27 June 2007
reporting
direct to Prime Minister Maliki – to implement bringing tribes
and
armed
insurgents into the fight against AQ‑I.
942.
Lt Gen Lamb
also wrote that he considered the appointment of General
Mohan
and Major
General Jalil as the military and police leaders in Basra
represented important
progress.
943.
Colonel Peter
Mansoor, executive officer to Gen Petraeus from 2007 to
2008,
recorded in
his book Surge
that Op
SINBAD operations “suffered … from the same
deficiencies
as the contemporaneous ‘Together Forward’ operations in Baghdad
–
areas
cleared could not be held without keeping sufficient troops
positioned among the
people”.516
Neither the
Maliki government nor the MNF‑I were willing to support
“more
robust”
operations, and the ISF were “too few and too poorly trained to
take on the
responsibility
for securing Basra”.
944.
Col Mansoor
assessed:
“Predictably,
the ‘clear and leave’ operations did not achieve enduring security
gains,
as the
Iraqi security forces to which the British quickly transferred
control of cleared
areas
proved unable to keep them clear. As a result, Operation SINBAD was
an
exercise in
futility, and Sadrist militiamen soon regained control of their
safe havens
in Basra.
The alternative to renewing the fight, in the minds of British
political and
military
leaders, was to cut a deal.”
On 25 June
two Republican Senators, Richard Lugar and George V Voinovich,
made
speeches
questioning the US troop surge and calling for troop
withdrawals.517
Senator
Lugar was
the senior Republican member of the Foreign Relations
Committee.518
Three days
later, President Bush made a speech at the Naval War College in
Rhode
Island in
which he defended the surge, arguing “our forces can see the
difference” that it
was making
on the ground.
945.
On 26 June,
VAdm Style briefed the Chiefs of Staff that:
“In Basra
itself, whilst a palpable threat to MNF existed, there was
general
agreement
that the UK transition plan should continue. It was anticipated
that there
could,
conceivably, be US pressure to delay the process, which had the
potential
to
introduce a gap in the timing of the handover of Basra Palace and
PIC in Basra.
516
Mansoor
PR. Surge: My
Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq
War.
Yale University
Press, 2013.
517
The New
York Times, 29 June
2007, Bush
Defends War at Naval College as Senate Republicans
Show
Increasing
Impatience.
518
Minute
Banner to Prime Minister, 29 June 2007, ‘Iraq –
update’.
177