As the world teeters on the edge of war, the pretexts of the warmongers have never seemed so flimsy. A rattled Tony Blair has now rounded on the millions who have marched against the war, comparing them to those who wanted to appease Hitler. But this is just the latest contortion as the massive global protests have rapidly unraveled the lies and spin peddled by the British pro-war camp. We have been told that: British and US intelligence have credible evidence of Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction.
The British "dossier" was exposed as a hodge podge of recycled old media reports and a plagiarised student thesis. Then Hans Blix effectively rubbished US evidence to the UN, explicitly rejecting some of the claims. The vast majority of Western contries back war.
This claim was based on a pro-war letter signed by Aznar, Blair, Berlusconi and a handful of cash-starved Eastern European states. The largest of the global protests (absolutely and per head of population) were precisely in those states supporting the war drive -Britain, Spain, Italy (and Australia) -whose heads of state signed the letter. The British government will only back war without a UN resolution if it is blocked by one country "unreasonably" exercising a veto. With the developing NATO split and the unwillingness of France, Germany, Russia, China and others to jump on the war bandwagon it became increasingly apparent that Bush and Blair would struggle to get a majority on the security council. The "unreasonable veto" line has since quietly been dropped. People are essentially pro-war but a second UN resolution. the anti-war marchers - was there a single placard displayed or slogan shouted to this effect? Did any of the platform speakers suggest it? The marchers were overwhelmingly against war because it isn't justified. Full stop. There is credible evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link.
Bin Laden devoted a significant chunk of his recent video to attacking the Iraqi regime. In any event with the country crawling with UN inspectors and CIA spy satellites not a shred of actual evidence has been produced.
not regime change but stopping the of mass destruction. they just want it rubber-stamped by Saddam Hussein. This particular lie was blown apart by
moral motives. (China). tional community'. The British government's war aim is threat from weapons Iragi soldier slaughtered in the last Gulf War
This porky was exposed by Blair himself on the morning of the monster demos. Desperate to shore up support, he did a U-turn and admitted the real purpose was overthrowing This war will be a "humanitarian act" conducted from the highest •The government's claim to the high moral ground is flatly contradicted by its own record. Its "ethical foreign policy" was explicitly ditched in favour of "pragmatism" and profit-making, coupled with double standards on friends who consistently breach UN resolutions (Israel) and slaughter workers Those who oppose war risk dividing and discrediting the UN, and therefore the very notion of an internaThe logic behind this spin seems bizarre. The world is united.... AGAINST WAR. It is the unrepresentative pro-war elite (who happen to have all the guns and money) that threaten this unity. The only reason more people aren't backing war is because there are no ghastly TV images to frighten people into backing war.
Basically, they're losing the political, moral, intellectual and factual arguments and they are blaming it on a lack of pictures. How condescending can you get? One of the movement's main arguments is precisely that the US and Britain are complicit in the crimes of Hussein and other dictators. Tony Blair speaks for the people.
The biggest marches in British, and probably world, history speak for themselves. Polls show Blair's support plummeting. In particular his strongest card - that he can be trusted as a man of integrity - is a fading memory.
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Protests against the war have spread throughout Europe, while state paranoia over political opposition has grown 4 soclalist resistance March 2003 Piers Mostyn OVER 130 people from Muslim or Middle Eastern backgrounds have been rounded up in a wave of recent arrests by the three states heading the pro-war campaign in Europe. In Britain there were at least 94 held in the ten weeks prior to 15th February, representing a trebling of the previous arrest rate under the Terrorism Act.
Scandalous press campaigns effectively tried and convicted those arrested before they even got near a courtroom. But only a quarter were ultimately charged with "terrorism" related offences. The majority were quietly released without any charge. For example:
Four people were arrested on the 9th January. Their offence? Being Algerians outside a Bureau de Change in possession of $16,000. All released VAT Civil rights under threat occupations, pickets, political vandalism) and terrorism. In the USA in January it was revealed that FBI supervisors have been ordered to profile all Muslims and mosques in their areas, in particular interviewing thousands of Iraqi origin -under the guise of assessing vulnerability to terrorist attack.
Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations commented, "this is obviously an indication to FBI field agents that they have to view every mosque and every Muslim as a potential terrorist. This is really imposing a sense of siege on the ArabAmerican community". And the American Civil Liberties Union has compared this with an ethnic census in the Second World War, information from which was infamously used to intern Japanese Americans.
Hundreds are still being detained without trial by the USA at Guantanamo Bay and other locations.