HOW THE BRITISH BLEW IT IN BASRA: “You can accuse the Americans of many things, such as hamfistedness, but you can’t accuse them of not addressing a situation when it arises. While we had a strategy of evasion, the Americans just went in and addressed the problem.”

As Greyhawk comments: “From the get go, they tried very hard to not be American. They succeeded.” And they got great press on how much smarter than Americans they were, until things were obviously in the toilet, at which point the problem became America’s fault!