Ex-diplomat: US was warned by UK diplomats of Iraq chaos,

[JohnyCanuck]

until it became evident the Poodle wanted to get a war on too.

US was warned of Iraq chaos, says ex-diplomat
By Andy McSmith

A former diplomat has revealed that the British mission to the United Nations opposed the policy of regime change in Iraq but was ordered by London to change its position in the lead-up to war.

The disclosure was made to MPs yesterday by Carne Ross, a member of the mission who resigned in protest at the Iraq war. He told the Foreign Affairs Committee that the US government was repeatedly warned by British diplomats that Iraq would fall apart if Saddam Hussein was toppled. But from mid-2002 instructions were received to change that view to fall in with the Bush administration.

Speaking in public for the first time since he left the diplomatic service two years ago, Mr Ross also confirmed suspicions that the Prime Minister made up his mind months before the Iraq invasion in March 2003 that the war was going to happen and British troops would take part. Mr Ross said when he was serving in the embassy in Afghanistan, as early as April 2002, British officials there knew troops were being held back in readiness for the Iraq invasion.

In the same article the ex-diplomat from the UK, Carne Ross, says the post Gulf War 1 sanction on Iraq were ill-conceived, caused "immense suffering" and did not achieve the intended goal.

During the years when he was imposing sanctions on Iraq, he never felt that he was under scrutiny by Parliament or the public. He added: "There wasn't a component of moral accountability, for instance. I felt, looking back, that what I did on sanctions for Iraq was fundamentally wrong. Sanctions were ill-engineered, misdirected, targeted at the wrong group of people and caused, as a result, immense suffering in Iraq, and did not achieve the ends that they were designed to do."

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1962686.ece

[Missy M]

1. Well their warnings sure came true, didn't they......

Bush wouldn't listen then but now he is open to suggestions. Bush should be run out of town on a rail.

[stellanoir]

2. Just heard a really good interview with

Rory Stewart who's a Brit who was part of the provisional authority in Southern Iraq. Mindblowing how badly we've blown it there. . .

http://www.here-now.org/shows/2006/11/20061109_2.asp

[JohnyCanuck]

3. Britain 'not tough' enough with US

Now how's this for irony. The British diplomats (as per the OP) tried before the war to warn their Yank colleagues that the neocon inspired policy to take out Hussein by armed invasion was going to create a class 1 clusterfuck in Iraq (until shut down by the sycophantic Poodle) and were roundly ignored for their trouble. Now the Brits are being castigated for not speaking up more forcefully after the invasion when they saw that Rummy's and the Neocon's policies were "insane".

Britain 'not tough' enough with US

Press Association
Thursday November 9, 2006 9:33 PM

A former US assistant defence secretary has blamed Britain for failing to "raise the alarm" with Washington over failings in the administration of Iraq following the war.

Kenneth Adelman, who served under Donald Rumsfeld during his first stint at the Pentagon in Gerald Ford's administration of the 1970s, said that British officials must have seen that policies being pursued in Iraq were "insane".

And he said that the UK should have been "very frank and very tough" with George Bush's administration about concerns over policies such as the dismantling of Saddam Hussein's army and Iraq's civil service.

Tony Blair's envoy Sir Jeremy Greenstock was in a position to see at close quarters the mistakes being made when he served as deputy to the US head of the Coalition Provisional Authority Paul Bremer in 2003-4, said Mr Adelman.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6203807,00.html