War in Iraq


A Letter for Gordon

From Stop the War

Gordon Brown will make a statement on the war in Iraq when parliament returns in October. Stop the War has begun organising a new mass campaign calling on Brown to bring all the British troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan immediately and to use his October statement to signal a break from George Bush’s foreign policy. An open letter to the Prime Minister is printed below and you can add your name online now at: http://www.stopwar.org.uk.

On Monday 8 October, Stop the War is organising a national troops out protest at Parliament, at which MPs will again be lobbied to reflect the opinion of the vast majority of people in Britain.

The latest opinion polls show that two thirds of the British people want the troops out of Iraq now and only six per cent think the war in Afghanistan is being won. Leaders of the British military have made it clear that they think the game is up in Iraq, or as Major General Richard Dannatt puts it, “We should get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems”.

OPEN LETTER TO GORDON BROWN:

Dear Prime Minister

We urge you to use your October statement to signal a break from George Bush’s foreign policy and to bring all the British troops out of Iraq immediately, regardless of US plans. It is clear the presence of British troops in Iraq is a pointless waste of life. The majority of Iraqis want them to go. Most soldiers have been withdrawn to base outside Basra where they play no active role but are coming under fire regularly and taking heavy casualties. It is time to go. The occupation of Afghanistan is sliding in to chaos so familiar from Iraq and the troops should be brought home. An attack on Iran would be a disaster for the population and would increase instability in the region.

We need a change of course.

If you would like to join us in helping to build the troops out now campaign, contact the Stop the War national office and we will explain how you can get involved: Telephone 020 7278 6694 or email [email protected]

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How much longer? How many more?

Yesterday, Muqtada al-Sadr was quoted as saying of the British military presence in Iraq:

“They are retreating because of the resistance they have faced. Without that, they would have stayed for much longer, there is no doubt.”

Unfortunately for the British, the trend in casualties in Iraq does reinforce what he had to say about the situation. For the last year, the 3-month moving average for combat classified casualties has climb steadily, rising from 7 per month in July 2006 to 42 per month by the end of June this year. Total casualties for 2007 have so far reached 1246.

British casualties in Iraq

Casualty Monitor has more details and also looks at the more mixed picture arising from the statistics for the war in Afghanistan.

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More Lord Scumbag

My article below detailed how some have done very well out of the war, particularly British Aerospace, with their unique hold over New Labour, their enforcer Jack Straw and his henchman Lord Taylor of Blackburn.

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/08/theres_good_mon.html#comments

I noted that since the BAE scandal, their name had been dropped from Lord Scumbag’s extensive list of paid consultancies and directorships in the House of Lords’ Register of Members’ Interests, but postulated that some of his many other contracts might be from/for BAE.

With hust an hour’s googling, one of us (who will be known as “V”) has sent me the following:

Here’s the list of companies Lord Taylor of Blackburn has a registered interest with.

Non-parliamentary consultant

Adviser, Initial Electronic Security Systems Limited

Adviser, Electronic Data Systems Limited

Adviser, Drax Power Limited

Adviser, Experian Limited

Adviser, NPL Estates

Adviser, Lucent Technologies

Adviser, Fujitsu Services

Adviser, Canatxx Energy Ventures Limited

Adviser, LogicaCMG UK Limited

Adviser, BT plc

President, Wrens Hotel Group

Remunerated directorships Non-executive Director, A Division Holdings Limited

Non-executive Director, Eisis Limited

1: Initial Electronic Security Systems Limited

Initial Electronic Security Systems was purchased by UTC Fire & Security in July, 2007

The following is from the news section of their own website:

http://www.iess.co.uk/news05.html

Monday, August 13, 2007

Flying High

High flyers Initial Fire Systems flew into action when BAE SYSTEMS awarded the fire company ‘Phase one’, the first stage in a complete refurbishment programme of fire protection at the defence manufacturer’s huge Warton facility.

The 750 acre site, where over 9000 people are employed is a final assembly site for BAE SYSTEMS – a major international company and one of this country’s leading exporters. Warton leads the world in systems integration and engineering for military aircraft, such as the Nimrod, Tornado, Eurofighter and Harrier.

The contract, one of the largest fire installations undertaken by Initial Fire’s Blackburn branch, involved the design and installation of 31 smoke detection and fire extinguishing systems, monitored and controlled by the British Aerospace Fire Station on sophisticated PC based NT graphics software, again designed and installed by Initial Fire Systems.

2: Electronic Data Systems Limited

From BAE’s website news archive:

http://www.baesystems.com/Newsroom/NewsReleases/2003/press_07012003.html

BAE SYSTEMS Awarded Major Sub-Contract For Royal Navy Messaging Enhancements

07 Jan 2003

BAE Systems C4ISR has been awarded a major sub-contract by EDS Defence within the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence’s Naval Afloat Messaging Coherency (NAMC) programme. This will provide a coherent formal military messaging facility to Royal Navy vessels at sea and enable access to Information Exchange services provided by the shore-based Defence Message Handling Systems (Navy) [DMHS(N)], which was also supplied by BAE Systems.

BAE Systems will be supplying its Summit-iX Information Exchange software product to EDS Defence for incorporation into the NAMC solution. Summit-iX is also employed within the DMHS(N) and is currently being delivered to the Royal Navy’s new Type 45 destroyers.

Summit-iX represents the United Kingdom’s first implementation of NATO’s new messaging standard STANAG 4406 Edition 1 and, to ensure inter-operability with ships and submarines using the existing older standard, features the proven BAE Systems’ MPS2000 product integrated within it.

NAMC is a key element in the process of rolling out a consistent information infrastructure into the Royal Navy. Supporting the creation of network-enhanced capability, it will be fitted to current Royal Navy aircraft carriers, Type 42 destroyers, Type 23 and Type 22 frigates, and to some Royal Fleet Auxiliaries, replacing a number of legacy systems. This will allow the Royal Navy to gain the benefits of coherence with its existing systems, planned future systems and under-pinning shore based support infrastructures.

The BAE Systems C4ISR Communications & Defence Infrastructure team based at Portsmouth will be supporting EDS Defence’s activities, which are focused on completing fleet-wide rollout by the middle of 2007.

BAE Systems awarded contract for new Royal Navy Warfare Operator Training programme

http://www.baesystems.com/Newsroom/NewsReleases/2006/press_13012006.html

13 Jan 2006 | Ref. 014/2005

BAE Systems has been awarded a contract by the Defence Logistics Organisation (DLO) for the Maritime Composite Training System (MCTS) Phase 1 programme, valued at approximately ‘100M.

This will provide the Royal Navy with a new shore-based Warfare Operator Training capability to meet the needs of the Type 45 Ready for Training later this decade and current in-service surface platforms.

