Y’all got some ’splaining to do.

Pictures of the Basra police handing over their weapons to JAM last week were followed by stories of the same patrolling Basra in HMMWVs. While there’s no telling right now if that’s true or not, the absence of a realistic plan or even an honest assessment of the problems faced while creating a professional security force in Iraq are on jaw-dropping display. Even more frustrating are the Pentagon’s pollyannaish assessments that tend more to propaganda than to a critical eye on the real world. And without an honest assessment, it is darn near impossible to expect any sort of sensible plan. Sadr’s deprecations over the last week and their manhandling of Maliki’s ISF set the stage for another public “assessment” where generals give testimony to politicians giving them speeches and the troops are no better off than before:

Iraq’s new army is “developing steadily,” with “strong Iraqi leaders out front,” the chief U.S. trainer assured the American people. That was three-plus years ago, the U.S. Army general was David H. Petraeus, and some of those Iraqi officials at the time were busy embezzling more than $1 billion allotted for the new army’s weapons, according to investigators.

The 2004-05 Defense Ministry scandal was just one in an unending series of setbacks in the five-year struggle to “stand up” an Iraqi military and allow hard-pressed U.S. forces to “stand down” from Iraq.

That’s from the AP’s Iraq’s Army a Long Time ‘Standing Up’

And the happy talk still continues

The current chief trainer counters that his Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, known as MNSTC-I, has made “huge progress in many areas, quality and quantity.”

“But we’re not free of difficulties,” Lt. Gen. James Dubik told reporters on March 4.

The GAO is hot on their heels but they only repeat what almost any combat troop working with the Iraqis will tell you - with a few notable exceptions, they are a hollow and untrustworthy force.

Desertions persisted. In its latest quarterly report, in early March, the Pentagon says some 197,000 military personnel have now been trained, but that number includes the equivalent of two divisions - 27,000 men - estimated to have gone AWOL in 2007. Some 224,000 police are listed as trained, including an unknown number who left their posts.

Without that honest assessment, and some strategy or another (I mean - pick something!) all the commentary and discussion about the success or failure of the troop increases are meaningless. Over the next couple of weeks leaders at all levels will testify or make the rounds in DC. The White House will spin for all it it is worth and all three presidential candidates will weigh in. Pasty faced “analysts” will make “expert assessments” in front of every camera from C-SPAN to FOX and Friends. Months later a fact checker will be able to see that they’ve gotten almost every single thing wrong at every step of the way. But by then the only ones that really know will be on their fourth or fifth tour in Iraq. The only thing we won’t hear is a real plan and anything approaching a comprehensive security strategy. And no - I haven’t a qualified recommendation to make because I, like just about everyone else, do not have the whole picture. Until we get that assessment and are honest about it, you can’t identify the real problems and you can’t make viable recommendations.

We’ve seen this game before and it is time for the most senior of military officers and their civilian counterparts to stop play-acting and get to the hard work of speaking truth to power and then doing what they’d demand of their subordinates - make a suggestion - pick something! But be honest about the costs and the chances of failure or success, and the results of that. Get the right info out there and let a real discussion of informed constituents proceed. Otherwise - shut up or identify yourself as the political prop you are.

Residents in southern Iraq are hopeful that the al-Mahdi Army will heed calls by Muqtada al-Sadr, the influential Shia leader, to withdraw from the streets.

For nearly a week, clashes between al-Sadr's forces and the government have forced hundreds of families in Basra, Kut and Kerbala to seek safety inside their homes.
At least 300 people have reportedly died since an Iraqi military crackdown in Basra last week sparked fighting across the country.

The operation was aimed at disarming the city's warring Shia militias, including the al-Mahdi Army, as well as crushing a number of criminal gangs.

But many Iraqi civilians say the fighting is spilling over to their lives.

"We need food and water," Abu Kareem, a Basra resident, told Al Jazeera in a phone interview.

"Electricity has been cut off [for] three days and all food we had in our refrigerators has been lost."

"Many houses are being used [by] fighters to hide and yesterday they entered my home twice, raising the dangers of an air strike over us," the 52-year-old added.

