Extremists in the driving seat

Socialist Resistance no2 | page 12

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

We should not ignore the very real problems that the Bush and Blair camp now face. They risk entangling themselves in a political and military process over which they cannot determine the final outcome, and which has a logic of its own.

Given the parlous state of the world economy the war has to be won quickly. If not then the financial costs will rise steeply. .... William Nordhaus, former US presidential economics adviser, argues that a protracted War might cost $1595 billion.

Moreover as has been argued in Resistance, Iraq is only the second stage in this new world war.

A few days ago, Henry Hyde, chairman of the House Relations Committee in the US, wrote to Bush arguing that the electioniof Lula in Brazil was extremely dangerous.

Lula was 'a pro-Castro radical' who would form with Chavez of Venezeula and Castro himself 'an axis of evil in the Americas', threatening the US with a '30kiloton nuclear bomb'.

The fact that Brazil has no nuclear programme is of no concern to such people. • • • .