MCTS offers a more flexible approach to training than is currently available and supports the aims of the Navy’s Versatile Maritime Training concept. Flexibility is achieved through the use of generic Classroom Based Skills Training for early training requirements ensuring that allocation to platform type can be deferred to the latest possible point in the training pipeline. High functional fidelity training is used where platform specific Individual Skills and Warfare Team Training are required. MCTS facilities will be situated at both the Maritime Warfare School Collingwood and the Devonport Waterfront.

Captain Mark Darlington, FLEET Assistant Chief of Staff (Naval Training and Education), said: “The SEABRIDGE partners bring a unique blend of expertise to this project. Their combined experience in the field of maritime operations and the training needed to support it, together with the already proven hardware and simulation software will better assist the RN produce capable, motivated and highly trained sailors primed to take their new skills into a highly demanding operational environment. The signing of this contract represents a very important step in bringing to life the concept of Versatile Maritime Training to support the Royal Navy of the 21st Century. The successful delivery of the MCTS project is vital to both individual and collective team performance.’

BAE Systems Integrated System Technologies (Insyte) leads the SEABRIDGE team with its partners Aerosystems International, EDS, Flagship Training, MDA and Serco.

Clive Richardson, Managing Director, BAE Systems Integrated System Technologies (Insyte), said: ‘BAE Systems, with our partners in the SEABRIDGE consortium, is delighted to have been selected to deliver the Maritime Composite Training System. We have used our deep experience in maritime operations to develop a cutting-edge, versatile training environment for Royal Navy personnel to develop and practice their skills. BAE Systems regards MCTS as an early step in the strategy to deliver coherent, timely and effective training to meet all the Royal Navy’s emerging requirements and to form the foundation of realisable joint training’.

Work on MCTS has started and facilities will be situated at the Maritime Warfare School Collingwood, Portsmouth and the Devonport Waterfront, Plymouth.

3: Fujitsu Services

Eurofighter Typhoon

We are working with Bae Systems and CASA on the European Eurofighter programme and Ground Support Systems for the aircraft. Fujitsu’s UK, Spanish, German and Italian arms are providing fixed and deployable IT infrastructures to their airforces. These run both engineering and mission support systems essential to the aircraft’s operation.

Source (http://www.fujitsu.com/uk/industries/defence/experience/)

Also Fujitsu seem to have been working with BAE on some sort of software for Joint Operations/battlefield situational awareness. I can’t really work out what this is apart from its military, its communications and it’s something to do with BAE, take a look at the pdf and see if it makes any sense to you.

http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/EU/uk/industries/defence/UKIT36-openJOP.pdf

4: LogicaCMG UK Limited

This is an old news story from BAE’s own archives.

http://www.baesystems.com/Newsroom/NewsReleases/2002/press_06062002.html

BAE SYSTEMS awards contract for security evaluation of royal navy’s type 45 destroyer communications system

06 Jun 2002

BAE Systems has awarded a contract for the security evaluation of the Royal Navy’s Type 45 Destroyer’s Fully Integrated Communications System (FICS) to Logica UK Ltd of Leatherhead, Surrey, United Kingdom, acting in the role of a CommerciaL Evaluation Facility (CLEF).

This represents a further significant phase in the fulfilment of the FICS programme – in February 2001, the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence awarded a contract for the development and installation of the FICS to Thales Communications Ltd. The latter is working in partnership with the BAE Systems C4ISR’s Communications & Defence Infrastructure team, based at Christchurch, United Kingdom, and Raytheon Inc, USA, to fulfil the requirement.

The contract award for security evaluation for Type 45 FICS follows closely upon the completion of the security clearance of the integrated internal and external communications systems being installed by Thales, in partnership with the BAE Systems team, on the Royal Navy’s new Landing Platform Dock (Replacement) platforms, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark.

The contract complements Logica UK Ltd’s other commitments within the Type 45 programme. These include providing security evaluation services on the Data Transfer and Combat Management Systems, and supplying consultancy services for security evaluation to the BAE Systems Prime Contract Office.

5: Non-executive Director, A Division Holdings Limited

From their own website:

http://www.adivisiongroup.com/content.asp?did=23765

Our history

The establishment of the A Division Group of companies was the culmination of many years of expertise and experience in education ,health and information technology on the part of the core members of our team, which resulted in the formation of the A Division Group in London, England in April 2001.

Although the Group has wide ranging international activities ,interests and operations and indeed, global ambitions, the Groups primary activities are centred upon the educational field, where A Division Learning Systems Limited is a primary sub-contractor to BAE Systems plc ,one of the World’s leading Defence contractors, for the delivery of education based projects worldwide.

To date A Division Learning Systems Limited has successfully delivered and continues to support IT based educational systems and programmes ‘ including Smart Learning and CAD-CAM, in Brunei, Kuwait, Malaysia and Thailand.

6: Non-executive Director, Eisis Limited

Eisis Limited is a subsidiary of EDS Electronic Data Systems Limited which owns 50% of Eisis

(source http://www.transnationale.org/companies/eds_electronic_data_systems.php)

This is the only thing I could find about Eisis, couldn’t confirm it from any other source as yet.

As Rector of the University of Dundee, one thing that shocked me was the way that New Labour have packed their apparatchiks on to University Courts (as on every other Board and Quango in the land.)

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/04/dundee_universi.html

It therefore comes as no surprise to find that Lord Scumbag of Death, aka Lord Taylor of Blackburn, a man doing very nicely out of the war, is a life member of the Court of the University of Lancaster – where I am now an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Law. I think I know some of the direction my research might take.

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Prisoner of Conscience

The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee reports the bleeding obvious, that our failure to support a ceasfire in the Lebanon materially damaged the UK’s political standing (courtesy of rabid Zionist and “Peace Envoy” T. Blair). The FAC report is well worth reading in full, as it is scathing on the disaster of Iraq as well.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmfaff/363/363.pdf

The official government response shows that, for all Brown’s claims, spin is still alive and well. Lying through his teeth, an FCO spokesman said that:

The UK worked strenuously for a ceasefire in Lebanon.

In fact the opposite was true. I had a friend and former colleague call me from our Mission to the United Nations phone me from New York at the time in deep personal despair, as he had been instructed to keep an early ceasfire resolution off the Security Council agenda by making it known that we would veto it. Meanwhile everyday he was seeing news footage of dead Lebanese chhildren dragged from the rubble of their homes.

One brave man who tried to do something about it was Marcus Armstrong. For having better moral sense and a great deal more guts than the rest of us, Marcus is now in jail. I received this email yesterday asking for messages of support, and I thought this was the best way I could pass it on, with my warmest endorsement.

During August 2006 US airforce planes, and planes chartered by them, were stopping to refuel at Prestwick airport while delivering munitions to the Israeli army. These bombs were then being used in the indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon and Lebanese civilians.

