Only one winner in war of words

FRASER NELSON and GEORGE KEREVAN

It is easy to forget, but some politicians and commentators made fools of themselves with dire predictions on the war with Iraq. How many are prepared to admit they were wrong?

IT IS always easy to be right in hindsight, especially when it comes to something as unpredictable as war. Yet many of those who opposed the war in Iraq got it spectacularly wrong, while Messrs Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld and Hoon were more correct than wrong-footed. Why?

There are no easy political points to be scored in arguing the case for war. After a million people marched in London and Glasgow, it was clear that the richest vein to tap for any politician was to join them in condemning the Blair government. Most protesters were driven by simple rationale: that war is mankind’s greatest evil and it should not be entered into if peace is the alternative.

The argument was powerful - but it was also bald. It was the classic example of the political myth - driven by emotion rather than reason and surviving in isolation from the hard facts. The grim truth was that, in Iraq, war was the second worst option. The worst was leaving in place a dictator who was using starvation as a weapon against his own people and, according to the United Nations itself, pursuing policies which were seeing 200 children a day perish unnecessarily.

To the politicians and commentators who knew the whole picture, it was clear that there was no good option with Iraq; it was a question of turning a blind eye or engaging with a murderous regime.

But, as with all political myths, there was money and air space awaiting those ready to tell the war camp what it wanted to hear. As serious commentators realised the macabre complexity of the situation, a vacuum was created which was filled by an array of soap-opera stars and forgotten back-bench politicians.

MPs who had lost office years ago and had slid into obscurity suddenly found they were guaranteed a route back on to television by denouncing the Prime Minister. Actors suddenly found themselves billed as authorities on geopolitical affairs.

Pop stars like George Michael and ex-wives of pop stars, like Bianca Jagger, lined the sofas of television studios to denounce the war. There would be as many as 500,000 dead, Ms Jagger told CNN - although in the end, the casualty list was less than 1 per cent of her total.

George Galloway, who was already heading for deselection in the Glasgow constituency shake-up, said words to the effect that Baghdad would never be taken by the coalition so long as a hundred Iraqis in it remained alive.

The route to the airwaves was in proposing a false dichotomy of war and peace. All serious commentators knew that for the people of Iraq, the downfall of Saddam’s regime would mark an end to the war they had faced for 30 years.

"There are no Americans in Baghdad," said the Iraqi information minister as the US marine gunfire rang out behind him. As the quotes below show, "Comical Ali" had his counterparts in the UK. All of them are amusing, none of them should be taken seriously on world affairs again.

DIRE PREDICTIONS

In the run-up to war, there were many dire predictions about the vast casualties, civilian and military, that would ensue. The consensus was that the conflict would begin with massive, continuous bombing following the pattern of the Gulf war of 1991. The death toll was predicted to be in the hundreds of thousands.

In 1939, we risked our own lives and safety in resisting a tyranny. In this instance, we are more likely to risk the lives of hundreds and thousands in a region that could rapidly spiral down into chaos.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, Daily Telegraph 5 November

Under present circumstances, it would be contrary to international law for the United Kingdom to engage in military action against Iraq, or assist any other state in taking such action, unless it was expressly authorised to do so by the United Nations Security Council.

Verdict of mock trial held by BBC Radio 4 Today programme on legality of Britain going to war on Iraq, 19 December

It is now clear from official documents that the United States is preparing for a possible slaughter in Iraq. The Pentagon’s "Doctrine for Joint Urban Operations" says that unless Baghdad falls quickly, it has to be the target of ‘overwhelming firepower’.

John Pilger, Daily Mirror, 20 December

1.5 million refugees will try to flee Iraq and 30 per cent of the country’s under-fives would be at risk of death from malnutrition if war takes place.

Leaked UN document, Guardian, 15 Feb

The "easy bit" will be an onslaught of hundreds of missiles on a defenceless population, resulting in countless, and uncounted, civilian casualties. Defending the right of rapacious power to do what it likes when it likes, from Hungary to Iraq.

John Pilger, New Statesman, 17 Feb

THE WAR BEGINS

THE first surgical air strikes are on the night of 19/20 March. The aim is to kill Saddam Hussein and decapitate the Iraqi command and control system - a very different strategy from the 1991 Gulf war. The war will last effectively 21 days.

