IRAQ

Arab News via Rense: Brits Abandon Major Southern Iraq Base

-- On Friday, Aug. 25, the Washington Post published a startling story from its Baghdad bureau. I can do no better than to quote its opening paragraph: "British troops abandoned a major base in southern Iraq on Thursday and prepared to wage guerrilla warfare along the Iranian border to combat weapons smuggling, a move that anti-American cleric Moqtada Sadr called the first expulsion of US-led coalition forces from an Iraqi urban center. 'This is the first Iraqi city that has kicked out the occupier!' trumpeted a message from Sadr's office that played on car-mounted speakers in Amarah. 'We have to celebrate this occasion!'"

Details painted the larger picture. Local resentment had boiled into anger when British soldiers entered a mosque to make arrests. Insurgents, clearly loyal to Sadr, began shelling the British base, Camp Abu Naji, which had 1,200 soldiers and was on the border of Iran. In simple language, the British withdrew from the camp, which was looted when they left, so clearly the withdrawal was less than orderly. The decision may have been encouraged by the fact that "the 2nd Battalion of the Iraqi Army's 4th Brigade mutinied".

MIDDLE EAST

Commondreams: Israel Prepares for the Next War

As Israelis read their newspapers, the message comes through loud and clear: Get ready for the next war, the really big war. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave his people an ominous warning yesterday when he “toured northern Israel Thursday and visited, among other venues, the hospital in Nahariya directly hit by rocket fire during the Lebanon war. ‘We must be prepared for (various) scenarios and ready for anything,’ he said. ‘We must push forward deadlines and be ready for the possibility of receiving casualties under all conditions.’ … ‘At this time we shall prepare for any possible scenario of a threat, in full force.’”

But who will be the enemy? “The head of the Israel Defense Forces Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that after the war with Hizbullah, Syria will try to reclaim the Golan Heights through either diplomatic or military means,” Yediot Aharonot reports.