Britain's Ashdown says no good option left in Iraq

The Associated Press
Published: July 15, 2007


LONDON: ~snip~

"Our withdrawal rate should be determined not by the security situation — which allows the militias, the insurgents, to determine our withdrawal — but by the state of training of the Iraqi forces," <Lord Paddy> Ashdown <co-chairman of an independent commission into Britain's Iraq policy> said on the British Broadcasting Corp.'s Sunday AM program. ~snip~

"There are no risk-free options. There are no good options left. What we have had to do is choose the least worst one," Ashdown said.

Ashdown, the former top international official in Bosnia, said former Prime Minister Tony Blair had failed to influence U.S. President George W. Bush's flawed plans in Iraq.

"We committed the cardinal sin of these interventions, which is to have ridiculously overambitious aims; to re-create Washington in Baghdad, to recreate a fully functioning Western-style democracy in a Middle Eastern country," Ashdown said. ~snip~

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/15/europe/EU-GEN-Britain-Iraq-Report.php