ABSTRACT
Over three months before the second Iraqi conflict started in 2003, I received a request – the first of many – to write an article on why the battle of Baghdad would be another Stalingrad. I tried to explain that there were far more dissimilarities than resemblances and added that history never repeats itself. The editor in question clearly thought that such caveats should not be allowed to spoil a brilliant idea for a piece, and she was disappointed by my refusal. In late February and March 2003, as war fever mounted, I came under a barrage of telephone calls from features editors in desperate search of articles by armchair experts on ‘Saddamograd’. I explained my refusal time and again: the score reached eight broadsheets, four tabloids and two magazines in Britain alone.
