"I would many times over liberate Iraq again from Saddam Hussein," Rice said. "I think he was a danger to the Middle East."
However, she suggested the U.S. government failed to understand "how broken Iraq was as a society" and should have focused its rebuilding efforts outside of Baghdad, the capital.
"We tried to rebuild Iraq from Baghdad out, and we really should have rebuilt Iraq from outside Baghdad in," she said.
"We should have worked with the tribes, worked in the provinces," she said, adding that smaller projects should have been favored over big ones.
"That's something that in retrospect that we finally got right" several years after the 2003 invasion. "And it's one reason I think Iraq has a chance."
1 comment :
I believe the first head of the US Occupational Govt, retired Lt.Gen. Jay Garner was working with the Iraqi tribes in 2003. Garner, who had worked with the Kurds in setting up their protective zone in northern Iraq in 1991, was quite knowledgable about Iraq and Iraqis. Unfortunately he was replaced after only a few months by Paul Bremer who proceeded to disasteriouly botch the job of rebuilding Iraq in the way Condi Rice describes.
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