movement against War Hilover the word nok to the undreds of thousands of people
streets on january 18 in the biggest global day of protest yet seen against war with Iraq
From London to Tokyo, Ireland to Syria, demonstrators marched to oppose the warmongering of George W Bush and the support role played by Tony Blair.
One of the biggest demonstrations to take place was in the heart of the beast, Washington DC, where a quarter of a million braved the bitter cold to send Bush a clear message: NO WAR"
Other protests across the US included Oakland and San Francisco in California, Albuquerque, Ann Arbor, Boston, and Indianapolis.
But the protests spanned across the world. Pakistan saw protests in Karachi and Lahore. Some of the biggest protests to take place were in the Middle East, with tens of thousands demonstrating in Syria's capital Damascus. In Egypt, an angry protest was attacked by riot police, while other protests went ahead in Beirut, and .... Istanbul in Turkey.
But just as the protests were taking place, the US was claiming that the drive to war was 'totally irreversible'. After discovering a dozen harmless and forgotten empty shells that might once have been intended to hold chemical weapons, UN weapons chief Hans Blix claimed they had evidence of an attempt by Saddam Hussein to build atomic weapons.
In reality they had found old documents in the homes of two Iraqi scientists dating back to the 1980 - when Saddam was an ally of the west.
Desperate to find the smoking gun, the UN is demanding more co-operation from Iraq. But only the week previously Blix was demanding more co-operation from Bush for refusing to hand over intelligence claiming to point to sites where weapons of mass destruction were held.
But it is increasingly clear that the B
Americans have given up on securing any significant evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction: .... ..• they know that virtually all of these were in fact destroyed by UN inspectors after the last Gulf War.
So the whole emphasis has now shifted from finding evidence to condemning Iraq's "failure of comply and co-operate". The fact that the shells and papers were discovered by the inspectors rather than volun teered by the Iraqis is cited as evidence that Saddam's regime is not being sufficiently "proacative" in seeking to prove its innocence.
Now Bush's advisors are tipping off the media that they will seek a fresh UN resolu tion citing this failure to comply as a pretext for war.
The process will go into overdrive in the final week of January, as more troops and munitions are dispatched to Kuwait and
• Anti-war protests clockwise from top left: Belgium, Germany, Syria, the USA and Poland. Below: Britain's second best selling tabloid, the Daily Mirror sees the potential support for the anti-war line. There is a lunatic with weapons of mass destruction ramping up' for a war that will imperil the whole world