The Guardian’s in heavy promotion for Jonathan Steele’s new book:
…Officials alone cannot be blamed. Ministers failed to ask serious questions. Blair never called on the experts for detailed analysis of the consequences of an invasion, officials say. He saw the war as Iraq's liberation and felt any postwar problems would pale in the face of Iraqi delight....Contrary to the conventional view that the occupation's problems stem mainly from failure to plan for postwar Iraq, they say there was plenty of planning, from how to react to mass refugee flows and a humanitarian crisis to the fallout from a sharp rise in the world price of oil. The real failure, they concede, was one of political analysis. Officials did not study how Iraqis would react to an occupation and what political forces would emerge on top once Saddam was removed.
As I recall it, the only political analysis thought needed at the time was Fouad Adjami’s contention that the Iraqis would welcome the occupation with flowers and sweets and that political shi’ism was a dead letter. Anything else was – ooh, what’s the phrase – the soft bigotry of low expectations. And for years afterwards, the purpose of pro-war propaganda was to make this conception stick in the face of a rising insurgency and the fact that political shi’ism was alive, well and winning elections. The establishment political environment as a whole was hostile to any other interpretation of events so it never got it.
Blair did tip his toe in the water, but withdrew it pretty rapidly.
The experts didn't seem to make much of an impression. Blair "wasn't focused", Tripp recalls. "I felt he wanted us to reinforce his gut instinct that Saddam was a monster. It was a weird mixture of total cynicism and moral fervour."
Indeed. Archbishop Blair of Al Yamamah.
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