Annan says Iraq life 'worse than under Saddam'

Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations, has said what many of us privately think. Perhaps the prospect of leaving office has freed him to tell the truth. He says that Iraqis are worse off now than they were under Saddam.

"If I was an average Iraqi, I would make the same comparison," he told the BBC.

"They had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets: they could go out, their kids could go to school and come back without a mother or father worrying 'Am I going to see my child again?'.

"A society needs minimum security and a secure environment for it to get on. Without security, not much can be done."

He also appeared to question the US's insistence that what is taking place in Iraq is not civil war.

"A few years ago, when we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war. This is much worse," he said.

He then outlined how much he personally opposed the war in the first place:

Mr Annan said he did "everything I could" to stop the war taking place in the first place and genuinely believed it could have been halted.

And he said his biggest regret from his time in the role was that the war had claimed the lives of almost two dozen colleagues in a Baghdad bombing.

"My biggest regret? It is the loss of 23 wonderful colleagues and friends I sent to Iraq who got blown away," he said.

"They went to Iraq to try and help clean up the aftermath of a war I genuinely did not believe in.

"Of course, when that happens you ask questions: would they be here if I had not asked them to go?"

It's a sad indictment of Bush's failed policy that Annan can even suggest such a thing, and it's even worse that most of us agree with the sentiment.

At least under Saddam's brutal regime there was order. The streets were safe. Electricity worked. People had jobs.

We have unleashed carnage upon these people and have dared to call it democracy.

Thank God there are people like Annan prepared to call a spade a spade. He will no doubt be attacked by the Bush supporting delusionists, who are determined not to see the misery that their warmongering has unleashed.

The people who delivered this carnage to the Middle East should have been driven from office by now. It's a sad indictment of our democratic system that both Bush and Blair remain essentially unpunished.

I, honestly, would support seeing both of them in the Hague.

Click title for full article.

tag: Iraq war, Kofi Annan, Saddam, , US foreign policy, "Stay the course"