Trouble in My Iraq Crystal Ball

ONE MAN who has been vindicated by events in Iraq is former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, who wrote exactly four years ago in the Evening Standard on 14 March 2003 that Saddam Hussein was not a threat to the West.

“Saddam is bad, but probably not mad,” said Lord Hurd, just before the war started.

“It might produce a quick military success,” Hurd predicted. “My own worry is with what follows. We might win the war in six days and then lose it in six months. Iraq is a notoriously difficult country to govern. We seem to have no clear notion of what would follow the disappearance of Saddam Hussein.

“Any long military occupation of Iraq by American and British troops would be regarded as a humiliation by the whole Arab world, particularly if a lot of Iraqis had been killed in the fighting.”

Bring back Hurd. Bring back John Major and Bill Clinton for that matter.

(c) 2007 Evening Standard; London (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.