Protestors gathered at Prestwick. Their aim was to raise awareness among the population locally and worldwide and to try to stop the flights. Information in the press and public channels was incomplete and contradictory.

Some of the issues under discussion were

Prestwick is a civilian airport unsuitable for such military activity

There was much secrecy surrounding the flights . Why?

Muntions passing through our peaceful part of Ayrshire were killing innocent civilians elsewhere

Shannon airport had already refused permission . Why was it granted at Prestwick?

On 3 nights in early August some of the protestors broke into Prestwick and to carry out a citizens inspection of the planes to establish whether the flights were actually carrying munitions. 8 of these protestors were tried at Ayr sheriff court ;last week . Evidence against them was incomplete. After the first 5 days of the trail 7 were released. Today was the last day of the trial. The last protestor, Marcus Armstrong , stood accused of breaking into the airfield and boarding a plane.

Marcus bravely conducted his own defence. He didn’t to deny the action but defended his motives. It was, he said, his responsibility , right and duty to try to protect the innocent civilians for whom the munitions were destined. He was trying to do this by gathering information, raising awareness and perhaps he would be able to disrupt the flights.

Its a difficult thing for a civilian to defend himself in a court of law. Marcus remained calm and focussed. At the end of the day the sheriff found him guilty and fined him ‘750. ( the maximum for this offence is ‘5 000) Marcus maintains that his action was not a criminal offence. He refused to pay the fine and has chosen the alternative, imprisonment.

The term of imprisonment is 28 days, though he is likely to serve only half of this. If you wish to support him you can write to

Marcus Armstrong,

c/o

Her Majesty’s Prison Kilmarnock,

Bowhouse,

Mauchline Road,

Kilmarnock,

Ayrshire,

KA1 5AA

you may wish to add ‘prisoner of conscience’ on the envelope

A previous peace protestor says a picture postcard is most uplifting!

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There’s Good Money in Death

In posts below I outlined the theory, first put forward in JA Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study, that imperial adventures abroad impoverish a nation but enrich certain powerful interest groups within it. I applied this to the Iraq war. Market events of the last few days bear out my description of the fragility of the United States’ current financial architecture. Gordon Brown has loyally bought $125 billion of US Treasury Bonds in the last few months to help shore up his ally, with my money. Brown is a man who prides himself on economic prudence, that is a move he will come to rue.

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/08/us_economic_vul.html#comments

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/08/j_a_hobson_impe.html#comments

When I give talks on Murder in Samarkand , I am keen to emphasise that the driver behind US Central Asian policy was the meeting between Bush, Enron and the Uzbek Ambassador in 1997. From twenty years experience as a diplomat I can tell you that the idea that big companies drive foreign policy is not an abstract concept, but comes down to very real contracts, very real money and very real, and often very nasty, people.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/bushlay12.html

The same point was made last week by a BBC report that the arms manufacturer British Aerospace has made record profits due to the War in Iraq. The BBC, for once, deserves some credit for the frankness of this report, which begins:

BAE profits soar on Iraq conflict

Work to re-equip UK and US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has helped profits to soar at defence group BAE Systems.

The UK’s largest defence firm, BAE made a pre-tax profit of ‘657m ($1.4bn), compared with ‘378m a year earlier.

BAE said the “high tempo” of UK and US military operations was increasing demand for land systems to support armed forces overseas. BAE, which is facing an anti-corruption probe by US authorities, saw its half-year revenues rise by 10%. The firm said its sales had benefited from its US operations, which achieved organic sales growth of 12% during the period.

Overall sales at BAE’s Land & Armaments business, which includes everything from tanks to munitions, rose 43%.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6938085.stm

British Aerospace is of course the company that provided $1.2 billion in bribes for Saudi Princes, as well as trafficking in sex for them, and had Tony Blair decide that an investigation into the crime should be dropped “In the national interest”.

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/06/bae_corruption.html

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/06/transcript_of_t.html

British Aerospace has the closest relationship with New Labour. When Robin Cook became Foreign Secretary in 1997, he announced that he intended to institute an “Ethical Foreign Policy”. Blair was determined to scupper this, particularly as it was known in the FCO and Downing St that Robin Cook planned to block a substantial sale of British Aerospce Hawk jets to Indonesia, a country which had a record of using air power against civilian populations in internal dissident areas.

Before Cook was ready, Blair ambushed him on the issue at one of New Labour’s very first Cabinet meetings. Jack Straw led the attack speaking in favour of BAE, strongly supported by Gordon Brown. In the first few weeks of Blair’s premiership, nobody was prepared to speak against him at Cabinet, and Cook was not just defeated, but deliberately humiliated by Blair. I have had an eyewitness account of this meeting from a then Cabinet Minister.

Cook was later to say that:

“I came to learn that the chairman of BAE appeared to have the key to the garden door to No 10. Certainly I never knew No 10 to come up with any decision that would be incommoding to BAE.”

Jack Straw has always been the most pervasive and insidious supporter of BAE in the Cabinet. It was Straw who lobbied hardest against Cook’s plans to limit BAE arms sales, and when Blair sacked Cook it was Straw who replaced him as Foreign Secretary. It was Straw who lobbied hardest for the investigation into the BAE bribes to be dropped, and it is Straw who now has become, supreme irony, Minister of Justice.

When Straw escorted Condoleeza Rice around the North West of England in March 2006, a BAE arms factory was the highlight of the trip.

Straw’s links with BAE are partly conducted through Lord Taylor of Blackburn, the former leader of the Blackburn with Darwen Council that includes Straw’s Blackburn constituency. Lord Taylor, an archetypal New Labour apparatchik from Straw’s constituency machine, has lived off the taxpayer in Labour Party appointed posts all his life. He is now chiefly known as the second highest claimer of expenses in the House of Lords. In 2005 Lord Taylor claimed over ‘57,000 of tax-free expenses, over three times the average claim of under ‘19,000. he spoke 15 times in the year.

But he doesn’t really need that public money anymore, as the grasping creep Taylor is the primary conduit between the defence industry and New Labour. He has been a highly paid “Consultant” to BAE for over a decade. He also has used some of that money to make major contributions to Jack Straw’s election expenses in his Blackburn constituency, declared by Straw in the Register of Member’s interests. Lord Taylor also regularly makes large contributions to fund Blackburn New Labour. When I stood against Straw in Blackburn at the last election, Taylor was present with Straw at a black tie event hosted by BAE in the constituency said to be “unrelated to the election”.

Interestingly, this year in the House of Lords’ Register of Members’ interests, BAE has disappeared from Taylor’s list of eleven paid consultancies and two paid directorships. It might be interesting to dig for links between these companies and BAE. Some are certainly arms firms – including the highly sinister Electronic Data Systems.

