Thursday, August 26, 2004
Iraq a fiasco because of the Neo-Cons, well don't take my word for it, take it from the insider!
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There was no "imminent threat" to the United States from Iraq. Then there was no strategy for building a new Iraq. Our closest allies and international help were "marginalized" and "ignored." "The Bush administration was never willing to commit anything like the forces necessary to ensure order in postwar Iraq." "Hubris and ideology" ruled. When chaos and insurgency overwhelmed "naive assumptions," the blunders were "compounded" by a further refusal to recognize reality. "The obsession with control was an overarching flaw in the U.S. occupation from start to finish." When faced with a harsh choice between "legitimacy and control ... the U.S. administration opted for the latter whenever the tradeoff presented itself." Now, "Iraq is more dangerous to the U.S. potentially than it was at the moment we went to war."
These are the reluctant judgments of one of the key U.S. officials who participated in the highest levels of decision making of the Coalition Provisional Authority. In an interview with me and in a forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs, Larry Diamond offers, from the heart of Baghdad's Green Zone, an unvarnished firsthand account of the unfolding strategic catastrophe.
Diamond, a scholar at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank located on the Stanford University campus, was personally recruited to serve as a senior advisor to the CPA by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who had been the Stanford provost.
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