Patrick Seale is a British writer and journalist specializing in the Middle East. His books include The Struggle for Syria; Asad of Syria: The Struggle for
the Middle East; and, most recently, The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East.
Much of the talk in Europe these days--in newspaper offices, at dinner parties, in foreign ministries--is about how the United States and Britain were conned into going to war against Iraq, or