...the British vowed to end three centuries of Ottoman rule, which had
grown corrupt, repressive and economically stifling. "Our armies do not
come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies but as
liberators," proclaimed Gen. Stanley Maude, commander of the British
forces, as his troops marched into Baghdad in 1917.
"When we have made Mesopotamia a model state, there is
not an Arab of Syria and Palestine who wouldn't want
to be part of it," she [Gertrude Bell, a British colonial
official] told the king, adding that she
hoped to see Faisal "ruling from the Persian frontier
to the Mediterranean."
-- Jonathan Kandell. "Iraq's Unruly Century",
Smithsonian Magazine May 2003.