Lament For Iraq (Bin The Spin)

Nobody should forget that the nation and society of Iraq have been destroyed, ruined and turned into a failed state. The Americans invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly, tortured, humiliated and demoralised the Iraqis. They have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives. More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile. Their air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium, beset with the most awful birth defects. Unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up again. The same is happening in Afghanistan.

It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the invasion.h

Iraqis increasingly say how vile Saddam was and how he gassed and killed millions of people ...and he did...but rewind the tape a few years. Saddam did all of these things when he was our ally and Thatcher and Reagan supplied him with the means to gas and kill these people. The political left, myself included, protested this at the time but no-one was listening.
Finally when we invaded Iraq Saddam was nothing more than a powerless demagogue lording it over a destitute and broken economy. Actually tens of thousands of Iraqis were still dying, but mostly as a result of us bombing their water treatment facilities and the sanctions that we imposed that wouldn't allow the importation of basic medical supplies and humanitarian aid.
Blair's greatest sin is that he understood Saddam was a tottering dictator on his last legs (and was absolutely NO threat to us or his own people) and he went along with US neo-conservative realpolitik theories to be on the right side of history because he thought it would be easy, despite the fact that middle east experts told him otherwise.
Obama thinks this is some kind of 'success' for the US military. What kind of a science fiction world are we living in these days?

Just Another Day In Iraq

He says he can pinpoint the root of his problems back to an incident in Basra in the first month of the Iraq invasion, seven years ago. "We were told to hit and clear an enemy building," says Dale. "The tanks opened up on the building and we went in, firing, throwing grenades in every room. We thought there was no one firing back because of the weight of fire. But when we got in there, it wasn't an enemy building, it was just a normal family. There were about seven of them in total. Dead children lying all over the floor." It was 27 March, 2003, his 33rd birthday.

As platoon sergeant he had to clear the casualties: "I really struggled hard with it. We were always told that we had to go in gently, not to injure any civilians. Me and the corporal got together afterwards and we knew what we'd done was wrong. But you tried not to talk about it."

My conclusion is that this victim of the Iraq debacle still doesn't understand his own part in it. Full story here.

Help For Heroes Appeal

Grown men aren't supposed to cry. But if you have been through all that Alastair has, going to hell and back, crying is impossible to avoid. Alastair still has flashbacks to the war in Iraq and how he helped start it. It was his job. He was good at it. He sat up all night copying things from the internet to warn the nation that they were going to be blown up in 45 minutes. Now he sits alone staring out of the window trying to make a new life for himself as a diarist. But the past keeps coming back to haunt him. Even on Sunday mornings when he is tirelessly plugging his books on TV AM, memories of his former life can overwhelm him and he loses control. He will blurt out things like ' I lost my best buddy in that war. I owed him everything. Tony was a great guy. We covered each other's backs.'

DONT FORGET ALASTAIR AND GIVE GENEROUSLY NOW.

Help For Heroes

PO BOX 2003

Fallujah Industrial Estate.

New Labour Let's Move On Mantra

This is worth reading just for the comments by the Guardianistas (of whom I am one). I am greatly reassured by these comments in the light of my own misgivings re Iraq which has haunted me, and I'm not exaggerating, since 2003. It bothers me that that the thought of the horrors perpetrated by the 'special relationship' should haunt me who marched against the proposed invasion and does not seem to bother the 'let's move on' brigade - Blair, Milliband, Balls, Brown, Hain, Harman....blah.. blah....bleurrrrrgh. I'll let the Guardianistas speak for me....;.

One Day To The Death of the New Labour Cult - Thanksgiving UK

Reasons to be grateful to Tony Blair and New Labour (hat-tip to William Burroughs):

Thanks for the 'special relationship'

Thanks for extraordinary rendition

Thanks for the 10p tax threshold

Thanks for the Private Finance Initiative(from an idea by M.Thatcher)

Thanks for the carnage in Iraq & Afghanistan

Thanks for the failed privatisation of the Post Office

Thanks for trying (and failing) to exclude the Gurkhas

Thanks for ID Cards by the back door

Thanks for the surveillance society

Thanks for schmoozing the bankers for years

Thanks for cash for honours

Thanks for Fred the Shred (Knighted by you)

Thanks, finally, to you and Brown for cleaning up British politics as you promised in 1997.

Kinnock on Iraq – ‘ Let’s Move On'

Lets move on, Neil? Move on from 1.5M people (low estimate) displaced? Move on from 300,000 men, women and children(very low estimate) dead? Move on from white phosphorous and depleted uranium-induced deformities in babies in Fallujah? Move on from Abu Ghraib, torture and rendition? Move on from the billions wasted in creating chaos and a Shiite theocracy in Iraq? Yes I bet you and your New Labour friends would like to move on. On the bright side, most of your candidates will be moving on to a career outside politics after the election on 6^th May and it will be largely as a result of the Iraq bloodbath and the other betrayals of everything that the Labour movement ever stood for. Why did they wheel you out to utter this crass, cynical garbage? Because Brown and Milliband and Mandelson don’t want their names in the same sentence as the word Iraq. You on the other hand are expendable to New Labour (and everyone else now). Roll on May 7^th. Clegg for PM.

Secret Jail Abuse In Iraq

They were held at al-Muthanna until the human rights ministry gained access to the prison and closed the facility.

"We were tortured for four long months continuously," another former detainee said.

"Whether you recognise or not, whatever they want you to say, they keep torturing you and the prisoners. They died in the torture."

Link To Short Video Here

Lobby Your Candidate on The War Debacles

Details of your candidate here. The occupations must be debated.

