Grauniad Samizdat

With the advantage of three years of hindsight, politicians' failed predictions about Iraq make dispiriting reading. "Any war will cause a refugee crisis of huge proportions," insisted Charles Kennedy. Iraqis proved him wrong by distinguishing perfectly well between a war on tyranny and a war on them, and stayed put. "The same doctrines [of pre-emptive war] could equally be applied by India vis-a-vis Pakistan, or in any dispute where a state feels threatened," warned Shirley Williams, shortly before India and Pakistan initiated talks to resolve the Kashmir dispute. In his tirade before the US Senate, George Galloway eulogised his own wartime perspicacity, which presumably included his assessment of Saddam Hussein: "I think he will be the last man standing in the bunker….

….Mainstream opponents of the war accepted a delusory picture of containment's accomplishments, and understated the costs. Even the Islamists and Leninists of the Stop the War Coalition were less evasive; they can be faulted for lack of candour only in describing themselves as anti-war, rather than anti-American and anti-British. "While war lasts by far the lesser evil would be reverses, or defeat, for the US and British forces," declared Socialist Worker when war broke out.

---

So writes Oliver Kamm in today’s article We Were Right to Invade Iraq.

The astonishing thing is where he’s written it.