Top aide's damning attack on Blair's Iraq war

[cal04]

A damning assessment of Tony Blair's lack of leadership in Iraq amid its descent into lawlessness has been made by one of Britain's most senior diplomats.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the former ambassador to the United Nations and the first British envoy to Iraq, said the Prime Minister had taken his "eye off the ball" in the crucial first days and weeks after the liberation, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

In the starkest language concerning the failure of the Government to anticipate the insurgency, Sir Jeremy said: "In the days following the victory of 9 April <2003> no one, it seems to me, was instructed to put the security of Iraq first. To put law and order on the streets first. There was no police force. There was no constituted army except the victorious invaders.

"And there was no American general that I could … establish who was given the accountable responsibility to make sure that the first duty of any government – and we were the government – was to keep law and order on the streets. There was a vacuum from the beginning in which looters, saboteurs, the criminals, the insurgents moved very quickly."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/22/niraq22.xml&DCMP=EMC-new_22022007

[CJCRANE]

1. Interesting comments...

how many times can the Bush/Blair cons get away with the excuse of incompetance/"taking their eye off the ball". At least it's a first step to delving into the truth.

[maddezmom]

2. Blair rejects ex-Baghdad envoy criticism

LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday he bore no responsibility for the violence in Iraq, dismissing allegations from a former ambassador to Baghdad that the British leader failed to focus on stabilizing the country immediately after the invasion.

Former Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's representative in Baghdad until 2004, said in a BBC television interview that Blair had wanted an Iraqi police force established within months of the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion and was "tearing his hair" at the slow progress.

"But he didn't focus enough on the means of delivering what he wanted. He didn't perhaps quite concentrate enough on the instruments for delivering the final result that was needed in Iraq, and that's perhaps where he took his eye off the ball," Greenstock said, according to excerpts released Thursday of an interview for an upcoming British Broadcasting Corp. television documentary.

"No American general ... was given the accountable responsibility to make sure that the first duty of any government — and we were the government — was to keep law and order on the streets," Greenstock said. "There was a vacuum from the beginning into which the looters, the saboteurs, the criminals, the insurgents, moved very quickly."

Blair rejected suggestions that U.S.-led coalition forces were unprepared for the invasion's aftermath, particularly the sectarian violence, in a BBC radio interview.

more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070222/ap_on_re_eu/britain_blair