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The Arabs were victorious, but Britain’s promises to Sharif Hussein expired even before the conflict ended. Britain and France preemptively divvied up the captured Ottoman lands into British and French protectorates under the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. After the war,
maps were redrawn to create entirely new states, including the kingdoms of Iraq and Syria and, on the narrow strip of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, a Jewish homeland that would later become Israel.
political leaders tended to choose selectively from a menu of classified material in order to present a skewed, self-serving version of reality to the voting public.
It was one of the great ironies of the age, Abu Hanieh said. In deciding to use the unsung Zarqawi as an excuse for launching a new front in the war against terrorism, the White House had managed to launch the career of one of the century’s great terrorists.
The weapons of mass destruction that had loomed so threateningly in Bush’s speeches had not been found after four months of searching.
Iraq was not a mere product of lines drawn on a colonial map, whose value lay in the oil buried beneath its sands. It was a country of tribes that traced their lineage to the beginning of civilization itself.
