Brit troops give Jesus His birthday present

[Brother Temperance]

Soldiers Cheer "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" While Despatching Sand Negroes to Hell

More than 1,000 British troops carried out a dawn raid on a police station in the southern Iraqi city of Basra after receiving intelligence that dozens of prisoners were being tortured and faced imminent execution.
In the latest violent episode in a city increasingly riven by conflict, the troops, supported by helicopters and Iraqi forces, killed seven gunmen and demolished Jamiat police station, the headquarters of the serious crimes unit. Yesterday's attack, described by Major Charlie Burbridge as a "very significant move", was the climax of a British operation against the unit which had seen the arrests last week of several senior members.
The raid also highlighted the parlous state of the increasingly beleaguered Iraqi police force. Despite the British Ministry of Defence's insistence that Britain's exit strategy from Iraq relies upon building a strong Iraqi police and army, senior officers have begun in recent months to admit that there is a "small rotten core" within the Basra police. This comes as no surprise to locals, who have long claimed that the force is heavily infiltrated by insurgents and is responsible for the vast majority of murders in Iraq's second city.
Sunni leaders have said repeatedly that many police forces are made up of Shia militias who turn a blind eye to the "death squads" operating with grim efficiency around the country.
The Baker-Hamilton report released by the Iraq Study Group earlier this month was also heavily critical of the Iraqi police force, which, it said, "has neither the training nor legal authority to conduct criminal investigations, nor the firepower to take on organised crime, insurgents, or militias ... Iraqi police cannot control crime, and they routinely engage in sectarian violence, including the unnecessary detention, torture, and targeted execution of Sunni Arab civilians."
The damning verdict was a blow to the Bush administration; the US has claimed that its timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq is dependent on recruiting and training Iraqi security services - a process that has been long and troubled.

Of course, the naysayers in the biased liberal mainstream news always have to find a way to twist everything round, don't they? Yes, the plan is to stay the course until we've trained the Iraqi security forces up enough to be able to take over the running of the country themselves. Yes, this latest incident involved us having to blow up a police station being run by said security forces, yes, certain attempts have been made to describe said security forces as "death squads", and yes, to the untrained eye, this may look like the sort of thing that would be going on if our Mission was not fully Accomplished. What of it? God, and His chosen servant GWB, work in mysterious ways, and given time I am perfectly confident that all will become clear.