Outcome in Iraq would have been different had Hillary Clinton, others voted against war - UK expert

A leading British academic has said that the outcome may have been different if Democrat Senator Hillary Clinton and other US politicians had voted against an invasion of Iraq.

"Things would have turned out differently in the Middle East if the decision to go into Iraq had not been made," Paul Rogers, professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford in Northern England, said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

• Rogers, who is also a global security consultant to the Oxford Research Group, was referring to the US presidential hopeful's remarks last Thursday saying that voting for US troops to go into Iraq was the biggest mistake she has made.

All started with former US President George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech in 2002, which pointed a finger of blame at former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for the 9/11 attacks, Rogers said.

The overthrow of Saddam may have seemed a good idea at the time, but it also unleashed a new reign of terror, he added.

The Islamic State (IS) extremist group, now one of the biggest threats to world peace, may never had emerged at all, Rogers said.

"Once there was the occupation of Iraq, it made it easier for Islamic extremists. To them it was proof that Islam itself was under attack," he said. "If we had not had that, we would not have had the development of IS, which arose because of the occupation of the country."

There had been, he said, a lot of support for action in Afghanistan, but when this was extended to Iraq things were different, even though Italy backed the campaign along with Britain's Tony Blair....
 [Xinhua - globaltimes.cn]
27/4/16
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