Cameron 'smoked drugs at school'

Readers of this blog will know that I don't have a lot of time for David Cameron. I don't even intensely dislike him, I simply find him irksome and wonder what he actually believes in.

However, today it has been revealed that whilst he was at Eton he indulged in cannabis use.

Conservative leader David Cameron took drugs while he was a pupil at Eton College, a new biography has claimed.

The book, serialised in the Independent on Sunday, says Mr Cameron, then aged 15, was one of several boys caught smoking cannabis at Eton.

He confessed and was grounded. Some of the other boys were expelled.

Suddenly, I find that he's infinitely more interesting than I had previously assumed. I won't go as far as saying that I've changed my opinion of the man but I do find it slightly reassuring that there is a politician who has had a personal life that has some bearing on the experiences of everyone else on the planet.

The Conservative right wing have predictably turned on him.

Former Conservative Party chairman Lord Tebbit told BBC News 24 the claims would not do Mr Cameron much good with Tory activists.

"On the whole, I've always thought that it was better to be pretty honest about things," he said. "Because, sooner or later the truth of the matter tends to come out, and it's always better to have brought it out yourself rather than have somebody else bring it out."

The implication from Tebbit is that Cameron has not been honest, although you'd have to have been pretty dumb not to have worked out that he did indeed have a drug past from his answers to drug related questions during his leadership campaign.

Throughout his leadership campaign in 2005, Mr Cameron declined to answer questions about drug taking when they were put to candidates.

He repeatedly stressed he had a right to a private past and refused to answer them.

Mr Cameron was initially asked at a fringe meeting at the 2005 Conservative party conference if he had ever taken drugs.

He told the meeting he had had a "typical student experience", later adding: "I did lots of things before I came into politics which I shouldn't have done. We all did."

Later that same year on BBC One's Question Time, he said everybody was allowed to "err and stray" in their past.

He told the audience he would not bow to a "media-driven agenda" to "dig into politicians' private lives".

I had always thought his answers on this subject were quite clever as he avoided the Clintonesque, "I never inhaled" answer that was always frankly ludicrous and totally unbelievable.

So now the Tories are being led by a man that has "a past" which, despite having taken place in the hallowed halls of Eton, at least has some bearing on the lifestyle of most Britons; one in three of whom is said to have tried drugs at some point.

Norman Tebbit may be tearing his hair out at this revelation, but to the rest of us Cameron has just succeeded in making the Tories look more relevant than they have for the past decade.

David Cameron is suddenly interesting. Who would have believed it?

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tag: David Cameron, drugs, cannibis, Eton

Putin attacks 'very dangerous' US

It would appear that Vladimer Putin has had enough of Bush's threatening behaviour towards Iran. Indeed, has even gone as far as to lay the blame for nuclear proliferation directly at the door of Bush's foreign policy.

At a summit in Munich he has attacked the United States for what he said was its "almost uncontained" use of force around the world.

America's "very dangerous" approach to global relations was fuelling a nuclear arms race, he told a security summit.

"One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way," he said, speaking through a translator.

"This is very dangerous. Nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law.

"This is nourishing an arms race with the desire of countries to get nuclear weapons."

BBC defence and security correspondent Rob Watson, in Munich, said Mr Putin's speech was a strident performance which may well be remembered as a turning point in international relations.

Personally, I think Putin is to be applauded for calling Bush's foreign policy out for what it is. It is a form of hypocritical bullying that is carried out in total contravention of international law. And, with Bush and his cronies now making noises regarding Iran, I think it's high time that someone indicated to Bush that the world will not roll over as it did before the Iraq war and simply accept Bush's assertions, nor should the world stand silently by whilst Bush and his neo-con buddies make plans to attack another sovereign nation without the involvement of the UN.

Of course, Joe Liebermann could be expected to give us the Republican... sorry, the independent perspective:

US Senator Joseph Lieberman described it as "provocative. Its rhetoric "sounded more like the Cold War", the senator said.

You'll notice that Joe doesn't bother to attempt to challenge the substance of Putin's charge, instead preferring to concentrate on it's tone. The simple fact is that the US has already acted outside of international law during it's invasion of Iraq and, from all the noises emanating from right wing think tanks, is seriously considering doing so again with regards to Iran.

Mr Putin's spokesman Dimitry Peskov said the speech was "not about confrontation, it's an invitation to think".

"Until we get rid of unilateralism in international affairs, until we exclude the possibility of imposing one country's views on others, we will not have stability," he said.