EDS is another of the arms companies that has made many billions from the Iraq war. Among their many current defence contracts is a $12 billion project on electronic systems for the US armed forces. Presumably a well-plugged in New Labour apparatchik like Lord Taylor was of no hindrance to EDS in March 2005 when they landed a ‘2.5 billion contract from the UK MOD for a similar project. Indeed, if Lord Taylor cannot help swing that kind of contract, why are EDS paying him?

I do not have power of words sufficiently to condemn the institutional sleaze of a system where a scumbag like Lord Taylor can be put, unelected, by Labour into a seat for life in the national legislature. There, while a legislator, he can act as a well paid and highly connected lobbyist for the arms industry. As someone who has been deeply patriotic, I must now say that I find myself unable to have any pride in my own country any longer.

What are our soldiers dying for again?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/baefiles/story/0,,2091253,00.html

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We Killed One Million People – Yes, You and I Did

Today, we are calling the fact that, around now, on our best estimate, a million people have died in Iraq as a result of the chaos launched by the US and UK led invasion. That is a million people, the majority of them women and children, who would overwhelmingly be alive today were it not for the actions of governments acting on behalf of the large majority of readers of this blog, paid for by our taxes.

Click on the counter in the left margin to get an explanation of the estimate. It is based on the Lancet study that estimated 655,000 dead long since, an appraisal judged “sound” by the UK’s Chief Scientist and “If anything, an understimate” by the experts in the Department for International Development. Despite these endorsements from their own experts, the British government attempted to rubbish the study.

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/03/lying_abouth_th.html

Not one of us has done enough to stop it. Whatever the vagaries of our electoral systems, it is to the eternal shame of both the US and UK that Blair and Bush were re-elected, by a substantial slice of our societies, after becoming war criminals.

Only the most rabid commentators now even attempt to justify the War in Iraq. Saddam Hussain was a terrible ruler, but the rate of death, the collapse of essential services and the destruction of integrated society, that we have brought upon Iraq is far worse. The near total silence of the pro-war lobby is stunning. I haven’t even heard “At least we got rid of Saddam” or “We brought freedom and democracy” for ages. Hopefully they hang their heads in shame. Except for the odd murmur that it’s all Al-Qaida’s fault, like the crestfallen schoolboy, head hanging, face flushed, caught with the stolen i-Pod in his pocket but still mumbling it was Tommy who done it.

Al-Qaida, of course, were virtually non-existent in Iraq before our invasion.

Gordon Brown is reportedly under great pressure from the White House not to pull out British forces and leave the US isolated. This is ridiculous. Basra, like so much of Iraq, is under control of disputatious local militias, often constituting rival units of the laughably named “Iraqi security services.” Our troops are effectively under siege, in horrible conditions, in isolated camps. When we send out patrols, we just lost three good men killed in four days.

Of course we don’t know the exact number of Iraqi dead. Nobody does – dead civilians are not considered important enough to count by the occupying forces. I don’t care if the estimate of a million is 50% out, either way. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died a terrible death, and we caused it. Not one of us has yet done enough to stop it. The guilt lies heaviest on Bush, Blair and Cheney.

But it lies on you and me too.

NB For a discussion of why the use of the estimate method is necessary and its likely validity see Casualty Monitor.

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Good for Gordon

The Village Voice detect hopeful signs that Gordon is not as much of a poodle as Tony. I hope they are right. It is worth following the link, not so much for my namecheck as for the lovely photo.

http://villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/2007/08/postpoodle_poli.php

It would be churlish not to congratulate the government for at long last calling for the release of five British residents, against whom there is no smidgeon of evidence, held in Guantanamo Bay. My own campaigning on this issue has been mostly with the Save Omar campaign from Brighton. I have no doubt the government’s welcome change of heart is related to the departure of the odious Blair.

The BBC, however, seems to think it necessary to report the story with reference to the dangers the government is running by potentially letting innocent people walk the streets.

In the meantime the government is revealing its callousness towards all Iraqi life by refusing to allow Iraqi interpreters, working for the British forces, to have asylum in the UK. Of course we must, as we leave defeated, get out all Iraqi civilians who have worked for us and their immediate families. I do not want to see our soldiers training their guns on their own desperate staff as the last helicopter takes off.

When the government tried to stop me publishing Murder in Samarkand, one of the more despicable arguments they used was to try emotional blackmail by asking me to consider what reprisals the Uzbek government would take on my ex-staff. The obvious answer to that, is that of course the Uzbek government already knew the whole story, and who my staff were. What we should have been doing was offering to get my ex-staff out with their immediate families and give them asylum. They refused to contemplate that.

In fact the UK Embassy in Tashkent has since I left substantially reduced its local staff and, as far as anyone can tell, now performs no discernible function. I am happy to say that at least three of my close staff members have indeed managed to escape the country so far.

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190,000 missing weapons

The US seems much more concerned at having lost 190,000 weapons than at a multiple of that number in dead people losing their lives.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2841342.ece

Doubtless many of these weapons are in the hands of opponents of the US occupation. Of those other weapons issued by the US that can be accounted for, most are in the hands of security services that are simply local militias in uniform and can switch allegiances from day to day.

You have to add to the 190,000 weapons the still greater potency of the weapons already in Iraq

before the invasion, looted from Saddam’s massive conventional arms caches which the coalition failed to secure while Bush and Blair had them desperately searching for non-existent WMD.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/10/26/explosives_were_looted_after_iraq_invasion/

The other thing the US is good at losing is money. Of course, the poor US tazpayer is spending a triilion dollars on the War in Iraq, while the hopeless administration manages to mislay billions at a time.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article720217.ece

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2008189,00.html

Much of that lost money lined the pockets of “contractors” and corrupt officials. Some will have again found its way through criminal channels to the Iraqi resistance. The US continually accuses Iran of funding and arming the Iraqi resistance. That is hardly necessary when the US is doing such a good job of arming and funding the Iraqi resistance itself, often through the well established criminal gangs within the US armed forces.

http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=41005&archive=true

You really do have to wonder how long this can go on. The brainwashing of key portions of the US population through the media and evangelical churches, and the crass appeal by shifty politicians to “Patriotism”, has held the line so far against all the evidence of the disaster this is for the US as a nation. But at some time the patience of the people must surely snap – I suspect leaving a timid Democrat leadership scuttling to keep up.

