Basra

1. Yesterday, British troops, amongst other things, stormed a prison in Iraq which was holding 2 soldiers who'd been arrested for shooting Iraqi police.

These are the two guys arrested:
















Thing is, when I looked in the paper this morning, their faces were blurred... probably due to this (from Rigourous Intuition, the comments of which are very interesting):

Reuters appended a note to each photo over the wire: "ATTENTION EDITORS - THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT REQUESTS THAT THE IDENTIFICATION OF THIS MAN IS NOT REVEALED, EITHER VIA PIXELLATION OF THEIR FACES OR BY NOT PUBLISHING THE PHOTOS."

2. According to Daily Kos, BBC World Service originally said the men (SAS guys) were driving a car full of "full of explosives and bomb making equipment." Which would explain the blurring... Antiwar say a similar thing, with a quote from Xinhua:"

'Two persons wearing Arab uniforms opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover they were two British soldiers,' an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua. The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said."

Antiwar continue:

By "Arab uniforms" they no doubt mean traditional Arab dress, long flow-y Lawrence of Arabia drag, but as for the explosives .... I'm not sure how much truth there is in this report, but the source doesn't necessarily rule it out. After all, what were those two Brit Special Forces types doing out of uniform -- and seemingly gone native? They were apparently riding around Basra, with whatever it was they had in their car: explosives, surveillance devices, or maybe just candy to hand out to children....

3. A commentary on WIIIAI includes mentioning this act violates international law by the soldiers being undercover; while another one here asks why were the soldiers dressed in Arabic clothes? So much for Iraq being a "sovereign nation".

4. Now the Iraqis are calling for us to leave! Some people are just so ungrateful...

5. More comments on Rense, including This report give crediblity to the 'conspiracy theorists' who have long claimed many terrorist acts in Iraq are... initiated and carried out by US, British and Israeli forces.

6. See also this.

I've always said the term "conspiracy theorist" is just a way of attacking someone's credibilty, when their statements cannot be proven wrong. A "conspiracy theory" is just what you get when you combine facts, logic & rational thinking, which makes holes in the official version.