"My sons and wife are scared and when I tried to refuse their [fighters'] entrance, I was beaten," he added.

Yearning for calm
Fighting continued in Basra on Sunday despite calls by al-Sadr for his troops to stand down and withdraw from the streets, dashing the hopes of residents who yearned for calm.

"I'm glad that our cleric decided to call for the militia to withdraw but I'm not sure it will work out," Ala'a Salah, a Basra resident, said.

"When you cease fire without addressing the main issues facing our society, the wound will be open and ready for any new infection. I'm sure clashes will return but on a much worse scale."

Salah added that the temporary ceasefire has allowed his family to get food, petrol for generators and clean water. But as soon as it is safe, he said, he will pack up and leave the city.

Abu Ali, a fighter for the al-Mahdi Army, said he will obey al-Sadr's order, but does not believe all militia fighters will stand down.

"Some fighters are feeling used as they were told to fight for recognition and now to stop without any concessions being made to them," he said.

"If we stop [fighting], we are going to be seen as losers and a weak group and the possibility to be politically recognised will be less likely."

Health care woes
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has expressed concerns that continued fighting in southern Iraq could create a humanitarian crisis in the region.

"Hospitals in Basra and in parts of Baghdad are running out of medical stocks, food and fuel," said a Red Cross volunteer who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorised to speak to the press.

"Aid workers have been prevented from entering Basra for security reasons while the need for aid is urgent. Some families have told me by phone that in some houses children are starving and armed groups aren't responding to appeals from civilians," he said.

Ali Dureid, another Basra resident, told Al Jazeera that after his brother has been killed outside his home, the family had to wait for hours before carrying the body inside.

They also had to delay his burial for two days while they waited for fighting to subside in their neighbourhood.

"A foul smell started to come from his body," 34-year-old Duraid said.

Dureid added that he understood why the al-Mahdi Army militia have taken up arms, but said the killing of innocent civilians does not ultimately serve their interests.

"They are fighting to be recognised, but how can Iraqis [recognise] them if what they are doing is letting innocent civilians die under their ideals?"

ALLENTOWNPA. -- , -- In one of their sharpest exchanges of the presidential campaign, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama clashed over the Iraq war on Monday, with each challenging the other's credentials on national security.

Meanwhile, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival for the party's nomination, went after Obama's supporters for urging her to exit the race.

McCain lashed out after a Mississippi event that launched the Arizona senator's weeklong tour of the nation to highlight his military pedigree.

Responding to Obama's frequent mocking of McCain's suggestion that U.S. troops might remain in Iraq for 100 years, the Republican nominee-in-waiting said the Illinois senator failed to understand that America has kept forces in Korea, Japan, Germany and Kuwait long after wars in each country ended.

"In all due respect, it displays a fundamental misunderstanding of history, of how we've maintained national security, and what we need to do in the future to maintain our security in the face of the transcendent challenge of radical Islamic extremism," McCain told reporters on his campaign plane.

"And I understand that, because he has no experience or background in any of it," McCain added.

Obama and other critics have dogged McCain over his remark in New Hampshire last year that the U.S. might keep troops in Iraq for as long as 100 years.

McCain has stressed since then that he meant that U.S. troops might need to remain to support Iraqi forces, not to wage full-scale warfare.

Campaigning Monday in Allentown, Obama questioned McCain's judgment -- and that of New York Sen. Clinton -- in voting to authorize the war in Iraq.

"John McCain and Hillary Clinton, they had a chance to make a good decision on the most important foreign-policy issue of a generation, and they got it wrong," Obama told a crowd of 4,000 at Muhlenberg College.

"There's only one candidate left who got it right, and that's who you should want answering that phone call at 3 o'clock in the morning," he added, alluding to a Clinton ad suggesting that she was best suited to handle a foreign- policy crisis.

Obama also stood by his criticism of McCain for saying U.S. forces could stay in Iraq for as long as 100 years.

"Barack Obama," his spokesman Bill Burton said, "doesn't need any lectures from John McCain, who has consistently misunderstood American national security and the history of the Middle East in arguing for an invasion and 100-year occupation of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11."