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J A Hobson – Imperialism: A Study

My efforts to bring the great J A Hobson out of obscurity, that people might use him as a guide to the motivation driving the Iraq war and other US foreign policy, are having some success. Moon of Alabama has posted an extract including this statement:

the adoption of Imperialism thus serves the double purpose of securing private material benefits for favoured classes of investors and traders at the public cost, while sustaining the general cause of conservatism by diverting public energy and interest from domestic agitation to external employment.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2007/08/imperialism-a-s.html

Let me post another key section. Hobson, an economist, outlines economic statistics and analysis to prove that the costs of the British Empire 1870 to 1900 had far outweighed any economic benefit to the economy as a whole. He goes on to state this:

Seeing that the Imperialism of the last three decades is clearly condemned as a business policy, in that at enormous expense it has procured a small, bad, unsafe increase of markets, and has jeopardised the entire wealth of the nation in rousing the strong resentment of other nations, we may ask, “How is the British nation induced to embark upon such unsound business?” The only possible answer is that the business interests of the nation as a whole are subordinated to those of certain sectional interests that usurp control of the national resources and use them for their private gain. This is no strange or monstrous charge to bring; it is the commonest disease of all forms of government. The famous words of Sir Thomas More are as true now as when he wrote them: “Everywhere do I perceive a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their own advantage under the name and pretext of the commonwealth.”

I.IV.1

Although the new Imperialism has been bad business for the nation, it has been good business for certain classes and certain trades within the nation. The vast expenditure on armaments, the costly wars, the grave risks and embarrassments of foreign policy, the stoppage of political and social reforms within Great Britain, though fraught with great injury to the nation, have served well the present business interests of certain industries and professions.

I.IV.2

It is idle to meddle with politics unless we clearly recognise this central fact and understand what these sectional interests are which are the enemies of national safety and the commonwealth. We must put aside the merely sentimental diagnosis which explains wars or other national blunders by outbursts of patriotic animosity or errors of statecraft. Doubtless at every outbreak of war not only the man in the street but the man at the helm is often duped by the cunning with which aggressive motives and greedy purposes dress themselves in defensive clothing. There is, it may be safely asserted, no war within memory, however nakedly aggressive it may seem to the dispassionate historian, which has not been presented to the people who were called upon to fight as a necessary defensive policy, in which the honour, perhaps the very existence, of the State was involved.

I.IV.3

The disastrous folly of these wars, the material and moral damage inflicted even on the victor, appear so plain to the disinterested spectator that he is apt to despair of any State attaining years of discretion, and inclines to regard these natural cataclysms as implying some ultimate irrationalism in politics. But careful analysis of the existing relations between business and politics shows that the aggressive Imperialism which we seek to understand is not in the main the product of blind passions of races or of the mixed folly and ambition of politicians. It is far more rational than at first sight appears. Irrational from the standpoint of the whole nation, it is rational enough from the standpoint of certain classes in the nation. A completely socialist State which kept good books and presented regular balance-sheets of expenditure and assets would soon discard Imperialism; an intelligent laissez-faire democracy which gave duly proportionate weight in its policy to all economic interests alike would do the same. But a State in which certain well-organised business interests are able to outweigh the weak, diffused interest of the community is bound to pursue a policy which accords with the pressure of the former interests.

I.IV.4

In order to explain Imperialism on this hypothesis we have to answer two questions. Do we find in Great Britain to-day any well-organised group of special commercial and social interests which stand to gain by aggressive Imperialism and the militarism it involves? If such a combination of interests exists, has it the power to work its will in the arena of politics?

I.IV.5

What is the direct economic outcome of Imperialism? A great expenditure of public money upon ships, guns, military and naval equipment and stores, growing and productive of enormous profits when a war, or an alarm of war, occurs; new public loans and important fluctuations in the home and foreign Bourses; more posts for soldiers and sailors and in the diplomatic and consular services; improvement of foreign investments by the substitution of the British flag for a foreign flag; acquisition of markets for certain classes of exports, and some protection and assistance for trades representing British houses in these manufactures; employment for engineers, missionaries, speculative miners, ranchers and other emigrants.

I.IV.6

Certain definite business and professional interests feeding upon imperialistic expenditure, or upon the results of that expenditure, are thus set up in opposition to the common good, and, instinctively feeling their way to one another, are found united in strong sympathy to support every new imperialist exploit.

How do they do it?

In view of the part which the non-economic factors of patriotism, adventure, military enterprise, political ambition, and philanthropy play in imperial expansion, it may appear that to impute to financiers so much power is to take a too narrowly economic view of history. And it is true that the motor-power of Imperialism is not chiefly financial: finance is rather the governor of the imperial engine, directing the energy and determining its work: it does not constitute the fuel of the engine, nor does it directly generate the power. Finance manipulates the patriotic forces which politicians, soldiers, philanthropists, and traders generate; the enthusiasm for expansion which issues from these sources, though strong and genuine, is irregular and blind; the financial interest has those qualities of concentration and clear-sighted calculation which are needed to set Imperialism to work. An ambitious statesman, a frontier soldier, an overzealous missionary, a pushing trader, may suggest or even initiate a step of imperial expansion, may assist in educating patriotic public opinion to the urgent need of some fresh advance, but the final determination rests with the financial power. The direct influence exercised by great financial houses in “high politics” is supported by the control which they exercise over the body of public opinion through the Press, which, in every “civilised” country, is becoming more and more their obedient instrument. While the specifically financial newspaper imposes “facts” and “opinions” on the business classes, the general body of the Press comes more and more under the conscious or unconscious domination of financiers. The case of the South African Press, whose agents and correspondents fanned the martial flames in this country, was one of open ownership on the part of South African financiers, and this policy of owning newspapers for the sake of manufacturing public opinion is common in the great European cities. In Berlin, Vienna, and Paris many of the influential newspapers are held by financial houses, which use them, not primarily to make direct profits out of them, but in order to put into the public mind beliefs and sentiments which will influence public policy and thus affect the money market. In Great Britain this policy has not gone so far, but the alliance with finance grows closer every year, either by financiers purchasing a controlling share of newspapers, or by newspaper proprietors being tempted into finance. Apart from the financial Press, and financial ownership of the general Press, the City notoriously exercises a subtle and abiding influence upon leading London newspapers, and through them upon the body of the provincial Press, while the entire dependence of the Press for its business profits upon its advertising columns involves a peculiar reluctance to oppose the organised financial classes with whom rests the control of so much advertising business. Add to this the natural sympathy with a sensational policy which a cheap Press always manifests, and it becomes evident that the Press is strongly biassed towards Imperialism, and lends itself with great facility to the suggestion of financial or political Imperialists who desire to work up patriotism for some new piece of expansion.

I.IV.40

Such is the array of distinctively economic forces making for Imperialism, a large loose group of trades and professions seeking profitable business and lucrative employment from the expansion of military and civil services, from the expenditure on military operations, the opening up of new tracts of territory and trade with the same, and the provision of new capital which these operations require, all these finding their central guiding and directing force in the power of the general financier.

