June 27, 2005 journal, the people of England have been led into Mesopotamia into a trap which will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by the steadily withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, or incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the pubic knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. "We are today not far from a disaster". This is quoting from the London Sunday Times 22 August 1920 about British experience.

Does this sound exactly like our situation today in the same place that is now called Iraq?

"The sins of commission for those of the British civil authorities in Mesopotamia especial-ly of those ‘colonels’ who were given a free hand by London. They are controlled from no Department of State, but from the empty space which divides the Foreign Office from the Indian office. They availed themselves of the necessary discretion of war-time to carry over their dangerous independence into times of peace. They contest every suggestion of real self government sent them from home. A recent proclamation about autonomy was circulated with inaction from Baghdad, was drafted and published out there in a hurry, to forestall a more liberal statement in preparation in London. “Self-determination papers”, more favorable to England were extorted in Mesopotamia in 1919 by official pressure, by airplane demonstrations, by deportations to India. The cabinet cannot disclaim all respon-sibility. They receive little more news than the public: They should have insisted on more, and better. They have sent draft after draft of reinforcements, without inquiry. When con-ditions became too bad to endure longer, they decided to send out as High Commissioner the original author of the present system, with a conciliatory message to the Arabs that his heart and policy have completely changed. Yet our published policy has not change, and does not need changing, it is that there has been a deplorable contrast between our pro-fession and our practice. We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish Government, and to make available for the world its resources of corn and oil. We spent nearly a half million men and nearly a thousand million of money to these ends. This year we are spending 92,000 man and 50 million of money on the same objects. Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They kept 14 thousand local conscripts embodied, and killed a yearly average of 200 Arabs in maintaining peace. We keep 90,000 men, with airplanes, of armoured cars, gunboats, and armoured trains. We have killed off about 10,000 Arabs in this rising this summer. We cannot hope to maintain such an average: It is such a poor country, sparsely peopled; but Abd el Hamid would applaud his masters, if he saw us working. We are told the object of the rising was political, we are not told what the local people want. It may be what the cabinet has promised them. A minister in the House of Lords said that we must have so many troops because the local people will not enlist. On Friday the government announced the death of some local levies defending their British officers, and say that the services of these men have not yet been sufficiently recognized because they are too few (adding that characteristic Baghdad touch that they are men of bad character). There are 7000 of them, just half the old Turkish force of occupation. Properly officered and distributed, they would relieve half our army there. Cormer con-

trolled Egypt’s 6 million people with 5,000 British troops; Colonel Wilson failed to con-trol Mesopotamia’s 3 million people with 90,000 troops." Just change the dates and this is us and we should have known very well not to get involved in this war. (Continued)