Bush ignored British poodle in Iraq

This is a video photo montage of the national Stop Bush demonstration held in London in Britain on Thursday 20th November 2003 against the UK visit of American President George W. Bush which culminated in the public toppling of a ‘Bush’ statue in Central London.

The Journey starts from Birmingham before joining the national Stop the War Coalition in Trafalgar Square. Includes Birmingham School Students Against War. Also organised by CND, MAB and supported by others.

From the Guardian in Britain:

US authority accused of ignoring allies in Iraq

· CPA was dysfunctional, says British official
· UK ‘complicit’ in failing to prepare postwar plan

Patrick Wintour, political editor
Saturday June 16, 2007

The US-led administration set up to run Iraq following the invasion in 2003 was a “dysfunctional organisation” which almost completely ignored the British, according to its director of operations.

Andrew Bearpark, probably the Coalition Provisional Authority’s central British figure, also revealed that when he asked for details of the plan to restore the Iraqi power supplies, he was given a one-page piece of paper with a list of a dozen Iraqi power stations and their potential output, amounting to what he describes as “a wish list”. “That was the CPA plan”, he said in an interview with the Guardian.

He described Britain as “being complicit in Iraq’s current position as a failed state due to its the failure to prepare a postwar plan.”

Mr Bearpark, an advocate of an early British troop drawdown, also backs the call for an official British inquiry into the failure of postwar planning – a call made this week by the Conservatives in a Commons debate, but rejected at least for the moment by the prime minister in waiting, Gordon Brown. …

Mr Bearpark, a veteran of reconstructions in Bosnia and Kosovo, was initially asked to operate as the deputy to Paul Bremer, the US CPA administrator. He asserts that it was obvious there were not enough troops to deal with “looting on an industrial scale” and also blames a lack of cooperation between the US military and the 3,000-strong civilian administration.

Mr Bearpark was asked to take on the job by the Foreign Office after the invasion and arrived in the country at the end of May, a few weeks after Mr Bremer, staying until July 2004, the entire span of the CPA.

Electricity in Iraq now: here.