Robin Cook: reformatted

["James Daly" <james.irldaly@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

apologies for incompetent formatting:
COOK: BRING OUR LADS HOME
Mar 30 2003
Let's send Rumsfeld and his hawks to war instead
By Robin Cook

http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/page.cfm?objectid=1279001
2&method=full&siteid=106694

This was meant to be a quick, easy war. Shortly before I
resigned a Cabinet colleague told me not to worry about the
political fall-out.

The war would be finished long before polling day for the
May local elections.

I just hope those who expected a quick victory are proved
right. I have already had my fill of this bloody and
unnecessary war. I want our troops home and I want them home
before more of them are killed.

It is OK for Bush to say the war will go on for as long as
it takes. He is sitting pretty in the comfort of Camp David
protected by scores of security men to keep him safe.

It is easy to show you are resolute when you are not one of
the poor guys stuck in a sandstorm peering around for
snipers.

This week British forces have shown bravery under attack and
determination in atrocious weather conditions. They are too
disciplined to say it, but they must have asked each other
how British forces ended up exposed by the mistakes of US
politicians.

We were told the Iraqi army would be so joyful to be
attacked that it would not fight. A close colleague of US
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld predicted the march to
Baghdad would be "a cakewalk".

We were told Saddam's troops would surrender. A few days
before the war Vice-President Dick Cheney predicted that the
Republican Guard would lay down their weapons.

We were told that the local population would welcome their
invaders as liberators. Paul Wolfowitz, No.2 at the
Pentagon, promised that our tanks would be greeted "with an
explosion of joy and relief".

Personally I would like to volunteer Rumsfeld, Cheney and
Wolfowitz to be "embedded"  alongside the journalists with
the forward units.

That would give them a chance to hear what the troops
fighting for every bridge over the Euphrates think about
their promises.

The top US General, William Wallace, has let the cat out of
the bag. "The enemy we are fighting is different from the
one we'd war-gamed".

War is not some kind of harmless arcade game. Nobody should
start a war on the assumption that the enemy's army will co-
operate. But that is exactly what President Bush has done.
And now his Marines have reached the outskirts of Baghdad he
does not seem to know what to do next.

It was not meant to be like this. By the time we got to
Baghdad Saddam was supposed to have crumpled. A few days
before I resigned I was assured that Saddam would be
overthrown by his associates to save their own skins. But
they would only do it "at five minutes past midnight". It is
now long past that time and Saddam is still there. To
compensate yesterday we blew up a statue of Saddam in Basra.
A statue! It is not the statue that terrifies local people
but the man himself and they know Saddam is still in control
of Baghdad.

Having marched us up this cul-de-sac, Donald Rumsfeld has
now come up with a new tactic. Instead of going into Baghdad
we should sit down outside it until Saddam surrenders. There
is no more brutal form of warfare than a siege. People go
hungry. The water and power to provide the sinews of a city
snap. Children die.

You can catch a glimpse of what would happen in Baghdad
under siege by looking at Basra. Its residents have endured
several days of summer heat without water.

In desperation they have been drinking water from the river
into which the sewage empties. Those conditions are ripe for
cholera.

Last week President Bush promised that "Iraqis will see the
great compassion of the US". They certainly do not see it
now. They don't see it in Baghdad. What they see are women
and children killed when missiles fall on market places.
They don't see it in Basra. What they see is the suffering
of their families with no water, precious little food, and
no power to cook. There will be a long-term legacy of hatred
for the West if the Iraqi people continue to suffer from the
effects of the war we started.

Washington got it wrong over the ease with which the war
could be won. Washington could be just as wrong about the
difficulty of running Iraq when the fighting stops. Already
there are real differences between Britain and America over
how to run post-war Iraq.

The dispute over the management of the port of Umm Qasr is a
good example. British officers sensibly took the view that
the best and the most popular solution would be to find
local Iraqis who knew how to do it. Instead the US have
appointed an American company to take over the Iraqi asset.
And guess what? Stevedore Services of America who got the
contract have a chairman known for his donations to the
Republican Party.

The argument between Blair and Bush over whether the UN will
be in charge of the reconstruction of Iraq is about more
than international legitimacy. It is about whether the Iraqi
people can have confidence that their country is being run
for the benefit of themselves or for the benefit of the US.

Yesterday there was a sad and moving ceremony as the bodies
of our brave soldiers were brought back to Britain.

The Ministry of Defence announced that they were to be
buried in Britain out of consideration for their families.
We must do all we can to ease the grief of those who have
lost a husband or a son, cut down in their prime.

Yet I can't help asking myself if there was not a better way
to show consideration for their families.

A better way could have been not to start a war which was
never necessary and is turning out to be badly planned.