It's time to say sorry for Iraq's agony

[NNN0LHI]

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1922881,00.html

General Sir Richard Dannatt, the army's biggest gun, has blown apart Blair's promises and exposed the disaster our leaders try to hide

Mary Riddell
Sunday October 15, 2006
The Observer


History will forgive the war on Iraq. Or so Tony Blair told the US Congress in July 2003, as the first cold shadows fell on the invasion. The Prime Minister also warned of 'many further struggles ahead'. He cannot have imagined that these would include being gunned down by the head of the British army. By calling for a pull-out from Iraq, General Sir Richard Dannatt has reversed the view of the French wartime leader, Georges Clemenceau, that 'war is too serious a matter to entrust to military men'. In Dannatt's view, it is too vital to be left to the sofa warriors of Downing Street. His men have had enough, and he has said so.

The military can barely hide their glee. The previous head, Sir Michael Jackson, was seen by soldiers as Blair's puppet. Now they have a leader who puts the army first. Dannatt may not share this jubilation. Naivety, or every general's tendency to rank himself just below God in the cosmic line management structure, led him into an unintended row.

As he must know, Iraq is rarely kind to generals. In April 1915, General Sir Charles Townshend had a nervous breakdown on the road from Basra, shortly before his troops were decimated. His successor, General Sir Stanley Maude, died of cholera. Almost a century after the last, doomed British invasion, another general decides that the game is almost up. snip

Maybe the best that can be done is to help the refugees and to resolve never again to fight a war like this. If so, it is time to admit it. It is time to say sorry for the folly and the carnage, not to pretend, as a nation is eviscerated, that all can be redeemed and excused. The Prime Minister may forgive an army general. History will not be so merciful to Mr Blair.

[panader0]

1. I agree about the apology, but where do you start when you have

killed over 600,000 men women and children? We need to pull out immediately (a pullout would reduce, not increase the violence) then issue the world's greatest apology, and try to atone. The money spent on the war could have done so many good things.

[Democrats_win]

2. War reparations: Show me the money. Tax the hell out of the chickenhawks

[shance]

3. "Sorry" that our Administration has murdered 650,000 of your people and

destroyed your cities and water with permanently toxic/cancer causing agents like depleted uranium?

Sorry?????????????????