Twenty years after the invasion of Iraq, politicians continue to repeat the errors of the past by taking information from security briefings that they want to hear.
Ahead of the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation, US and UK politicians used some of the intelligence gathered by western security agencies to suggest that the local population would predominantly welcome external military powers as liberators. But it quickly became apparent this was a mistake and that the fighting capability of those who would resist had been underestimated. A long and bloody insurgency followed.
Fast forward to 2022 and we saw Russian president Vladimir Putin acting under the apparent belief that his conquest of Ukraine would also be simple, and meet with little resistance from a weak defence force. Western intelligence reports have since highlighted how Putin and his advisers significantly underestimated Ukraine and made poor judgements about their own intelligence information.
