Colonel Tim Collins OBE Appears On Newsnight Special: Iraq: 10 Years On.
28/02/2013
Colonel Tim Collins OBE featured on a Newsnight Special on Tuesday 26th February 2013 to discuss Iraq, 10 years on from the intervention in 2003.
The program also featured insight from former Prime Minister Tony Blair, the UN's former chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix and former UK Ambassador to the US, Sir Christopher Meyer, amongst other contributors. The program was hosted by Kirsty Wark.
Colonel Tim Collins OBE featured on a Newsnight Special on Tuesday 26th February 2013 to discuss Iraq, 10 years on from the intervention in 2003.
The program also featured insight from former Prime Minister Tony Blair, the UN's former chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix and former UK Ambassador to the US, Sir Christopher Meyer, amongst other contributors. The program was hosted by Kirsty Wark.
Kirsty Walk asked Colonel Collins;
"From your experience in Iraq, what can we learn for future adventures?"
Colonel Collins replied;
"What we can learn from this is, in a strange way, as our forefathers learnt after the Boer War, is that our military needs to be fit for purpose.
"I think the leadership and the equipping of the British Army was woeful at the time of the intervention when we began the liberation. That will hopefully improve, but I think by and large we learned that getting involved in other people's affairs isn't as simple as we thought and I think there was a reluctance to get involved in Syria as a result, and certainly our intervention in Libya was very measured as a result."
He later added;
"We're gun shy of becoming involved where we should be becoming involved and there has to be a balance somewhere along the line."
The program is available on the BBC iPlayer, via the link below until Tuesday 5th March 2013:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b01r0xtw/