Clare Short regrets that Saddam is no longer running Iraq. Everything was so peaceful and orderly then.
She's writing in this morning's Guardian about the Hutton inquiry and how it's essentially a distraction from the more important issue, "whether the nation was deceived on the road to war, and where responsibility lies for the continuing chaos and loss of life in Iraq." As an American, I think it's important to know on what basis was the decision made to take the country to war. I would imagine if I were British, my concerns would be similar.
However, given all that we've learned about life under Saddam, I can only conclude that even with the current turmoil, the Iraqi people are better off without hm. Yes, from their perspective, it would have been better had they been able to bring him down through an internal uprising, but considering the slaughter Saddam ordered after previous attempts, I doubt that would have been possible.
Short revisits the notion that Blix should have been given more time. She surely knows that was not possible, but just couldn't accept the responsibility of waging war. You cannot keep a quarter of a million troops sitting idle in the dessert. Once the troop build-up had begun, all parties knew there was a limited window before war. And, Blix only got back into Iraq thanks to that troop build-up. Clare Short knows that as well.
