"US intelligence officials warned the National Security Council before the Iraq war that the American plan to build democracy on the ashes of Saddam Hussein's regime - as a model for the region - was so audacious that, as a CIA report put it in March, it could ultimately prove "impossible".
That assessment ran counter to what the Bush Administration was saying at the time as it sought to build support for the war.
President George Bush said then that a democratic Iraq would lead to more liberalised, representative governments, where terrorists would find less popular support and the Islamic world would be friendlier to the United States..."
The Age
5:44:25 PM
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