From The Times Online :
" ... Oddly enough, I doubt it is the Iraqi people who suffered the greatest avoidable damage. Iraq was just an artificial state and a toxic mess, beyond our capabilities to cure.
We bobbed uncomprehending on the angry surface of currents we had not created, but only unleashed. History would have done so later, anyway.
The damage we did ourselves, however, was avoidable. The casualties have been heartbreaking. Domestic trust in our political class has haemorrhaged. Good faith has been questioned. A premiership has been ruined. Billions have been squandered. Our Armed Forces have been put on the rack in an unpopular war. Afghanistan has been neglected. European relations have been soured.
Britain's credit in the Middle East has been spent. Our American ally has overreached and discredited itself.
And — and this you bloody well know, David — al-Qaeda, which at the start had little to do with Iraq, have been enabled to take root among Muslims everywhere, including Britain. The dishonesty of conflating Islamic fundamentalism with the Iraqi conflict, and the dishonesty of Blair's pitch on WMD, still make my blood boil.
I thought they did yours, too, David. On February 2, 2003, you wrote (in The Observer) “I don't believe Saddam is a major backer of al-Qaeda.”
Ten weeks later, in The Guardian, you wrote: “If nothing is eventually found, I — as a supporter of the war — will never believe another thing that I am told by our Government, or that of the US ever again. And, more to the point, neither will anyone else. Those weapons had better be there somewhere.”
What happened to your argument? ... "
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