BBC NEWS | Middle East | How predictions for Iraq came true

BBC NEWS | Middle East | How predictions for Iraq came true: "By John Simpson
BBC World Affairs Editor

It was a few weeks before the invasion of Iraq, three years ago. I was interviewing the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, in the ballroom of a big hotel in Cairo.

Shrewd, amusing, bulky in his superb white robes, he described to me all the disasters he was certain would follow the invasion.

The US and British troops would be bogged down in Iraq for years. There would be civil war between Sunnis and Shias. The real beneficiary would be the government in Iran.

'And what do the Americans say when you tell them this,' I asked? 'They don't even listen,' he said.

Over the last three years, from a ringside seat here in Baghdad, I have watched his predictions come true, stage by stage.
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Doing and undoing

Just over three years ago, when I interviewed the Saudi foreign minister, I asked him why he thought the US was determined to invade Iraq.

He said he had put the same question to Vice-President Dick Cheney. Mr Cheney had replied: "Because it's do-able."

It was. The trouble is, undoing the kind of damage the Saudi foreign minister foresaw is proving very hard indeed.

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