Joe won't address these points because he basically agrees with the concept of American exceptionalism, the belief that the United States has an exceptional position among countries, and should not be bound by international law except where it serves American interests.

This hideous and hypocritical stance is behind Bush's insistence that Iran should desist from enriching uranium, even as the US - under Bush's direction - explores a new range of bunker busting nuclear technology.

Putin has at last called a spade a spade. Shortly after 9-11 the world effectively gave Bush a free pass, in part because we all agreed that a hideous crime had been committed, and also because - with that crime fresh in people's minds - no-one wanted to be accused of anti-Americanism.

With his foray into Iraq Bush drained the well of sympathy that the US had acquired world wide.

Liebermann and others may not like it, but there are many people all over the planet who will be applauding Putin for saying what many of us are thinking. There can be no international law if the most powerful country in the world insists that this is something that it need not concern itself with and can ignore at it's will.

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tag: Putin, Bush, Iraq, American values, principles, Iran, UN, international law

Anthony Weiner Rips the "Republic Party"

Rep. Anthony Weiner rips the "Republic Party" for obsessing over Nancy Pelosi's request to travel on a government airplane.



Hat Tip to Anything They Say

tag: Republicans, Anthony Weiner, Nancy Pelosi, transport

The Right Wing Noise Machine

Quartet: Palestinian gov't must recognize Israel

As I wrote about yesterday, the Palestinians have come to a power sharing agreement between Hamas and Fatah and are setting about forming this new government.

The thing that most worried me was that the Israelis would seize on the fact that Hamas had only implicitly recognised the State of Israel, rather than explicitly recognising her as the Quartet were demanding.

And a report in today's Ha'aretz seems to confirm my worst fears:

Meanwhile, Israeli officials said the coalition deal failed to meet Western conditions to end the sanctions and initial reaction from the United States and Europe was muted.

"The conditions have not been met. This is not something we can live with," said one Israeli official, on condition of anonymity.

In other words the Israelis are going to attempt to insist that the disgraceful sanctions currently crippling the Palestinian economy should be kept in place.

The Israelis appear to be doing everything they can to cause strife amongst the Palestinians at the moment, including a highly incendiary dig around the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the timing of which is insensitive to say the least considering the current situation in the Palestinian government.

Thankfully the Russians are calling for sanctions to be lifted in the wake of the new agreement, but with Israel insisting that recognition must be forthcoming before the Quartet do so, the Americans will be sure to insist that these barbaric sanctions remain in place.

We got a hint of the possible American reaction from the New York Times:

"The international community has made it clear that in order to be able to have a broader relationship with the Palestinian Authority government, that those principles are going to have to be met," The New York Times quoted Casey as saying. He added that officials were still studying the accord.

For too long now the international community has allowed Israel to place false barriers that the Palestinians must jump over before they will engage in any form of peace talks. The international community needs to recognise that the Israelis have managed to find reasons not to engage with the Palestinians for decades and this call for "recognition" is simply another red herring to avoid the Israelis having to seriously negotiate.

The simple truth is that the situation in Palestine (when Hamas and Fatah were fighting in the street) suited the Israelis, as they would rather these groups fought each other rather than themselves.

But the international community also needs to recognise the part that we played in creating the conditions for civil war in Palestine. The situation in Gaza and the West Bank is desperate and the sanctions that we have supported have led to genuine hardship for millions of Palestinians. Without any hope of a political solution, violence will ensue.

And however much the US claim that Israel are merely looking for a "moderate" in order to begin negotiating, it will not be lost on the Palestinians that Abbas was in charge for a full year after Arafat died and that no negotiations were forthcoming. Once again, Israel managed to find a reason not to negotiate.

Indeed, if Israel's past behaviour is any indication of her future intent then it would matter not a jot if Hamas explicitly recognised Israel's right to exist, as the Israelis would quickly find another reason why they could not engage with the Palestinians. They have been playing this tune for forty years.

The Russians have the right idea. We must stop the sanctions and encourage dialogue between the two sides. The French have also indicated that they view the agreement positively. Bush will, of course, attempt to please the Israelis as usual, but he will find it hard to keep the Quartet on side if he sticks rigidly to the line that the Israelis are encouraging him to take.

The Palestinians have made an historic compromise. If it is not rewarded then there is a real danger that factional fighting could break out again.

And I am not at all convinced that this is not what the Israelis secretly want.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called on the international community Thursday to ensure that Israel's right to exist is respected by any Palestinian government that emerges from the talks.

