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North Africa and the Near and Middle East

In Afghanistan and, indeed, Iraq, I felt very sorry for the previous Government because one often had the feeling that they were not being told the truth at every opportunity. On a Defence Select Committee trip to Afghanistan, I remember being briefed by a guy in the Foreign Office who gave us the normal line that everything was going terribly well but that there were challenges. Six weeks later, he sidled up to me in a restaurant and said, ““Adam, I'm really sorry about that briefing I gave you, but the problem is that no one gets promoted for telling it how it is.””