I.IV.41

The play of these forces does not openly appear. They are essentially parasites upon patriotism, and they adapt themselves to its protecting colours. In the mouths of their representatives are noble phrase, expressive of their desire to extend the area of civilisation, to establish good government, promote Christianity, extirpate slavery, and elevate the lower races. Some of the business men who hold such language may entertain a genuine, though usually a vague, desire to accomplish these ends, but they are primarily engaged in business, and they are not unaware of the utility of the more unselfish forces in furthering their ends. Their true attitude of mind is expressed by Mr. Rhodes in his famous description of “Her Majesty’s Flag” as “the greatest commercial asset in the world.”*20

The entire book is available online.

http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Hobson/hbsnImp.html

It is deeply saddening to me how much of the great heritage of Liberal thought is now neglected. I do hope you will take a look and see just how little we have learnt in the ensuing 100 years.

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US Economic Vulnerability

The War in Iraq has already cost the US taxpayer over $500 billion and will cost over $1 trillion – that’s $1,000,000,000,000 – according to official estimates.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/08/01/analysis_says_war_could_cost_1_trillion/

The war has been almost entirely deficit financed. It has added to the US’ already massive budget and current accounts deficits. The US economy can sustain its massive deficits because the rest of the World is willing to treat the dollar as its currency of note, and accept the value of the eurodollar.

Eurodollar is a term economists coined decades ago to denote dollars held outside the US. It is no longer that apt as most of them are held in Asia now. China alone holds about a trillion dollars – indeed there is a neat argument that China’s willingness to hold vast stocks of US paper has financed the Iraq war. Japan, perhaps surprisingly, also has over $400 billion.

How much money are we talking? Let me put it this way. China could buy all the real estate in London or New York – buy every property in the whole city – and have change. China could buy a controlling interest in every single company in the Dow Jones.

That, however, is not the danger. The danger is that China, Japan and others will come in time to doubt that these huge mounds of paper (OK, virtual paper) really hold the value that they are supposed to hold. They could start to diversify their holdings. The result in the US could rapidly tip towards extreme inflation, among other symptoms. Once the process starts it snowballs – the UK went through the economic trauma of slipping from being the key currency in the last century, largely as the result of expensive wars.

Confidence is a difficult thing, and the process could certainly be sparked by moves to switch major commodity trading to euros. The US is indeed jumpy about that, though the theory that this concern triggered the Iraq war is overblown.

Much of the trillion dollars war cost is redistributive within the United States. It is important to remember that to ordinary people – and to the unfortunate US taxpayer – the War in Iraq may look like an unmitigated disaster, but to easily identifiable groups the whole thing is a great success.

Record oil prices have resulted in obscene levels of profit for the oil companies. Armaments manufacturers have bulging order books and, given urgency of demand, have like the oil companies been able to increase not just profits but profit margins. The privatisation of war has brought massive contracts for those employing the many tens of thousands of mercenaries and the logistic supply contractors.

Like any war, increased career opportunities have opened up for the senior military. This one has been unique in the massive burgeoning of budgets, jobs and promotions within the security services also.

How the system works was outlined 100 years ago by the Liberal economist J.A.Hobson in his great book Imperialism – A Study. Written at the greatest extent of the greatest formal Empire the World has yet seen, Hobson proved, counter to the prevailing wisdom of both supporters and opponents of Empire, that the Empire had cost Britain money, not been a gain at the expense of the colonies. But while the net effect had been to make Britain poorer, the redistributive effect had made the ruling class, military and arms manufacturers much richer, at the expense of everyone else.

Hobson is now almost completely forgotten. In part this is because Lenin, a much lesser thinker, ruthlessly plagiarised Hobson’s work some years later and plastered it over with Communist claptrap. But for me Hobson’s Imperialism is in the same rank as J.S. Mill’s On Liberty, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man, as essential reading on the foundations of modern political thought.

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Afghanistan

This blog has been silent for a week because I have been looking at environmental and fair trade projects around Ghana. It does mean that I was not here to say “I told you so”, now it is admitted Blair’s Iran maritime boundary map was a fake. But in my absence I was delighted that the Mail on Sunday published my article about an even bigger deception, the war in Afghanistan:

DYING TO PROTECT THE DRUGS BARONS

This week the 64th British soldier to die in Afghanistan, Corporal Mike Gilyeat, was buried. All the right things were said about this brave soldier, just as, on current trends, they will be said about one or more of his colleagues who follow him next week.

The alarming escalation of the casualty rate among British soldiers in Afghanistan ‘ up to ten per cent ‘ led to discussion this week on whether it could be fairly compared to casualty rates in the Second World War.

But the key question is this: what are our servicemen dying for? There are glib answers to that: bringing democracy and development to Afghanistan, supporting the government of President Hamid Karzai in its attempt to establish order in the country, fighting the Taliban and preventing the further spread of radical Islam into Pakistan.

But do these answers stand up to close analysis?

There has been too easy an acceptance of the lazy notion that the war in Afghanistan is the ‘good’ war, while the war in Iraq is the ‘bad’ war, the blunder. The origins of this view are not irrational. There was a logic to attacking Afghanistan after 9/11.

Afghanistan was indeed the headquarters of Osama Bin Laden and his organisation, who had been installed and financed there by the CIA to fight the Soviets from 1979 until 1989. By comparison, the attack on Iraq ‘ which was an enemy of Al Qaeda and no threat to us ‘ was plainly irrational in terms of the official justification.

So the attack on Afghanistan has enjoyed a much greater sense of public legitimacy. But the operation to remove Bin Laden was one thing. Six years of occupation are clearly another.

Few seem to turn a hair at the officially expressed view that our occupation of Afghanistan may last for decades.

Lib Dem leader Menzies Campbell has declared, fatuously, that the Afghan war is ‘winnable’.

Afghanistan was not militarily winnable by the British Empire at the height of its supremacy. It was not winnable by Darius or Alexander, by Shah, Tsar or Great Moghul. It could not be subdued by 240,000 Soviet troops. But what, precisely, are we trying to win?

In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not?

The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen.

The Taliban had reduced the opium crop to precisely nil. I would not advocate their methods for doing this, which involved lopping bits, often vital bits, off people. The Taliban were a bunch of mad and deeply unpleasant religious fanatics. But one of the things they were vehemently against was opium.

That is an inconvenient truth that our spin has managed to obscure. Nobody has denied the sincerity of the Taliban’s crazy religious zeal, and they were as unlikely to sell you heroin as a bottle of Johnnie Walker.

They stamped out the opium trade, and impoverished and drove out the drug warlords whose warring and rapacity had ruined what was left of the country after the Soviet war.

That is about the only good thing you can say about the Taliban; there are plenty of very bad things to say about them. But their suppression of the opium trade and the drug barons is undeniable fact.