£6000 for Cavalry Kit, £2000 for Combat Troops

From The Herald

IAN BRUCE, Defence Correspondent
March 21 2007

The Ministry of Defence spends almost three times as much to equip members of the Household Cavalry for ceremonial duties in London as it does to kit out soldiers for the front line in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Figures obtained by The Herald show that the cost of dress uniforms, breastplate, helmet, thigh boots, swords, and ornate buckles and badges for cavalrymen who remain in London, largely as a tourist attraction, amounts to more than £6000 a trooper for up to three years.
The bill for desert camouflage combat clothing and accoutrements for soldiers sent to fight insurgents in Basra and Helmand is about £2200, while those deployed to more temperate areas such as the Balkans are issued with £760 worth of uniforms.

The five Foot Guards regiments, who also draw ceremonial guard and parade duties as part of the Queen's Household Division, have about £1000 spent on their red tunics, dark blue trousers and controversial bearskin headgear.
The MoD also pays for the upkeep of more than 400 horses for the Household Cavalry mounted regiment, the unit which provides mounted escorts for royal occasions such as Trooping the Colour.
While troops in action in both Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered shortages of everything from desert uniforms and boots to reliable ammunition in the past four years, soldiers wearing uniforms not seen on any battlefield since Waterloo in 1815 are armed with swords worth up to £1000.
Prince Harry is already a cornet (a second lieutenant) in the Blues and Royals and Prince William will follow him into the regiment after passing out from Sandhurst later this year.
Harry's dress uniform cost £2500, even though his first posting is as an armoured troop leader in Iraq.

The Madness of King Tony

Published Date: February 27, 2007 By Marina Hyde

If one is to endure a prime ministerial discourse on Iraq for any length of time these days, it is necessary - in the name of sanity - to cultivate strategies of detachment. Destroying another radio solves nothing, and there may be health risks associated with beginning one's waking day shouting dementedly at the glottal-stopped voice drifting over the airwaves. And so it was, listening to Tony Blair sing the praises of his Iraq adventure on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Thursday, that my mind began to wander. If it wasn't all such a bleeding mess, I thought vaguely, the prime minister's delusions of success would be almost comical. Comical ... comical ... the word triggered some neural connection. But what? Gradually but inexorably, the memory of another charismatic proselytiser for Iraq's rude health began to resolve itself. Cast your mind back to the Iraq war as it was originally billed - the one where we won in three weeks - and which revisionist historians may just come to classify as a kind of phoney war curtain- raiser to the prolonged horror that succeeded it. Quite the most entertaining cameo of the day was that played by Saddam's information minister Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf, who we came to know as Comical Ali. Not for him the relentless negativity that so exasperates Tony Blair where critics of his mission's success are concerned. "There are only two American tanks in the city," the information minister would beam beatifically during one of his must-watch daily briefings in early 2003, surrounded by reporters who would have been to able to count at least three if they stood on a low chair. Or recall his declaration as news channels screened footage of coalition troops patrolling Saddam international airport: "They are not in control of any airport." Listening again to Blair's Today interview, it is easy to imagine his declarations as simply one melody in a discordant symphony, a series of those beloved soundbites that could be spliced with contrapuntal news of actual events. "We should be immensely proud." Crash! A six-hour firefight in Ramadi leaves 12 dead. "What we had to do was rebuild an Iraqi army and police - we did that." Bang! A US soldier dies and three are injured by a roadside bomb in Diwaniya. "It is better now that [Saddam] has gone." Wallop! A car bomb factory is discovered in Baghdad. Just as it was with his apparent inspiration, Comical Ali, it becomes ever more difficult to avoid the suspicion that the prime minister is living in a parallel universe, where success and failure are merely states of mind. Of course, as mentioned, the information minister's input in this historic saga was limited to a cameo. After being captured by coalition forces, he was almost instantly released, evidently deemed to have known so little as to be useless. Unlike Blair, Al-Sahaf seems to have become swiftly aware of the limits of his appeal, and after a few TV appearances, he now lives an unassuming existence in the United Arab Emirates. His prime ministerial imitator, however, is assumed to have far loftier plans, with the North American lecture tour a seeming inevitability. Enthralled audiences can no doubt expect more insights such as we gained on Thursday, when the PM appeared to justify Iraq's sprightly journey in the direction of civil war with the observation: "You can't absolutely predict every set of circumstances that comes about." Well quite. You can, however, have a vague punt on possible outcomes, and if you are over the age of 15, not involved in a still- unfathomed platonic infatuation with the US president, and willing to listen to intelligence you didn't pilfer off the internet, you might hazard the road ahead was slightly more pitfall-ridden than seems to have been judged. But will the time ever come, one wonders idly, when our revisionist historians reconsider the ravings of Comical Ali? The idiocy of most of his statements will, admittedly, endure. Footwear- based supremacy has not been achieved, despite the much-vaunted boast that the Iraqis would be waiting for the coalition forces "with shoes". But the smile fades when recalling other pronouncements. "Do not be hasty because your disappointment will be huge," the old crazy warned. "You will reap nothing from this aggressive war, which you launched on Iraq, except for disgrace and defeat." "We will embroil them, confuse them, and keep them in the quagmire," he said later, adding that "they cannot just enter a country of 26 million people and lay besiege to them! They are the ones who will find themselves under siege." There are, of course, rather fewer than 26 million people in Iraq these days, but even those who dispute the precise extent of the population depletion might agree that it comes to something when, in hindsight, several statements by this preposterous character seem more prophetic than anything spouted by the British government at the time. Fortunately for Mr Blair, this kind of cynicism is not voguish in the hotel ballrooms of North America. There he may expect to be permanently cosseted against any unwelcome intrusions of reality, and we can only wish him the speediest of journeys. - Guardian