London - Another British general Sunday openly and severely attacked US strategy in Iraq, calling it "fatally flawed" and lacking in detail on post-combat initiatives. Major-General Tim Cross, most senior British officer involved in post-war planning, told the Sunday Mirror: "We were all very concerned about the lack of detail that had gone into the post-war plan."
His criticism came after the former head of the British military, General Sir Mike Jackson, was quoted by the Daily Telegraph Saturday as branding the US approach "intellectually bankrupt."
In the latest comments, Cross - like Jackson also retired - said he had raised serious concerns with then US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld - but Rumsfeld "dismissed" or "ignored" the warnings.
"Right from the very beginning we were all very concerned about the lack of detail that had gone into the post-war plan and there is no doubt that Rumsfeld was at the heart of that process," he said.
"The US had already convinced themselves that following the invasion Iraq would emerge reasonably quickly as a stable democracy," Cross was quoted as saying.
"There is no doubt that with hindsight the US post-war plan was fatally flawed and many of us sensed that at the time."
In his critical remarks of Saturday, Jackson in particular has also blamed Rumsfeld and his neoconservative allies for the chaos in Iraq.
But the former US envoy to the United Nations, John Bolton, rejected Jackson's criticism. His comments were "way off the mark," Bolton was quoted as saying by the BBC.
The Sunday Times meanwhile reported that Britain was preparing to pull out its 5,500 troops from Iraq soon, handing full control over the southern province of Basra to the Iraqi army.
It quoted London government sources as saying Prime Minister Gordon Brown was aiming at being able to tell parliament on its October 8 resumption that control had been passed on.
The paper added that US commanders in iraq had already accepted that British forces - who have been gradually handing back the province to Iraqi control, were on their way out of Iraq.
