I think the beginning of wisdom is to recognise that it was always the case that we were bound up in the future of Iraq. People describe it as a war of choice or as a decision to intervene. We were always involved with Iraq. Not only were we always involved with it, we were always responsible for the state of affairs there because of a long history of on the whole, rather bad statecraft. So the fact is a maimed and wrecked Iraq was in our future no matter what. And it’s going to stay in our future no matter what. I would have thought that the beginning of wisdom, to repeat myself, is to realise there’s no such thing as leaving it. You can’t dump it. It would be like pretending it wasn’t on the map at all.

Transcript of interview on Aussie TV here.

Video here (broadcast: 13/09/2007).

hAT TIp: John