US Army Humvee attacked by a vehicle borne improvised explosive device (VBID), Baghdad, Iraq: photo – wikicommons/ Jim Gordon
Donald Tusk was in the centre-right opposition when the Polish SLD-led government, under the then prime minister Leszek Miller, declared support for the United States, as it began bombing Baghdad on 20 March 2003, bent on finding weapons of mass destruction and forcing regime change.
Mass looting and a violent insurgency followed Saddam Hussein’s fall from power, but no WMDs - the stated reason for the ‘coalition of the willing’ going to war - ever emerged.
"Then, while in opposition, I supported the Polish government’s decision,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Wednesday.
He added though that with present knowledge, it would have been “easy to have behaved differently then”.
President of Poland, Bronislaw Komorowski, said, when asked if he would have supported Poland’s limited role in the Iraq invasion – Poland had 200 special forces on the ground as the bombing campaign began, and later put 2,500 troops into the country during the occupation – that the coalition’s war in Iraq, “was an expression of solidarity in the face of a terrorist threat”.
“It’s easy to be the wise guy after the event,” he said, however, echoing the words of his prime minister.
Following 9/11, Warsaw supported the war as a gesture “of Polish solidarity in the face of a terrorist threat on an unprecedented scale," the president said.
Poland lost 23 soldiers in the bloody uprising that followed the invasion, but Komorowski said that one of the benefits of the support for the US was that Poland’s participation in the Iraq war reinforced Polish-American relations.
"Though there were shortcomings to the decision, there were also positives, including the strengthening of our alliance, an access [for our troops] to a type of training experience, access to modern [military] techniques," he said.
“Although, there will always be a question of whether the price was worth it,” Komorowski added. (pg)
Source: IAR/PAP
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