Iraq Turns 10: Amanpour interviews former British Deputy Prime Minister about regrets, lessons learned

Prescott interview airs TODAY, March 19 at 4:00pm ET on CNN International

As the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq reaches its 10th anniversary, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour looks back at what was won and lost in Iraq on Tuesday, March 19.

Amanpour interviews Lord John Prescott, former Deputy Prime Minister for the United Kingdom under the Tony Blair Administration, who responds to her inquiry about the human and financial costs of war in Iraq – and for the U.S. and Great Britain, which led the 2003 invasion:

“Well, I think you have to start from the beginning to the end.  It’s 10  years – time to look at those decisions.  Right at the beginning we were hoping to get the United Nations resolution.  There were other matters were agreed to, not least of all the road map with Bush and the Israel-Palestine, all those things were not achieved and we can see now that in the shock and awe, may have got rid of Saddam, but it certainly never brought peace.  And you have to ask yourself 10 years on was it justified and was it really about regime change?  And if it was about regime change, I’m afraid that didn’t make it legal,” Prescott tells Amanpour during their interview.

In addition, Amanpour interviews Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, two former McClatchy journalists who reported on conflicting evidence against the Bush Administration’s assertions of an involvement of the Saddam Hussein regime into the events of 9/11, the existence of WMD, Islamic extremism, and rare leaks from CIA skeptics for the arguments for war offered by Bush Administration officials.  In 2003, McClatchy was a content publisher for more than 30 newspapers and Internet media organizations, though Strobel and Landay say that many of those outlets refused to run their stories whenever they were thought to be too critical of the arguments supporting the war.

Amanpour also reflects upon the 25th anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s chemical massacre in the Northern Iraqi city of Halabja, and her own reporting on the criminal court proceedings that ultimately convicted the former Iraqi dictator of the mass killings, as well as for illegally invading Kuwait in 1991, suppressing the Shiite uprising after the 1991 war, and assassinations of political enemies.

Amanpour airs weeknights at 4:00pm on CNN International through April 1 when it will broadcast each evening at 3:00pm.  All times Eastern.

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