Iraqi Forces Crumbled in Basra Battle

by Steve Soto

More evidence that the surge is working so well:

More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.

Petraeus has spent the better part of the last year buying Sunni support with cash; going after pockets of Al Qaeda and Sunni resistance with American forces; and now inserting American forces in Shia-on-Shia turf battles. Clearly in all this time his efforts to build an Iraqi force that can stand on its own have been ineffective at best, and there still is no political reconciliation for anyone to brag about, and whatever there was is gone now after al-Maliki's ill-prepared and unilateral attempt to use those same Iraqi forces for his own political advantage.

But the surge is working, right?