• destined to last Looting remains a problem in the city. This allows Bush to claim now that the reason no weapons of mass destruction have been found is that they were probably looted.
The occupation of Iraq is now destined to last several years. A more serious concern for the Americans is that Iraq's oil industry, which they hoped to use to pay for the occupation and privatisation of the country, Christian Science Monitor and the Mail on Sunday. But as Galloway rightly says, who was behind the forgeries in the first place? Were the security services involved and if this were the case what knowledge did leading figures in the government have of this?
Moreover Galloway remains suspended from the Labour Party, supposedly for the campaign itself continues at a much higher level than it did after the Afghan war.
The June STW activists conference drew nearly 500 people, this compares with a similar conference in June 2002 where only 100 attended. STW will be supporting the protest against the international arms show in Docklands in September. A trade union delegation to Iraq is being planned and will take place this year.
The Cairo conference which produced the Cairo Declaration is being reconvened in November and STW will be working to send a significant delegation to Egypt. A national demonstration with both CND and the Muslim Association will take place in late September, just before the Labour Party Conference, and on the third anniversary of the Intifada. T movement i contral. The key no he question of the unity of the
building the mass anti-war campaign has always been to focus on what unites the broad movement rather than on what divides it.
And what unites the movement is oppo sition to the war on terror and the questions of defending civil liberties and oppos ing racism. Refugees from both Afghanistan and Iraq are faced with being forced to return to countries that the Foreign Office now declares 'safe' even though these countries are now more unstable than ever.
The STW June conference also received two delegations from Japan. What is essential now is to cherish and develop these international contacts. The most inspiring aspect of the anti-war movement has been its internationalism. On February 15 there were 600 demonstrations round the world and millions marched against the war.
nternationalism is important not because it is a fine idea but because it
is the only real force that can end the Project for the New American Century. Since the end of the cold war some have mourned the loss of the Soviet Union as a counterbalance to the unbridled imperialism unleashed by the Bush regime However this was never the reality of the international situation because it always involved the subordination of the interests of working people internationally to the needs of the Soviet bureaucracy. Now there is a possibility to create a new international movement
Those millions who demonstrated on February 15 have not been won to the side of reaction. In Britain the opinion polls now show a big majority who consider the war to have been wrong and based on lies Having come onto the streets once they will do so again.
The logic of Blair's position is that he must now follow every twist and turn of Bush's war on terror. As relations deteriorate between Europe and America his schizophrenic politics will destroy him.
For the socialist left the burning question is to found a politically coherent organisation capable of responding to a situation in which hundreds of thousands, if not millions, are beginning to ask questions to which reformism has no answers.