Andrew Gilligan (search), the BBC reporter who accused British Prime Minister Tony Blair of "sexing up" Iraq intelligence reports, was eventually accused of having sexed up his own reports and was forced to resign from the BBC. So one might assume that he is as critical of the war in Iraq as he was of the men who led us into that war. Not so.
Writing in the Evening Standard on the anniversary of the war’s commencement, Mr. Gilligan notes that, “One year on (since the war began), the most important fact is that nobody’s worst fears on that wakeful night have come true.”
He reports that with a few tragic exceptions, there was little civilian damage and “colleagues who arrived after the war was over kept asking us where all the destroyed buildings were.”
Mr. Gilligan still professes that the threat from Saddam was not so serious as to require a war. But he has no doubts as to the successful execution of that war: “There never was a military stalemate, a refugee crisis, a hundred thousand civilian dead…That old doom-mongers favorite, the revolt of the ‘Arab street’ across the Middle East, has remained as much of a mirage as any weapon of mass destruction.”
And that’s the Asman Observer.
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