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Reader riposte: 60 Minutes in Baghdad

Reader riposte: 60 Minutes in Baghdad
Published 14 Mar 2013 

Andrew Farran writes:

The anecdotal observations by Major Gen (Retd) Jim Molan in his piece 60 Minutes goes to Baghdad cannot sugarcoat what by any reckoning was a disastrous, hugely costly and illegal war. Agreed that those who survived the war are better off than those who did not. Agreed that the political shape of Iraq has greatly changed whereby it is largely run now by Shias instead of Sunnis, with the result that Iran has gained an ally rather than an enemy, which in turn has strengthened the hand of Syria's Bashar al-Assad.

I hadn't realised that these were the objectives of the US/UK/Australian invasion, and that the fact that Saddam Hussein didn't have WMDs was neither here nor there in terms of the war's justification.

Your readers would be far better informed as to the state of Iraq today if they were to read a very recent publication of the International Institute for Strategic Studies entitled Iraq: From War to a New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, a Senior Fellow of that Institute and a renowned authority on the Middle East and Iraq. They would get a very different picture indeed from that painted by the retired Major General.


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