Speaking in Madrid, Livni said the three requirements were not negotiable and applied to any future Palestinian governments.

"We expect the international community to stick to its own requirements that were stated after the elections which Hamas won," she said.

It's a red herring designed to obstruct dialogue and it deserves to be treated as such.

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tag: Israel, Palestine, power sharing agreement, Hamas, Fatah, Abbas, Quartet, sanctions, blockade,

Target Iran: US able to strike in the spring

And as the Senate discovers how the Bush administration lied and manipulated intelligence in order to justify attacking Iraq, we have the news that the Bush regime are at the advanced stage of preparations for a strike against Iran, with only the timing under question.

Some say they could attack this spring whilst others say they'll leave it to next year so that Bush can attack Iran just before he leaves office. He not only has no plans to clean up the mess he has created in Iraq before he slinks out the door, he's actually thinking about opening up a whole new Middle Eastern nightmare before he slips the keys under the doormat.

Neo-conservatives, particularly at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, are urging Mr Bush to open a new front against Iran. So too is the vice-president, Dick Cheney. The state department and the Pentagon are opposed, as are Democratic congressmen and the overwhelming majority of Republicans. The sources said Mr Bush had not yet made a decision. The Bush administration insists the military build-up is not offensive but aimed at containing Iran and forcing it to make diplomatic concessions. The aim is to persuade Tehran to curb its suspect nuclear weapons programme and abandon ambitions for regional expansion.

Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, said yesterday: "I don't know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran."

But Vincent Cannistraro, a Washington-based intelligence analyst, shared the sources' assessment that Pentagon planning was well under way. "Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place."

He added: "We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous."

Cannistrano points out that no actual decision has been taken, but one only has to listen to the hardening of Bush's language towards Iran to realise in what direction his decision is leaning.

Last month Mr Bush ordered a second battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS John Stennis to the Gulf in support of the USS Eisenhower. The USS Stennis is due to arrive within the next 10 days. Extra US Patriot missiles have been sent to the region, as well as more minesweepers, in anticipation of Iranian retaliatory action.

In another sign that preparations are under way, Mr Bush has ordered oil reserves to be stockpiled.

The danger is that the build-up could spark an accidental war. Iranian officials said on Thursday that they had tested missiles capable of hitting warships in the Gulf.

Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former air force officer who has carried out war games with Iran as the target, supported the view that planning for an air strike was under way: "Gates said there is no planning for war. We know this is not true. He possibly meant there is no plan for an immediate strike. It was sloppy wording.

"All the moves being made over the last few weeks are consistent with what you would do if you were going to do an air strike. We have to throw away the notion the US could not do it because it is too tied up in Iraq. It is an air operation."

The people cheer leading Bush towards a strike on Iran are the same people who cheer led the case for the war with Iraq. The American Enterprise Institute appeared to be out of favour as Iraq descended into chaos, however, Bush recently took their advice over the advice of James Baker and the Iraq War Study Group when he decided to implement his "surge and accelerate" policy as opposed to Baker's proposal for dialogue with Iran and Syria.

Indeed, Josh Muravchik, a Middle East specialist at the American Enterprise Institute is vocal in calling for such a strike:

I do not think anyone in the US is talking about invasion. We have been chastened by the experience of Iraq, even a hawk like myself." But an air strike was another matter. The danger of Iran having a nuclear weapon "is not just that it might use it out of the blue but as a shield to do all sorts of mischief. I do not believe there will be any way to stop this happening other than physical force."

Mr Muravchik is intent on holding Mr Bush to his word: "The Bush administration have said they would not allow Iran nuclear weapons. That is either bullshit or they mean it as a clear code: we will do it if we have to. I would rather believe it is not hot air."

And then, of course, there is the small matter of Bush's legacy.

Mr Bush is part of the American generation that refuses to forgive Iran for the 1979-81 hostage crisis. He leaves office in January 2009 and has said repeatedly that he does not want a legacy in which Iran has achieved superpower status in the region and come close to acquiring a nuclear weapon capability. The logic of this is that if diplomatic efforts fail to persuade Iran to stop uranium enrichment then the only alternative left is to turn to the military.

This was always the problem of having a US President with so little interest in foreign affairs. Bush seems not to realise that Iran achieved superpower status the very moment he invaded Iraq. The reason that Reagan, Kissenger and others hoped that Iraq and Iran would fight themselves to stalemate was precisely because if either was victorious then they would have superpower status in the region.

