The war in Iraq

 It is the anniversary of the illegal  invasion of Iraq.

some articles of interest:

• we-did-it-so-badly-its-now-backfired-women-and-minority-us-forces-reflect-on-the-invasion-of-iraq-now-20-years-ago
  
• iraq-war-20-years-on-how-the-world-failed-iraq-and-created-a-less-peaceful-democratic-and-prosperous-state
  
• what-went-right-iraq
  

The invasion was a farce. It was based on a lie. Hans blix and his team told us Iraq had no developed any WMDS and any old weapons were so degraded to be useless. most of Iraq's airforce was in Iran and They could not even service their tanks. They could not even threaten their neighbours lat alone great and not so great powers. By the way you do not invade a country whom you believe have WMDs unless you have no regard for your soldiers!

The neo-cons simply had no understanding of Iraq, Replacing Hussein would obviously mean sectarian violence and closer ties with Iran. This was completely missed.

As Gareth Evans pointed out at the time the USA had given the next great power carte blanch to invade any country they wanted to. Indeed they could not really criticise Russia with any credibility.

All in all it was a complete disaster which some of us saw at the time.