Tim Collins (Ex-army)

Colonel (retd) Tim Collins OBE (born Belfast, Northern Ireland, April 1960) is a former colonel in the British Army. He is best known for his role in the Iraq War in 2003, and his inspirational eve-of-battle speech, a copy of which apparently hangs in the White House's Oval Office. By 2005 he was to make a complete about-face on his assessment of the war, calling it a "catastrophe" and a "right-rollicking cock-up".

Collins was born into a Protestant (Presbyterian} family and raised in Northern Ireland, where he grew up during the very worst of the Troubles. His secondary education was at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution - universally known as "Inst" - before he attended Queen's University of Belfast, where he read economics. His school career was notable not so much for high academic achievement as for a focussed involvement with the Inst Combined Cadet Force (CCF) contingent and the school Rifle Club, which he captained at Bisley. Collins was notable for solemn determination, considerable achievement, and an impatiently sceptical attitude towards authority, a combination of traits which later brought him success as a regimental soldier and occasioned abrasive relationships with some superior officers

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