Bush made Iran a regional superpower by removing Iran's enemies in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and he made them a superpower without Iran having to fire a single shot.

It is also highly unlikely that any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities will succeed and any attack will certainly not remove Iran's status as a regional superpower.

Bush has created his own monster, and if he thinks he can put what he has created back into the box by a few air strikes over Tehran then he is even more seriously deluded than I had previously thought.

Iran is a new regional superpower and it is aligned to the Maliki government in Iraq that Bush supports. That is simply the reality that Bush has created. All of these facts are interrelated and interconnected. Bush's spectacular lack of curiosity seems to have blinded him to the fact that you can't pull this particular piece of string without unravelling the whole tapestry.

If Bush thinks things are bad in Iraq now, just wait until he attacks Iran and enrages Iraq's Shia population. At the moment it's mostly Iraq's Sunni's that are lined up against his forces, when he sets Iraq's Shia's against the US it really will be reminiscent of the American exit from Saigon when soldiers scrambled to get on to fleeing helicopters.

Bush, and his neo-con advisers, seem to believe that each of these things exist in isolation and can be dealt with separately. This is a fatal error. But it's an error that Bush is on the brink of making.

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tag: Bush, James A Baker, Iran, Maliki, American Enterprise Institute, air strikes, neo-conservatives, Cheneywar study group, Dick Cheney, nuclear proliferation, Shia, Sunnis, US State Department, Afghanistan, Taliban

Pentagon unit defied CIA advice to justify Iraq war

Donald Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans, which was overseen by Douglas Feith, manipulated intelligence exaggerating the link between al Qaeda and Saddam's Iraqi regime in order to bolster the government's case for war in Iraq the Senate was informed yesterday.

"The office of the under-secretary of defence for policy developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the intelligence community, to senior decision-makers," the report says.

Mr Feith's office was the source for some of the most glaring examples of faulty intelligence during the run-up to the war. In 2002 it promoted the idea that there had been a meeting between the lead September 11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta, and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001. The intelligence community has never established this.

The unit deliberately undermined the work of intelligence agencies in briefings in August 2002 for the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and officials at the national security council, Mr Gimble said. The briefings repeated the claims about the Prague meeting but did not mention the CIA's extreme scepticism. Instead, the briefings alleged "fundamental problems with the way that the intelligence community was assessing the information".

This will come as no surprise to anyone who followed what they were up to at the time. The Office of Special Plans was the single reason that any reasonable observer before the Iraq war became convinced that, no matter what Saddam did, Bush was intent on invading.

This was an office set up, according to individuals interviewed by Seymour Hersh, "in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true—that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons (WMD) that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States."

Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld were also convinced that the CIA "was out to disprove linkage between Iraq and terrorism,' according to Hersh's sources.

So this unit existed for one purpose, to bolster the case for a US invasion of Iraq. It did so by displaying "intelligence" of dubious quality in the worst possible light and using this "intelligence" to create a drumbeat for war that, in the end, became unstoppable.

In carrying out this task, Feith and others were greatly aided by the American press who accepted these falsehoods without question and daily reported this nonsense as if it was fact.

I remember at the time making a few simple Google searches and discovering that the shelf life of chemical weapons was about five years. We had, at that time, had Saddam under punitive sanctions for the past twelve years. I therefore reasoned that anything that Saddam may have one day possessed would surely be mush by now and was amazed that very few national newspapers were making this point. They were rather simply echoing the Bush administrations reasons for invasion without checking whether or not what they were saying made any sense.

And, as Bush has recently set up an Office of Special Plans charged with looking into Iran's possible weaponry, there has never been a better time for making sure that Press don't go to sleep a second time.

Glenn Greenwald has linked to a set of questions from the Nieman Watchdog site that desperately need answering by any enquiry into how the US Press fell asleep at the wheel and allowed Bush and his cohorts to basically fabricate a case for war. They include:

Why did the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau’s “against-the grain reporting” during the build-up to war receive such “disappointing play,” in the words of its former bureau chief?

* Why, on the eve of war, did the Washington Post’s executive editor reject a story by Walter Pincus, its experienced and knowledgeable national security reporter, that questioned administration claims of hidden Iraqi weapons and why, when the editor reconsidered, the story ran on Page 17?

