they are vindictive enemies who will stop at nothing to protect themselves

Are you Andrew Collins in disguise?

fuck out of me sometimes what these people will say and do to keep hold of their power and reputation. Is there any chance that Blair will be taken down by this?

The Iraq sanctions were a near-total financial and trade embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council against the nation of Iraq. They began August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait,[1] and continued until May 22, 2003, after the fall of the Saddam Hussein government in the US-led invasion earlier that year. Their stated purpose was at first to compel Iraq's military to withdraw from Kuwait and after that to compel Iraq to pay reparations, and to disclose and eliminate any weapons of mass destruction, and to do certain other things.
Initially the U.N. Security Council had adopted Resolution 661, a resolution that imposed stringent economic sanctions on Iraq.[2] After the end of the 1991 Gulf War, those sanctions were extended and elaborated on, including linkage to removal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), by Resolution 687.[3][4] The sanctions banned all trade and financial resources except for medicine and "in humanitarian circumstances" foodstuffs.[2] They were perhaps the toughest, most comprehensive sanctions in human history, and caused much controversy over the increased child-and-infant mortality, poverty, and suffering inflicted on the Iraqi people, marked by two senior UN representatives in Iraq resigning in protest.

Just as a, ahem, pre-emptive strike against all the 'Bush and Blair cooked the whole thing up on the back of a fag packet' stuff that I fear will shortly follow ;-)

that strongly about the legitimacy of the war or the Government's ethics, he could have done the honourable thing and resigned.

of dead civilians in Iraq will read this report with interest when it appears. I'm sure it will make them feel much better.

Michael Franti's take on the first Persian Gulf Distraction is strangely familiar in 2009.

The Winter Of The Long Hot Summer

It all seemed so idiotic
all the accusations of unpatriotic
The fall we'll always remember,
capitulating silence election November
before the winter
of the long hot summer
Somewhere in the desert
we raised the oil pressure
and waited for the weather
to get much better
for the new wind to blow in the storm
We tried to remember the history in the region
the French foreign legion, Imperialism,
Peter O'Toole and hate the Ayatollah
were all we learned in school
Not that we gave Hussein five billion
Not of our new bed partner the Syrian
and of course no mention
of the Palestine situation
It was amazing how they steamrolled
They said eighty percent approval
but there was no one that I knew polled
No one had a reason for being in the Gulf
We waited for congress to speak up
illegal build up
But no one would wake up
Our representatives were Milli Vanilli's
for corporate Dallas Cowboy Beverly Hillbillies
With perfect timing
the politicians rhyming their sentiments
so nicely oil gold and sand
my sediments precisely....
We regretfully support the lunacy
I'm afraid there is no time for more scrutiny
National unity preserve our community
Teflon® election opportunities
were in profundant abundance
On January second the Bush administration
announced a recession had stricken the Nation
the highest quarterly earnings in ten years
were posted by Chevron®
Meanwhile a budget was placed in our hands
as the deadline in the sand came to an end
so much for the peace dividend
one billion a day is what we spent
and our grandchildren will pay for it 'til the end
When schools are unfunded
and kids don't get their diplomas
they get used for gun boat diplomacy
disproportionately black or brown we see
bullet catchers for the slave master
Then the conservatives called up reservists
to active service left families nervous
but more importantly broke nine hundred a month
but the check came late, army red tape you see,
this golden opportunity
We watched the tube and read the newspaper
The propaganda of the gas masked raper
was the proper slander to whip up the hatred
The stage was lit and the lights were all faded
The pilots in night vision goggles Kuwaited and
generals masturbated
'til the fifteenth two days later they invaded
Not a single t.v. station expressed dissension or
hardly made mention to the censorship of information
from our kinder and gentler nation
blinder and mentaler retardation
DISORIENTATION
The pilots said their bombs lit Baghdad
like a Christmas tree
It was the Christian thing to do you see
they didn't mention any casualties
no distinction between the real
and the proxy
only football analogies
We saw the bomb hole
We watched the Super Bowl
We saw the scud missile
We watched Bud® commercials
We saw the yellow ribbons
Saw pilots in prison
We never saw films of the dead...at eleven
Angela Davis addressed the spectators
and shouting above a rumbling generator said
if they insist on bringing us down
then let's shut the whole country down
Marching through the downtown
A hundred thousand became participants
and we heard the drums of millions off in the distance
rushing through the cities
some of them did things that weren't so pretty
most were there for primal scream therapy
news men concentrated
on the negative liked the jingoists more
peaceful protesters ended up on
the cutting room floor
Nintendo® casualties of the ratings war
More bombs dropped than in World War II
or in both Asian invasions,
new world order persuasion,
Business as usual for our nation
Could you imagine a hundred fifty thousand dead,
the city of Stockton coffins locked in
when we clocked in...not to mention civilians
The loss of life on both sides
pushed the limits of resilience
The scent of blood in our nostrils
fuel of the fossil land of apostle
The blackness that covered the sky
was not the only thing that
brought a tear to the eye or
the taste of anger to the tongues
of those too young to remember
Vietnam
Is heroin better in a veteran's mind
than the memory of the dying laying in a line
Is it the smell or the shadows heaving and weeping
that keeps the soldier from sleeping
as he sings the orphan's lullaby
When the soldiers put down their bayonets
the strings are chained to the marionettes
Emir of Kuwait gets back in his jet
we replace the dead with new cadets
will we hate those who did the shelling
or will we hate those who weren't willing
to do the killing
when the leaders of the bald eagles come home to roost
will we sing a song of praise and indebtedness
for our deliverance from evil
or will we sing a song of sadness
for the dreaded debt this mess
delivered us PEOPLE

