In 1920, T. E. Lawrence, the famous Lawrence of Arabia wrote, "The people of England have been led in Iraq into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. It is a dsgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster...our unfortunate troops, under hard conditions of climate and supply are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the willfully wrong policy...." If you just changed a couple of those words around, it could sound like a report coming from Iraq today.

Tariq (Tah-rick) Ali, born in Lahore, then a part of British-ruled India, now in Pakistan is an internationally renowned writer. He is based in London where he is an editor of Left Review. He's written more than a dozen books on world history and politics. A charismatic speaker, he is in great demand all over the world. In his spare time he is a filmmaker, playwright and novelist. He is the author of The Clash of Fundamentalisms and Bush in Babylon. His latest books are Street Fighting Years and Speaking of Empire & Resistance with David Barsamian.