I don't think anyone could have put it better than David Kurtz at TalkingPointsMemo has:
Within less than a week the Basra offensive has gone from "a defining moment" in Iraqi's history, in the President's words, to an operation conceived by Maliki that the U.S. didn't plan, had little warning of, and couldn't control.
McClatchy News asks a question:
BAGHDAD — Relative calm settled over Basra, neighboring provinces and Baghdad on Monday as a ceasefire took hold after nearly a week of pitched fighting between the Mahdi Army militia of Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr and Iraqi government forces.
Buh... Bye..
Citing the 90% drop in violence in Basra, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced that Basra will be handed back within two weeks during a surprise pre-Christmas visit to the troops. Having to arrive like a thief in the night, pitch dark in a RAF C-130, but he damn sure brought some good news. I know Prof. Cole will disagree with the security decrease in Basra, but I know there will be many happy English, Irish and Scottish families this Christmas. 
While our troops languish in a hell that our government put them in with no end in sight.
There are some revelations from a recent Time magazine piece. Revelations that tell us a great deal actually. First the obvious:
The U.S. is ceding huge swaths of territory to shaky provincial governments that have to face increasingly powerful Shi'ite militias very much alone.
Small contingents of U.S. soldiers enter Karbala and Najaf only for brief visits with local officials these days, and much of the rest of southern Iraq has no American troops at all.
The U.S. Military can't sustain its current deployment, much less this 'surge'. Secondly, even the Pentagon has figured out we are the targets. They did learn the lesson of Al-Anbar even if the Bush administration won't admit it.U.S. soldiers are wondering if handlers from Iran's elite security forces have begun schooling and organizing fighters in the very areas American forces nominally control.
Predictably, and we did predict this back in August as an argument for withdrawal. The British pullout in Basra has caused a significant drop in violence. So much so even Bush's general, Petraeus was forced to comment on it.
General Petraeus, giving the Government his own assessment of the way that things are going in the south, said that he had personally blessed the decision to pull out the remaining 500 troops from the Basra Palace base, and was pleased that it had been carried out "in an orderly way". He also said that the level of violence in the city in recent weeks had dropped significantly. -- timesonlineNot that it's all hearts and flowers. There are increasingly reports of cholera outbreaks and still no regular clean drinking water and power issues. There have been a few suicide bombings that threatened the peace but that has seemed to have passed for the moment. There is also an increase in fundamentalism in and around Basra. Billboards with women being painted over, music CD's being banned. This is clearly the Iranian influence. Which is much more pronounced there in the south due to the proximity and many Iranians actually living in Basra. Between that and the support for Shiite leader Moqtada Al Sadr, there is a distinct decrease in social freedoms. Whether this translates into a radical Islamic state ala' the Taliban is unclear. My sense of the Iraqi culture would be no. The Iranians went very strict after their revolution but didn't go near as far as the Taliban. But does Petraeus think that the rise of the Sadrist's is something that should concern us?
General Petraeus said he would not put it at the top of his list, but that it was one of several factors that would dictate when conditions were right for any reduction of forces. "But I wouldn't rank it in any particular order," he said.Sounds more like he has too much on his plate rather than good assessment. Or maybe he is getting confused by all the spin.
LONDON — British soldiers began withdrawing Sunday from their last base in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, paving the way for fresh troop cuts and fueling worries about the security of the country's second-largest city and the surrounding region.
U.S. and Iraqi authorities have expressed concern that a broader British drawdown could jeopardize the region's rich oil resources and the land supply line from Kuwait to Baghdad and beyond. Some analysts also fear that British withdrawal could exacerbate a violent power struggle between rival Shiite groups in the sect's southern heartland.
