Downing Street Says

» Monday, August 20, 2007

Iraq

Asked if the Prime Minister had had any thought about the reports over the weekend from the US that said that the UK was beaten in Iraq and that we were now facing rising violence and a Saigon situation, the PMS replied that people should look at the response that the Basra military spokesperson Major Michael Shearer gave this morning. Major Shearer had pointed out although that there had been increased violence, that this was not surprising due to the fact that malign forces are attempting to claim responsibility for what was in fact a long established strategy in the Basra province. Therefore, our strategy remained in place, and the Basra province would pass responsibility to the Iraqi forces as had happened in three of the four areas for which the UK had responsibility.

Asked if there was any chance of stepping up the Army presence in the other three provinces in light of the killing of the Provincial Governor, the PMS said that whilst she was aware of the reports, she was not going to comment on them in detail at this stage. There were challenges ahead for all the Iraqi security forces, but our strategy was as set out as before. With regards to a longer-term strategy, as President Bush and the Prime Minister said at Camp David recently, we were awaiting for General Petraeus’ report later in September.

1 Comment »

It would be nice to think that we were making a conscious decision to tell the Americans to go to hell in Iraq. In fact we are leaving Basra with our tails between our legs just the Americans will leave Iraq in the same way next year. What a farce. Global War on Terror? It’s just as well that was a joke from day 1.
Comment by Rob — 2 Sep 2007 on 3:21 pm | Link

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

August 2007

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Sat

Sun

« Jul

Sep »

» Monday, August 20, 2007

Iraq

1 Comment »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries