“The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace … and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from disaster. Our unfortunate troops … under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for willfully wrong policy … but the responsibility, in this case, is not on the army which has acted only upon the request of the civil authorities.”
T. E. Lawrence, in the 1920s, criticising the British government for becoming embroiled in the new nation of Iraq.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Richard 05.09.09 at 5:04 pm
History has this nasty habit of repeating itself…
Micky 05.10.09 at 11:36 pm
Same old, same old - bloody tragic isn’t it.