That we will encounter more difficulties and anxious moments in the days ahead is certain. But no less certain, indeed more so, is coalition victory.

Tony Blair

This war could last for decades.

Richard Littlejohn, Sun, 14 Jan

The war "could last six days, six weeks, I doubt six months".

Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, 30 Mar

He will be in front of everyone. He will fight and guide our country to victory.

Iraqi parliamentary speaker, Saadoon Hammadi, on Saddam Hussein

THE ARMCHAIR GENERALS

BY THE end of the first week, the only kind of Iraqi resistance the war would see had appeared; tiny, unco-ordinated bands of Baath Party militiamen in civilian dress, armed only with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades - hardly the stuff to derail the coalition’s advance. And yet ...

Now that the locals have churlishly refused to play the part allocated to them in the CENTCOM script, we’re settling down resignedly for the longer-haul … the regime remains buoyant.

Andrew Gilligan, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme

As the Americans lie blinded by the sand in the desert, the resistance from the Iraqi army in the south has been more fierce than anyone expected. Pentagon triumphalists have run for cover as the prospect emerges of a war which could last six months. The battle of Baghdad is likely to be rather less of a walkover than anyone expected.

Iain MacWhirter, Herald, 26 March

We were told the war would be "a cakewalk"; that "hopefully we’ll be in Baghdad in the next three or four days". Why did they think it would be so easy?

Independent editorial, 30 March

Generals dig in for long war. Assault on Baghdad put off for weeks.

Times headline, 31 March

The Daily Mirror will continue to report this war as it sees it, and as I sit here today I see a right bloody mess, frankly.

Piers Morgan, editor, 31 March

And they thought it was going to be so easy. They really did believe it; that troops would be welcomed in Iraq, with flowers and hugs and kisses.

Andrew Stephen, New Statesman, 31 March

The Iraqi people will soon be rid of Saddam, his barbaric regime and suffering he has visited on them.

Geoff Hoon, Defence Secretary, early April.

EVEN IN THE US

THE media wobble in the second week of the war was as pronounced in the US as it was in Britain, perhaps more so. In particular, liberal commentators zeroed in on the military strategy of the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who had overruled the traditional demand of the generals to outnumber vastly any opponent before being willing to enter battle.

We’ve never done anything like this with this modest a force at such a distance from its bases … If they [the Iraqis] actually fight … it’s going to be brutal dangerous work, and we could take, bluntly, a couple to 3,000 casualties."

General Barry McCaffrey, former Gulf war commander, 25 March

According to a dozen or so military men I spoke to, Rumsfeld simply failed to anticipate the consequences of protracted warfare. He put army and marine units in the field with few reserves and an insufficient number of tanks and other armoured vehicles. Supply lines have become overextended and vulnerable to attack, creating shortages of fuel, water and ammunition.

Seymour Hersh, New Yorker magazine, published 31 March

As the war drags on, any stifled sympathy for the American invasion will tend to evaporate. As more civilians die and more Iraqis see their "resistance" hailed across the Arab world as a watershed in the struggle against Western imperialism, the traditionally despised Saddam could gain appreciable support among his people.

Robert Wright, Slate.com, 1 April

A couple of weeks into the war, it’s now apparent just how ideologically blinkered the administration’s view of Iraq actually was, and how that view has already imperilled our troops.

Harold Meyerson, American Prospect, published 11 April

THE PROPAGANDA WAR

THE Iraqi propaganda machine milked Western press scepticism for all it was worth. It was their only weapon.

It is not going to be a short war.

Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, 20 Mar

I strongly believe we have a duty to report all sides of this issue as of any issue.

Andrew Gilligan, reporter for BBC Radio 4 Today programme, 20 March

The US has miscalculated. It seems that the Iraqis are comfortably waiting for the Americans to arrive in order to choose the appropriate time to attack.

Tony Benn, 25 March

Tony Blair has managed to sound as if this desert fiasco is a great victory in the making. Quite a feat. He may be deluding himself, but it doesn’t show.

