Philip Gordon

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the US’s top envoy to Iraq, tells the Los Angeles Times that the 2003 invasion of Iraq has opened a “Pandora’s box.” Iraq is currently embroiled in violence fueled by ethnic and sectarian tensions. Khalilzad says the “potential is there” for the situation to become a full-blown civil war. [Los Angeles Times, 3/7/2006] Four years earlier, Philip Gordon of the Brooking Institution had used the same exact words in warning about the potential for civil war if the US were to invade Iraq. In March 2002, he said, “Removing Saddam will be opening a Pandora’s box, and there might not be any easy way to close it back up” (see Late March 2002).