Now we are occupying the country, that has changed. According to the United Nations, 2006 was the biggest opium harvest in history, smashing the previous record by 60 per cent. This year will be even bigger.

Our economic achievement in Afghanistan goes well beyond the simple production of raw opium. In fact Afghanistan no longer exports much raw opium at all. It has succeeded in what our international aid efforts urge every developing country to do. Afghanistan has gone into manufacturing and ‘value-added’ operations.

It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.

How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government ‘ the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.

When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid, armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons ‘ especially those grouped in the Northern Alliance ‘ to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils. Then we made them ministers.

President Karzai is a good man. He has never had an opponent killed, which may not sound like much but is highly unusual in this region and possibly unique in an Afghan leader. But nobody really believes he is running the country. He asked America to stop its recent bombing campaign in the south because it was leading to an increase in support for the Taliban. The United States simply ignored him. Above all, he has no control at all over the warlords among his ministers and governors, each of whom runs his own kingdom and whose primary concern is self-enrichment through heroin.

My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 until 2004. I stood at the Friendship Bridge at Termez in 2003 and watched the Jeeps with blacked-out windows bringing the heroin through from Afghanistan, en route to Europe.

I watched the tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan.

Yet I could not persuade my country to do anything about it. Alexander Litvinenko ‘ the former agent of the KGB, now the FSB, who died in London last November after being poisoned with polonium 210 ‘ had suffered the same frustration over the same topic.

There are a number of theories as to why Litvinenko had to flee Russia. The most popular blames his support for the theory that FSB agents planted bombs in Russian apartment blocks to stir up anti-Chechen feeling.

But the truth is that his discoveries about the heroin trade were what put his life in danger. Litvinenko was working for the KGB in St Petersburg in 2001 and 2002. He became concerned at the vast amounts of heroin coming from Afghanistan, in particular from the fiefdom of the (now) Head of the Afghan armed forces, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, in north and east Afghanistan.

Dostum is an Uzbek, and the heroin passes over the Friendship Bridge from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan, where it is taken over by President Islam Karimov’s people. It is then shipped up the railway line, in bales of cotton, to St Petersburg and Riga.

The heroin Jeeps run from General Dostum to President Karimov. The UK, United States and Germany have all invested large sums in donating the most sophisticated detection and screening equipment to the Uzbek customs centre at Termez to stop the heroin coming through.

But the convoys of Jeeps running between Dostum and Karimov are simply waved around the side of the facility.

Litvinenko uncovered the St Petersburg end and was stunned by the involvement of the city authorities, local police and security services at the most senior levels. He reported in detail to President Vladimir Putin. Putin is, of course, from St Petersburg, and the people Litvinenko named were among Putin’s closest political allies. That is why Litvinenko, having miscalculated badly, had to flee Russia.

I had as little luck as Litvinenko in trying to get official action against this heroin trade. At the St Petersburg end he found those involved had the top protection. In Afghanistan, General Dostum is vital to Karzai’s coalition, and to the West’s pretence of a stable, democratic government.

Opium is produced all over Afghanistan, but especially in the north and north-east ‘ Dostum’s territory. Again, our Government’s spin doctors have tried hard to obscure this fact and make out that the bulk of the heroin is produced in the tiny areas of the south under Taliban control. But these are the most desolate, infertile rocky areas. It is a physical impossibility to produce the bulk of the vast opium harvest there.

That General Dostum is head of the Afghan armed forces and Deputy Minister of Defence is in itself a symbol of the bankruptcy of our policy. Dostum is known for tying opponents to tank tracks and running them over. He crammed prisoners into metal containers in the searing sun, causing scores to die of heat and thirst.

Since we brought ‘democracy’ to Afghanistan, Dostum ordered an MP who annoyed him to be pinned down while he attacked him. The sad thing is that Dostum is probably not the worst of those comprising the Karzai government, or the biggest drug smuggler among them.

Our Afghan policy is still victim to Tony Blair’s simplistic world view and his childish division of all conflicts into ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’. The truth is that there are seldom any good guys among those vying for power in a country such as Afghanistan. To characterise the Karzai government as good guys is sheer nonsense.

Why then do we continue to send our soldiers to die in Afghanistan? Our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq is the greatest recruiting sergeant for Islamic militants. As the great diplomat, soldier and adventurer Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Alexander Burnes pointed out before his death in the First Afghan War in 1841, there is no point in a military campaign in Afghanistan as every time you beat them, you just swell their numbers. Our only real achievement to date is falling street prices for heroin in London.

Remember this article next time you hear a politician calling for more troops to go into Afghanistan. And when you hear of another brave British life wasted there, remember you can add to the casualty figures all the young lives ruined, made miserable or ended by heroin in the UK.

They, too, are casualties of our Afghan policy.

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=469983&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=

I think this is perhaps the most important thing I have published. It is also worth noting that the Mail was the only mainstream paper which would carry at the time my article exposing the fake maritime boundaries map. The Guardian and Independent refused to stand against the “patriotic” flood of lying propaganda. The Mail has since been totally vindicated. I think they deserve full credit for continuing to take challenging material which contradicts the official story.

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The Iraqi Resistance Movement Comes of Age?

In what could be considered an encouraging development, some of the most important elements of the disparate Sunni Iraqi resistance appear to have come together to form a united political front. These include the 1920 Revolution Brigade, named after the 1920 Arab revolt against the previous British occupation, and six other organisations. While fighting to end the presence of foreign troops, they are also apparently pro-Iraq unity, anti-terrorist and looking for international recognition. This development may possibly prove to be a milestone in the long path back to some sort of stability for this conflict ridden country.

From The Guardian

Seven of the most important Sunni-led insurgent organisations fighting the US occupation in Iraq have agreed to form a public political alliance with the aim of preparing for negotiations in advance of an American withdrawal, their leaders have told the Guardian.

In their first interview with the western media since the US-British invasion of 2003, leaders of three of the insurgent groups – responsible for thousands of attacks against US and Iraqi armed forces and police – said they would continue their armed resistance until all foreign troops were withdrawn from Iraq, and denounced al-Qaida for sectarian killings and suicide bombings against civilians.

Speaking in Damascus, the spokesmen for the three groups – the 1920 Revolution Brigades, Ansar al-Sunna and Iraqi Hamas – said they planned to hold a congress to launch a united front and appealed to Arab governments, other governments and the UN to help them establish a permanent political presence outside Iraq.

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Afghanistan: British Front Line Casualty Rate Claimed to be Higher than the Second World War

The Telegraph is claiming that the rate at which British soldiers are being seriously injured or killed on the front line in Afghanistan is about to exceed that suffered by UK troops during the Second World War. While there are many reasons to be cautious about their analysis, e.g. they may be unfairly comparing frontline casualties from Afghanistan with total casualties in WWII, the claim is nonetheless striking.

