War games: The reality vs the rhetoric

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As Tony Blair makes his last trip to Iraq as Prime Minister, he is still defending his support for the invasion and occupation, and claims the future is hopeful. But the decision not to send Prince Harry to Basra speaks louder than words. Raymond Whitaker reports

Tony Blair yesterday ventured where it was deemed too dangerous for Prince Harry to go, paying his seventh and final visit to Iraq before he leaves office. Even though all but his most loyal followers consider that the bloody chaos inflicted on Iraq by the invasion and the bungled occupation will be a permanent blight on his decade in Downing Street, the Prime Minister remained as blithe as ever.

With the benefit of hindsight, he was asked yesterday as he stood in Baghdad's Green Zone, would he have done things differently in Iraq? His reply: "The truth is that Iraq was liberated from a terrible dictatorship under Saddam, and now there are attempts to oppress it in a different way, with terrorism and violence." He had "no regrets whatever" about overthrowing Saddam.

Yet reality could not be kept at bay altogether. Both in Baghdad and later in Basra, where he met British troops, mortars landed in the locations he visited. He brushed off the attack on the Green Zone, during which one bomb hit the British embassy compound shortly before his arrival, saying: "There are mortar attacks and terrorist attacks happening every day. We don't give in to them."

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The Independent on Sunday has learned, however, that the Chief of General Staff found himself squeezed between the Royal Family, which insisted that the Prince should go, and Downing Street, which for all the Prime Minister's public confidence, was horrified by the danger of Harry being killed, wounded or captured. Although the Defence Secretary, Des Browne, declared the decision was one for the army, Gen Dannatt came under heavy unofficial pressure from elsewhere in the Government.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2562755.ece