Ohiocore

The following are direct quotes from a BBC NEWS report on their country's continued military presence, "Basra: British troops in Iraq's 'peaceful' city":

• Last month, British troops fired 100,000 rounds of ammunition in southern Iraq.
• The base in Amara sustained more than 400 direct mortar hits.
• The British battalion there counted some 853 separate attacks of different kinds: mortars, roadside bombs, rockets and machine-gun fire.
• They say that no British regiment has had such intense 'contact' since Korea...
• Five cleaning ladies at a British base were murdered on their way to work.
• Two local translators for the army disappeared. Their severed heads were found outside the front gate.
• But perhaps the most worrying development of the August fighting was that none of Basra's 25,000 police officers came to the aid of the British soldiers.
• Some even helped the gunmen...
• Eighteen months after arriving in Iraq, [UK troops] are still recruiting new police officers and giving them basic training. The main qualification seems to be that you haven't been in the police before.

But perhaps most damning of all:

• in local elections in the British sector this week, turnout was just 15 per cent.