The casualty rate in the most dangerous regions of the country is approaching 10 per cent. Senior officers fear it will ultimately pass the 11 per cent experienced by British soldiers at the height of the conflict 60 years ago. The rise is partly driven by a tenfold increase in the number of wounded in action – those injured, but not killed – in the past six months as fighting in Afghanistan has intensified.

Last November, only three British soldiers were wounded in Afghanistan by the Taliban, compared with 38 in May.

Meanwhile in Iraq, British troops are now suffering a higher rate of fatal casualties by proportion than their American colleagues.

In a five-month period this year, there were 23 fatalities among the 5,500 British troops compared with 463 fatalities among the United States’s 165,000 troops, according to the Royal Statistical Society. Military commanders are concerned that the high rate will start to have an impact on operations and morale.

Via LFCM

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Poetry Corner

A bright young Republican, Vitter

Wanted, for God, to be fitter;

So did exercise

On splayed teen thighs

Now bitter Vitter’s in the shitter.

Copyright Craig Murray All Rights Reserved

May only be reproduced after poking your head out of the window and shouting “George Bush is a moron!” at a passing stranger.

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Diaries of a vicious Lying Bastard

This is the only comment I shall make on Campbell’s diaries.

I presume Alasdair Campbell’s Diaries are as truthful and unspun as his Dossier on Iraqi WMD. I took this phrase from the publisher’s blurb on Amazon:

here is Tony Blair up close and personal, taking the decisions that affected the lives of millions

“Affected” appears to be a misprint for “Ended”.

I can guarantee you that there is infinitely more genuine insight into how government operated in the Blair era in Murder in Samarkand than in The Blair Years. Yet since the publication of Murder in Samarkand I have had no BBC TV interview about the book and a single BBC Radio interview, on BBC Radio Scotland. Campbell, by contrast, has had eighteen substantial BBC TV programme features so far in addition to a three part serialisation. Christopher Meyer – whose sales I have now overtaken – also received infinitely more BBC coverage than I, as did Lance Price. The distinction is, of course, that they all supported the invasion of Iraq.

The cheerful news is that Murder in Samarkand has now steamed past 20,000 copies sold, even ahead of the US launch in October and, of course, the film version. It also means we have sold nearly six times as many as David Blunkett, who again got infinitely more BBC coverage – and ten times the advance. So, slowly, word of mouth and reader opinion can counter, to some extent, publicity machines. But remember that publishers reckon an endorsement from Richard and Judy adds at least 200,000 to sales.

I think there needs to be an investigation into the practice by publishers of paying massive advances to politicians, which they know will never be recouped. Blunkett got ten times the advance I did, and he sold a sixth of the books. By my reckoning about ‘193,000 of his advance is still outstanding. Campbell will have to sell over half a million books to reach his advance. These are not commercial deals, they are backhanders from publishers. The deals are reached while people are still in office – therefore, it is a bribe. Blair reportedly put the agreed advance for his memoirs against the Connaught Square mansion. He would have to sell over 6 million copies to clear his advance.

Advances, like loans for peerages, are non-repayable if you don’t clear. This is yet another way our politicos are bought by big business groups. Rupert Murdoch is the largest owner of publishing houses in the UK, followed by German conglomerate Bertelsmann.

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The Psychology of the Workaday Killers

“I just remember thinking to myself, I just brought terror to someone else under the American flag, and that’s just not what I joined the Army to do,” he said

The Nation has a fascinating survey of US vets returning from Iraq. It is being much quoted in the media and on the net, but it is well worth reading the original.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hedges

You may have to click botton right to get past the financial appeal first – although the financial appeal itself is pretty interesting.

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Terrorist Attack on Glasgow Asians – No Media Coverage

The estimable Osama Saeed has this post about a terrorist “car bomb” attack on an Asian shop in Glasgow. http://www.osamasaeed.org/osama/2007/07/misplaced-reven.html

The shop has been completely detroyed. Peculiar, is it not, that you have not heard of it on the BBC?

Osama Saeed makes a tremendously strong point:

It would be worth reflecting that if this is how out of control someone or some people in Glasgow get after the Glasgow Airport incident, then how would some in Iraq react to the destruction there, not to mention the loss of some 650,000 lives?

It should go without saying, but this kind of misplaced vengeance doesn’t get us anywhere.

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Main British Force to Withdraw from Iraq in September?

From The Guardian

Iraq troops ‘ready for UK handover’

Prime minister Nouri Maliki has told British MPs that Iraqi security forces would be ready to take over security in Basra from UK forces at the beginning of September.

Maliki told a visiting delegation from the House of Commons defence committee on Tuesday that Iraqi forces “have already begun to take principal responsibility for the security mission, with the British forces playing the role of support when needed”, according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.

He reassured them of the “readiness of the Iraqi forces to receive security duties in Basra at the beginning of September”.

Basra, Iraq’s second largest city and a major oil hub, has seen frequent violence between Shiite militias vying for power, including assassinations and frequent attacks on British bases around the city.

Britain has withdrawn hundreds of troops from Iraq, leaving a force of around 5,500 based mainly on the fringes of Basra, 340 miles south east of Baghdad.

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The London bombs also belong to the new Prime Minister

An excellent article here by Jon Pilger

Just as the London bombs in the summer of 2005 were Blair’s bombs, the inevitable consequence of his government’s lawless attack on Iraq, so the potential bombs in the summer of 2007 are Brown’s bombs.

Gordon Brown, Blair’s successor as prime minister, has been an unerring supporter of the unprovoked bloodbath whose victims now equal those of the Rwandan genocide, according to the American scientist who led the 2006 Johns Hopkins School of Public Health survey of civilian dead in Iraq. While Tony Blair sought to discredit this study, British government scientists secretly praised it as “tried and tested” and an “underestimation of mortality”. The “underestimation” was 655,000 men, women and children. That is now approaching a million. It is the crime of the century.

In his first day’s address outside 10 Downing Street and subsequently to Parliament, Brown paid not even lip service to those who would be alive today had his government ‘ and it was his government as much as Blair’s ‘ not joined Bush in a slaughter justified with demonstrable lies. He said nothing, not a word.

See full article http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17973.htm

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Voting with their feet

From Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) – The armed forces, stretched by deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, are suffering shortfalls in personnel that could jeopardise their operating capability, a parliamentary committee said on Tuesday.

More staff are leaving the armed forces early, partly due to the pressures of long tours of duty overseas. Recruitment is not keeping pace, leading to a shortfall of almost 6,000 personnel or 3.2 percent in April 2007, said parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.

The Liberal Democrats, who were against the Iraq war, said the report showed personnel faced an “intolerable burden” and called for a timetable on withdrawal from Iraq.

For more go here

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