* Why did the Post, to the “dismay” of the paper’s ombudsman, bury in the back pages or miss stories that challenged the administration’s version of events? Or, as Pincus complained, why did Post editors go “through a whole phase in which they didn’t put things on the front page that would make a difference” while, from August 2002 to the start of the war in March 2003, did the Post, according to its press critic, Howard Kurtz, publish “more than 140 front-page stories that focused heavily on administration rhetoric against Iraq”?

* Why did Michael Massing’s critique of Iraq-war coverage, in the New York Review of Books, conclude that “The Post was not alone. The nearer the war drew, and the more determined the administration seemed to wage it, the less editors were willing to ask tough questions. The occasional critical stories that did appear were…tucked well out of sight.”

* Why did the Times’s Thomas E. Friedman and other foreign affairs specialists, who should have known better, join the “let’s-go-to-war” chorus?

* Why did Colin Powell’s pivotal presentation to the United Nations receive immediate and overwhelming press approval despite its evident weaknesses and even fabrications?

* Why did the British press, unlike its American counterpart, critically dissect the speech and regard it with scorn?

* Why did the Associated Press wait six months, when the body count began to rise, to distribute a major piece by AP’s Charles Hanley challenging Powell’s evidence and why did Hanley say how frustrating it had been until then to break through the self-censorship imposed by his editors on negative news about Iraq?

The reasons for the disgraceful absence of the United States Press as a watchful Fourth Estate are painfully obvious, as Greenwald again links to:

The press response to the build-up to the Iraq war simply is the latest manifestation of an underlying and ongoing reluctance to dissent from authority and prevailing opinion when emotions run high, especially on matters of war and peace, when the country most needs a questioning, vigorous press.

And the greatest irony in all of this is that the architects of this war, the people who lied and manipulated the intelligence in order to lead the country into war, not only have suffered no punishment for their dreadful actions, they are not even expressing regret.

Mr Feith, who left the Pentagon in 2005 for a post at Georgetown University, yesterday played down the influence of his unit. "This was not an alternative intelligence assessment," he told the Washington Post. "It was from the start a criticism of the consensus of the intelligence community, and in presenting it I was not endorsing its substance."

So Feith now claims that he "was not endorsing it's substance". This is what is known as lying with impunity.

As Bush and his cohorts now take aim at Iran, one would hope that any "intelligence" they present will be met with a much more critical eye than the one that greeted Feith's offerings from the Office of Special Plans. Offering's that even he now claims he never really believed in.

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tag: Office of Special Plans, most right wing administration ever, Iraq, Iraq war, Douglas Feith, Donald Rumsfeld,

Robert Fisk: Iraqi insurgents offer peace in return for US concessions

By Robert Fisk.

For the first time, one of Iraq's principal insurgent groups has set out the terms of a ceasefire that would allow American and British forces to leave the country they invaded almost four years ago.

The present terms would be impossible for any US administration to meet - but the words of Abu Salih Al-Jeelani, one of the military leaders of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Resistance Movement show that the groups which have taken more than 3,000 American lives are actively discussing the opening of contacts with the occupation army.

Al-Jeelani's group, which also calls itself the "20th Revolution Brigades'', is the military wing of the original insurgent organisation that began its fierce attacks on US forces shortly after the invasion of 2003. The statement is, therefore, of potentially great importance, although it clearly represents only the views of Sunni Muslim fighters.

Shia militias are nowhere mentioned. The demands include the cancellation of the entire Iraqi constitution - almost certainly because the document, in effect, awards oil-bearing areas of Iraq to Shia and Kurds, but not to the minority Sunni community. Yet the Sunnis remain Washington's principal enemies in the Iraqi war.

"Discussions and negotiations are a principle we believe in to overcome the situation in which Iraqi bloodletting continues," al-Jeelani said in a statement that was passed to The Independent. "Should the Americans wish to negotiate their withdrawal from our country and leave our people to live in peace, then we will negotiate subject to specific conditions and circumstances."

Al-Jeelani suggests the United Nations, the Arab League or the Islamic Conference might lead such negotiations and would have to guarantee the security of the participants.

Then come the conditions:

* The release of 5,000 detainees held in Iraqi prisons as "proof of goodwill".

* Recognition "of the legitimacy of the resistance and the legitimacy of its role in representing the will of the Iraqi people".

* An internationally guaranteed timetable for all agreements.

* The negotiations to take place in public.

* The resistance "must be represented by a committee comprising the representatives of all the jihadist brigades".

* The US to be represented by its ambassador in Iraq and the most senior commander.

