Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense under President George W. Bush, admitted in an interview published Sunday that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was marked by many failures that ultimately “spiralled out of control.”
Speaking with The Sunday Times to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Wolfowitz conceded that there “should have been Iraqi leadership from the beginning” as opposed to a 14-month American occupation.
He added, “The most consequential failure was to understand the tenacity of Saddam’s regime.”
Wolfowitz hailed the so-called troop surge that was implemented in 2007, two years after he left the Pentagon, which he said brought stability to a situation that had spiralled out of control and we’d had sectarian war.”
Long thought of as one of the chief architects of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy, Wolfowitz quibbled with the distinction, asserting that the war “wasn’t conducted according to my plan.”
