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Saturday 9 July 2016

UK foreign secretary: US decision on Iraqi army led to rise of Isis

Comment: The only thing they don't mention - yet again - is that this was purposeful and NOT and due to intelligence failures or lack of geopolitical foresight, though basic incompetence and corruption was certainly part of regime change and it always is. The essential point to remember was that this had been planned for years as part of Neo-Conservative doctrine. 


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The Guardian 

 

The UK has stepped up its criticism of the American conduct of the Iraq war, with the foreign secretary saying the single most disastrous mistake was the mass removal of supporters of the Ba’ath party from the Iraqi army, which he claimed had led directly to the formation of Islamic State. 

 

“Many of the problems we see in Iraq today stem from that disastrous decision to dismantle the Iraqi army and embark on a programme of debaathification,” Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, told the foreign affairs select committee. 

 

“That was the big mistake of post-conflict planning. If we had gone a different way afterwards we might have been able to see a different outcome.” 

 

He added: “It is clear a significant number of former Ba’athist officers have formed the professional core of Daesh [Isis] in Syria and Iraq and have given that organisation the military capability it has shown in conducting its operations.” 

 

He said the current regime of Haider al-Abadi, the Iraqi prime minister, had “a clear policy to reverse and to end the debaathification programmes and reintegrate Ba’athists into civic life but he is unable to get through the political system because it has become a touchstone of the Sunni-Shia divide in Iraq”. 

 

Ann Clwyd, a Labour MP on the committee and a strong supporter of the Kurds in Iraq, revealed that in 2003 she had personally gone to lobby Paul Bremer, the US head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the body overseeing the administration of Iraq, about the Iraqi army issue. She said she had complained that senior Iraqi professional soldiers, some with family backgrounds in the UK, were being pushed aside even though some of them were “willing to help in the changed circumstances”. 

 

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