Get out of Iraq – British troops get a last warning

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THE raid on Iraq’s Finance Ministry compound on Tuesday, by a column of up to 50 heavily armed police officers, in pick-up vehicles, which were waived through all of the check points around the compound, and then entered the compound building without facing any opposition to take away one British VIP and his four bodyguards, was a prepared and sanctioned attack on the British forces in Iraq.

No Iraqi government officials were taken although there were very high officials, including puppet government ministers in the building, while the building itself was not damaged in any way.

The kidnappers then escaped with their captives, moving towards the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City without experiencing any opposition from either Iraqi, or for that matter from US security forces who took an hour to arrive on the scene.

That this was a planned, targeted operation is obvious, as is the fact that it was assisted by the Iraqi police and military.

The targets were not accidental.

In fact one week earlier, Iraqi puppet troops and British soldiers, in an armed action in the city of Basra, killed the Mahdi Army commander in the city, Abu Qadir.

The Mahdi army is led by Moqtada al Sadr, who up till recently had up to six ministers in the Iraqi puppet regime.

These resigned under instruction from their leadership when the Prime Minister, Maliki, refused to demand or issue a timetable for a US troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Al Sadr now leads a substantial part, if not the majority of the Shia people, and his party and militia have a great influence on a section of the organisations that make up the current Iraqi state, and on a section of the ruling party and the puppet regime itself.

There is little doubt that the attack on the Iraqi Finance Ministry and the abduction of the five British nationals is an act of revenge for the killing of Abu Qadir and many other Shi’ite fighters in Basra at the hands of the British and puppet Iraqi forces.

As yet, it is not known which sections of the Iraqi puppet police and military sanctioned the operation against the Baghdad Finance Ministry, and which government officials gave their consent to it.

The outcome shows that since British security forces are not safe inside the government’s Finance Ministry Compound in the capital city of Baghdad, they are not safe anywhere over the entire territory of Iraq.

Similarly, since the Iraqi security forces provided and also collaborated with the abductors, who took no action against any Iraqi government official in the building, the Iraqi security forces and Iraqi government officials can not be trusted by the British armed forces, or the thousands of British security guards, anywhere over the entire territory of Iraq.

Clearly the time has come for the British forces in southern Iraq to quit Basra for Kuwait and then the UK, while they still have the time to do so in good order.

Their comrades in Afghanistan, who are beginning to suffer heavy casualties in a war on behalf of drug-running warlords in Kabul, must also be got out now while they still have time to do so.

Meanwhile, the insurgency is strengthening every day in Iraq and the occupation is getting weaker and weaker, as Tuesday’s kidnapping shows.

In fact, the call of Moqtada al Sadr for unity and reconciliation between the Sunnis and Shias to end the occupation of the country spells the end for the occupiers.

The insurgents in Northern, Southern and Western Iraq must now form a provisional military and political leadership to completely drive the occupiers out of the country and to hold a free election, with no foreign troops present, to bring forward a workers and farmers government to build a socialist secular and revolutionary Iraq.