Bill Hicks - still ringing down the years...

here, is there?

was very gratified to see Andrew Collins mentioning the passport/9-11 anomaly. I'm not one of the Bush is a lizard brigade, but I have noticed that anyone in the media who dares to mention the number of things that simply don't add up about that day gets tarred with that brush. so well done Andrew!

Nothing selective about that. and please, this is not an invitation to debate. My lunchbreak is over!

It just fell. These things happen. You're right. Sorry for upsetting you.

Occam's Razor applies.

Let's take the conventional view on 9/11.

A bunch of guys decide to hijack some planes and fly them into the WTCs, The Pentagon and Somewhere Else.

Amongst themselves, keeping things quiet, they manage to do so, bar the last one.

They probably didn't expect both WTC's to collapse as they did but the effect of burning aviation fuel on the ferroconcrete structures wasn't really something they considered in their original mandate.

Or the conspiracists' views..

The elected rulers of the largest democracy on Earthn decide to precipitate an oil-motivated global war on Islam by framing Al' Quaida in an act of mass-murder. Hundreds are recruited and kept quiet by a rule of omerta, none have subsequently spoken up, none horrified that their actions have caused the deaths of thousands of their fellow Americans..

There will always be coincidences. The simplest answer is almost always the correct one. Has a conspiracy theory ever been shown to hold water? I refer back to my original post here. The disputes surrounding the Iraq War are not conspiracy theories.

forward to reading what James Ellroy has to make of it all.

... it did occur to me that we (USA and UK amongst others) were supporters of Saddam Hussein when he was pitched against Iran. Obviously the methods used by his government during this period were acceptable as we turned the other cheek.
Birchill is a New-Labour apologist and her articles always seem to smack of selective amnesia. I doubt very much that she was championing for an invasion of Iraq during the eighties as this would have smacked of a return to the colonialism and imperialism from days of yore and would have sat uneasily with the thin transparent veneer of socialism she covered herself in during those days. Also, if we take her point literally then shouldn't we be planning to invade Zimbabwe, North Korea and any of the other despotic states that blight our world. Or should we check to see if they have reserves of oil first?

the points in this last defence 'from someone opposed to the war', but thought better of it. Never discuss politics. Instead I'm going to start a new thread called "What's the worst religion" and see if we can make it onto the front pages of a few international newspapers. Maybe get a fatwa or two going.

If you look at the site I lifted the text from, the whole point of it is that two people argue their opposite number's case. If you want, you can look at the pro-war person arguing the anti-war case, but seeing as the anti-war case is conventional wisdom in right-wing Tory and hard left alike...

Your reply is interesting. I'm guessing you're on the left, and anti-war. Nothing wrong with that. However, I can't help noticing a very strong trend developing on the left in recent years - that of resorting to ad hominem attacks rather than responding to substantive points. The elephant in the room where that phenomenon is concerned is of course 'anthropogenic global warming' (see what I did there with the inverted commas?) but that's a whole 'nother thread ;-)