A ruinous trap of their own making - Iraq is now more dangerous to the US

[Barrett808]

A ruinous trap of their own making - Iraq is now more dangerous to the US than when they went to war
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday August 26, 2004
The Guardian

There was no "imminent threat" to the United States from Iraq. Then there was no strategy for building a new Iraq."Hubris and ideology" ruled. Now, "Iraq is more dangerous to the US potentially than it was at the moment we went to war".

These are the reluctant judgments of one of the key US officials who participated in the highest levels of decision-making of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Both interviewed by me and in a forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs journal, Larry Diamond offers from the heart of the Green Zone an unvarnished first-hand account of the unfolding strategic catastrophe.

Diamond, a scholar at the Hoover Institution, a conservative thinktank located on the Stanford University campus, was personally recruited to serve as a senior adviser to the CPA by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, once provost of Stanford.

When he arrived in Baghdad, Diamond observed "a highly centralised decision-making process. There were weighty Americans with decades of experience in the region who were not consulted or integrated into decision-making, foreign service officers up to the level of ambassadors." The neoconservatives in the Pentagon were in charge, and CPA head Paul Bremer "was the agent more of the Pentagon than the state department". The Pentagon cut out state because the neocons viewed it as "not on board" ideologically.

The British were regarded as warily as was the state department. British ambassador to the United Nations Jeremy Greenstock was systematically shut out. "In terms of the final decision-making on key issues I never saw much evidence that had the opportunity to weigh in." When British officials in Basra urged conducting local elections there "they were vetoed", Diamond told me. "It would have helped. If the British had been listened to it might have been better. They had a history with this country."

(more)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1290870,00.html

Mods: This is arguably editorial, but Larry Diamond's opinion is also news. I leave it up to the Moderator gods to decide.

[A_Possum]

1. Kerry and the ruinous trap

""We have been dealt a bad hand by mistaken decisions, going to war, in prewar planning and in the first few months after the war ended. A lot of negative things are difficult to alter because of mistakes that were not inevitable. There are really no good options."

I'd like to hear Kerry say this, when they ask him about what he'll do in Iraq.

He has said he will provide the world the protection it needs from a failed state in Iraq, or something along that line, which is good, but it would be nice to be clear just why that's gonna be so damn near impossible now.

[indepat]

2. Simply shocking: Wasn't W supposed to be making us safer with his

pre-emptive war(s) policies?