Lawrence on the Iraq Quagmire, 1920

The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told … It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster.

– T.E. Lawrence, Report to the Sunday Times (London), Aug. 2, 1920.