In sharp contrast to the Republican claims that all is well in Iraq, Tony Blair recently admitted that Iraq is a "disaster."
This comes via Truthout.
Tony Blair admitted that British intervention in Iraq has been a disaster last night - sending shockwaves through Westminster.
In his frankest admission about the war to date, Mr. Blair admitted that Western forces have been powerless to stop the descent into violence.
The Prime Minister stopped short of accepting the blame for plunging Iraq to the brink of civil war - blaming instead the insurgent uprising that has killed 125 British troops.
But his admission in an interview with the Arab news channel Al Jazeera will be seen as an historic climbdown for Mr. Blair, who has always fought to put a positive gloss on often disastrous events.
Challenged by veteran interviewer Sir David Frost that the Western invasion of Iraq has "so far been pretty much of a disaster", Mr. Blair said: "It has."
...
Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff, told the Daily Mail that Mr. Blair's desire to forge a "liberal democracy" in Iraq was a "naive" failure and commented: "Whatever consent we may have had in the first place" from the Iraqi people "has largely turned to intolerance."
and lest we forget what Blair means when he admits the Bush/Blair Iraq policy has been a disaster, here is a reminder from the same article:
In addition to the British death toll of 125, nearly 5,000 British injured servicemen have been evacuated from the war zone. Some 2,865 Americans have been killed and more than 21,000 injured.
A report by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore last month claimed that 654,965 Iraqis have died over the last three years, with 200,000 deaths directly attributable to coalition forces.
Of course the disaster of the Bush/Blair failure goes much deeper even than that. We are now despied and distrusted by even moderate Muslim nations, Iraq spirals even further out of control, the Taliban and al-Qaeda are resurgent according to the CIA. Our real enemies are back, our former allies now hate us, and Iraq is worse of than ever. THAT really is disaster. Hate to say it, but I told you so!
