Word: iraq
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...Something Rotten Another key to learning is a readiness to confront past mistakes. In January, a British public inquiry into the Iraq conflict heard evidence from former Prime Minister Tony Blair. "In the end, [the war] was divisive, and I'm sorry about that," said Blair. But he continued: "If I'm asked if we're safer and more secure, I believe indeed that we are." (See pictures of the Bush-Blair friendship...
...Such assertions cut little ice with 60% of his compatriots who, according to a survey for the National Army Museum, believe Britain should never have gone into Iraq. The real value of the inquiry may lie in the detailed testimonies provided by witnesses from politics, civil service and the military that are forming a kind of virtual manual of how to not to run such operations. General Frederick Viggers, Britain's senior military representative in Iraq in 2003, told the inquiry that a lack of expertise in Whitehall was responsible for - and continues to create - problems on the ground...
...British soldiers can certainly be overconfident. But John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security, believes the real roots of British humiliations in Iraq lie in London. "If the politicians back home are not completely committed to this thing, if they have not leveled with the people on the likely costs of the war, then you're putting an unsupportable burden on the army in the field in a counterinsurgency campaign," says Nagl. "And so as you look at explanations as to why the British army performed better in Malaya than Iraq, one of the questions...
...Nagl, a former U.S. Army officer, credits Britons with providing valuable expertise to their American colleagues in Iraq. "Much of what the American Army ended up doing in Iraq under General Petraeus was as a result of lessons learned largely from the British," says Nagl, who helped Petraeus revise the U.S. counterinsurgency manual. "My own evaluation of how the British army adapted to the demands of counter-insurgency in Malaya had some role in influencing how we thought about the importance of building an adaptive learning organization." (Read a TIME cover story on Petraeus...
...year-old receptionist killed in British custody in September 2003, has heard that internal warnings about the treatment of prisoners were ignored. "The procedure for detention and collection of evidence can only be described as a shambles," wrote Lieut. Colonel Nicholas Mercer, the army's senior legal officer in Iraq, in a memo written only months before Mousa's death. A further inquiry has started to examine claims that up to 20 Iraqi detainees were killed in British custody in 2004, an allegation denied by Britain's defense ministry...