Iain MacWhirter, Sunday Herald, 30 March

Lying is forbidden in Iraq. President Saddam Hussein will tolerate nothing but truthfulness as he is a man of great honour and integrity. Everyone is encouraged to speak freely of the truths evidenced in their eyes and hearts.

Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, Iraqi information minister

THE EUROPEANS

IN EUROPE, the anti-war press felt vindicated by what it thought was the strong tide of Iraqi resistance.

This expedition of Bush is fuzzy, erratic and in its objectives fantastical.

Claude Imbert, editor of Le Point, 28 March

The Iraqis are resisting, bitterly, fiercely. The army is holding firm. The "crusaders" have not met any happy crowds. Thanks to Bush, Blair, Aznar, if you liked the world of the 1930s, you’ll love the 2000s.

Editorial, Marianne, 31 March

It was supposed to be a stroll. Now a long bloody war is threatening in Iraq.

Article in Die Zeit, 3 April

SADDAM'S LAST STAND IN BAGHDAD

IN THE second week, as the armchair generals settled into their obsession with turning skirmishes into heroic Iraqi battles, the unexpected heavy sandstorms and rain receded. The US marines raced for Baghdad unimpeded. The critics changed tactics …

In Baghdad, the coalition forces confront a city apparently determined on resistance. They should remember Napoleon in Moscow, Hitler in Stalingrad, the Americans in Mogadishu and the Russians at Grozny. Hostile cities have ways of making life ghastly for aggressors.

Simon Jenkins, Times, 28 March

Anyone who doubts that the Iraqi army is prepared to defend its capital should take the highway south of Baghdad. How, I kept asking myself, could the Americans batter their way through these defences?

Robert Fisk, Independent, 2 April

THE SAYINGS OF COMICAL ALI

AS THE war drew to a quick close and leading members of the regime disappeared, the only visible sign left of Saddam’s dictatorship was its information minister, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf. His increasingly surreal pretence that resistance continued turned him into a comic turn.

"There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!"

"My feelings - as usual - we will slaughter them all"

"Our initial assessment is that they will all die"

"God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Iraqis."

THE AMERICANS REACH BAGHDAD

ON 4 APRIL, US forces were at Baghdad airport, the strategic key to the Iraqi capital. It was left largely undefended as the generals in charge of the Republican Guard decided not to fight for the regime. The door to Baghdad was wide open.

We see the deeply angered Iraqi people rallying behind Saddam in defence of their land against a foreign invader - just as in 1941, the Russian people rallied behind an even more awful tyrant, Josef Stalin, in resisting the Nazi invaders.

Correlli Barnett, Daily Mail, 3 April

[The Iraqis] are not keeping to the script; and their extraordinary resistance against such overwhelming odds has required intensified propaganda in Washington and London.

John Pilger, Daily Mirror, 5 April

SOUR GRAPES AS THE REGIME FALLS

ON 9 April, Saddam’s statue was toppled in Ferdoos Square. The regime had imploded, as much as been overthrown. There was much rancour but no critical self-assessment by those who had predicted otherwise.

The mobs shrieked their delight. Men who, for 25 years, had grovellingly obeyed Saddam’s most humble secret policeman turned into giants, bellowing their hatred of the Iraqi leader as his vast and monstrous statues thundered to the ground.

Robert Fisk, Independent, 10 April

Nothing Bush and Blair, their cluster-bombing boys and their media court do now will change the truth of their great crime in Iraq.

John Pilger, New Statesman, 14 April

THE PREDICTIONS OF GEORGE GALLOWAY

FROM the start, George Galloway MP had predicted a bloody conflict with the Iraqis resisting every inch of the way. He, too, was unrepentant.

Sixty days and nights of carpet-bombing, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis.

He predicts at an anti-war conference in Cairo in December

I don’t believe these wolves [Bush and Blair] will be able to enter Baghdad and occupy Iraq.

I know Baghdad very well, it is a city of five million people with many alleyways and souks and mosques and houses and rooftops. I believe the entire city will become a firestorm and that the Iraqis will fight to the end and then beyond the end.

Independent, 7 April

I think he [Saddam] will be the last man standing in the bunker.

Independent, 7 April