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IRAQ WARS
Ten years on, Blair admits Iraq is not as he'd hoped
by Staff Writers
London (AFP) Feb 26, 2013


Baghdad security tightened amid budget demo
Baghdad (AFP) Feb 26, 2013 - Security forces on Tuesday sealed entrances to Baghdad, set up checkpoints and searched cars during a protest to demand the approval of Iraq's state budget, an interior ministry official said.

The security measures were to "prevent the entrance of strangers and to control the security situation," the official said, adding there was a sit-in by supporters of powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Tahrir Square in central Baghdad calling for parliament to pass the budget.

Votes on the 2013 budget have been repeatedly postponed.

Witnesses reported demonstrations in other parts of the city as well.

It was not immediately clear if the additional security measures, which the ministry official said have caused heavy traffic jams across the city, were aimed at preventing people from joining the protests, or guarding them against attack.

French reporter free to leave Iraq: lawyer
Baghdad (AFP) Feb 26, 2013 - An Iraqi judge on Tuesday closed the case of a French reporter who was held for three weeks before being released, and he is now free to leave the country, his lawyer Naama al-Rubaye said.

"After this decision, he can now leave," Rubaye said of Nadir Dendoune, who was detained in January for allegedly taking unauthorised photographs of security installations but freed earlier this month.

Dendoune was arrested while reportedly visiting Iraq to compile a series of stories on the upcoming 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion of the country for French magazines Le Monde Diplomatique and Le Courier de l'Atlas.

Iraqi judicial sources claimed that Dendoune, who also holds Australian and Algerian passports, was arrested carrying a camera with which he took pictures of the Iraqi intelligence service headquarters, army and police.

Dendoune's sister Houria told AFP from Paris, however, that her brother was arrested while taking pictures of a water treatment plant.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair admitted on Tuesday that the situation in Iraq is "not nearly" what he hoped it would be when Britain joined the US-led invasion to depose Saddam Hussein ten years ago.

He said he had made the best of an "ugly" choice between taking action against the Iraqi dictator in 2003 or running the risk that Hussein would launch chemical and biological attacks against his own people or the outside world.

"There are actually significant improvements in many parts of the country for the people, but I agree with you, it's not nearly what it should be," the former Labour leader told the BBC in an interview marking ten years since the invasion.

Around 162,000 people, almost 80 percent of them civilians, were killed in Iraq between the start of the US-led invasion and the withdrawal of US forces in December 2011, according to British NGO Iraq Body Count.

Attacks continue, with 1,500 people killed in violence in Iraq last year according to an AFP toll.

Blair, who stepped down in 2007 after ten years as prime minister, said he thought constantly about the people who lost their lives in the conflict.

"But in the end you're elected as prime minister to take these decisions. The question is, supposing I had taken the opposite decision?" he said.

"Sometimes what happens in politics, and unfortunately these things get mixed up with allegations of deceit and lying and so on, in the end sometimes you come to a decision where whichever choice you take the consequences are difficult and the choice is ugly. This was one such case."

Blair suggested that if Saddam was still in power now and Iraq had seen an uprising similar to those elsewhere in the Arab world, he would probably have been "20 times as bad as (President Bashar al-) Assad in Syria".

He acknowledged the US-led invasion remained extremely divisive, but said: "I've long since given up in trying to persuade people it was the right decision.

"In a sense what I try to persuade people of now is to understand how complex and difficult a decision it was.

"Because I think if we don't understand that, we won't take the right decision about what I think will be a series of these types of problems that will arise over the next few years.

"You've got one in Syria right now, you've got one in Iran to come. The issue is how do you make the world a safer place?"

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Related Links
Iraq: The first technology war of the 21st century






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