Originally from the Sunday Mirror: Excerpts (bold added by me): ...This week British forces have shown bravery under attack and determination in atrocious weather conditions. They are too disciplined to say it, but they must have asked each other how British forces ended up exposed by the mistakes of US politicians. We were told the Iraqi army would be so joyful to be attacked that it would not fight. A close colleague of US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld predicted the march to Baghdad would be "a cakewalk". We were told Saddam's troops would surrender. A few days before the war Vice-President Dick Cheney predicted that the Republican Guard would lay down their weapons. We were told that the local population would welcome their invaders as liberators. Paul Wolfowitz, No.2 at the Pentagon, promised that our tanks would be greeted "with an explosion of joy and relief". Personally I would like to volunteer Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz to be "embedded" alongside the journalists with the forward units. That would give them a chance to hear what the troops fighting for every bridge over the Euphrates think about their promises. The top US General, William Wallace, has let the cat out of the bag. "The enemy we are fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed". War is not some kind of harmless arcade game. ...Washington got it wrong over the ease with which the war could be won. Washington could be just as wrong about the difficulty of running Iraq when the fighting stops. Already there are real differences between Britain and America over how to run post-war Iraq. The dispute over the management of the port of Umm Qasr is a good example. British officers sensibly took the view that the best and the most popular solution would be to find local Iraqis who knew how to do it. Instead the US have appointed an American company to take over the Iraqi asset. And guess what? Stevedore Services of America who got the contract have a chairman known for his donations to the Republican Party. The argument between Blair and Bush over whether the UN will be in charge of the reconstruction of Iraq is about more than international legitimacy. It is about whether the Iraqi people can have confidence that their country is being run for the benefit of themselves or for the benefit of the US.