It is not difficult to see why the Americans would object to those terms. They will not want to talk to men they have been describing as "terrorists" for the past four years. And if they were ever to concede that the "resistance" represented "the will of the Iraqi people" then their support for the elected Iraqi government would have been worthless.

Indeed, the insurgent leader specifically calls for the "dissolution of the present government and the revoking of the spurious elections and the constitution..."

He also insists that all agreements previously entered into by Iraqi authorities or US forces should be declared null and void.

But there are other points which show that considerable discussion must have gone on within the insurgency movement - possibly involving the group's rival, the Iraqi Islamic Army.

They call, for example, for the disbandment of militias and the outlawing of militia organisations - something the US government has been urging the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to do for months.

The terms also include the legalisation of the old Iraqi army, an "Anglo-American commitment to rebuild Iraq and reconstruct all war damage" - something the occupying powers claim they have been trying to do for a long time - and integrating "resistance fighters" into the recomposed army.

Al-Jeelani described President George Bush's new plans for countering the insurgents as "political chicanery" and added that "on the field of battle, we do not believe that the Americans are able to diminish the capability of the resistance fighters to continue the struggle to liberate Iraq from occupation ...

"The resistance groups are not committing crimes to be granted a pardon by America, we are not looking for pretexts to cease our jihad... we fight for a divine aim and one of our rights is the liberation and independence of our land of Iraq."

There will, the group says, be no negotiations with Mr Maliki's government because they consider it "complicit in the slaughter of Iraqis by militias, the security apparatus and death squads". But they do call for the unity of Iraq and say they "do not recognise the divisions among the Iraqi people".

It is not difficult to guess any American response to those proposals. But FLN [National Liberation Front] contacts with France during the 1954-62 war of independence by Algeria began with such a series of demands - equally impossible to meet but which were eventually developed into real proposals for a French withdrawal.

What is unclear, of course, is the degree to which al-Jeelani's statement represents the collective ideas of the Sunni insurgents. And, ominously, no mention is made of al-Qa'ida.

Click title for source.

tag: Iraq, withdrawal, pull-out, ceasefire, al Qaeda, Shia, Sunnis, surge and accelerate

Rival Palestinian factions agree to form coalition government

The unelected Abbas has come to an agreement with Hamas to form a power sharing government in Palestine, although it is still unclear if this will be enough to make the Quartet lift their sanctions of Palestine - imposed after the people there democratically elected a Hamas government.

After two days of talks in Mecca, the leaders of Hamas and Fatah agreed a list of ministers for a new national unity cabinet and called for a halt to factional fighting that has claimed more than 100 lives in the occupied territories in recent weeks. The deal appeared to have averted a slide into civil war. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, described it as a new era.

Hamas, the Islamic militant movement voted into government a year ago, appeared to have the upper hand in the agreement. Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister and Hamas leader, will stay on and an independent candidate, selected by Hamas and approved by Fatah, will be given the key position of interior minister, which includes control of the thousands of security forces.

Israel and the Quartet of Middle East negotiators - the EU, the UN, the US and Russia - had insisted that to lift an international boycott the new government had to meet three conditions: recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence and acceptance of previous peace deals. Before the Mecca agreement it appeared that both Israel and the Quartet were reluctant to accept any flexibility on those requirements. However, last night it appeared that the deal included no explicit recognition of Israel, but agreed only to "respect" past peace agreements.

Before the meeting, Fatah officials said they were looking to Hamas to sign up to a stronger acceptance of previous peace deals, either agreeing to "honour" them or to "commit" to them.

Israel have not yet said whether or not it accepts this new deal, although a spokesman did say that it expected any new government to agree to all the terms laid down by the Quartet. Unless Israel agree to recognise the new government then it is unlikely that the crippling international sanctions on Palestine will be lifted.

The deal appears to be based on the Prisoners Document.

The document consists of 18 points, and calls for an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders and the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza strip. The initial version of the document has generally been interpreted as implicitly recognizing Israel's right to exist, as opposed to the official Hamas platform, which calls for Israel's destruction.

Of course, the recognition of Israel in the Prisoners Document is implicit rather than explicit, so the Israelis can be expected to find fault with this and to insist that the sanctions are not lifted.

“I wonder why the issue of recognizing Israel is the key to everything?” Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas government, said earlier Thursday. “We are interested to end the siege but not at any cost.”

He added: “We try to balance between our Palestinian national constraints and our opening up to the international community. Israel is not ready to deal with any Palestinian side unless the Palestinians deal with the Israeli conditions.”

Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman for Mr. Olmert, said, “Israel expects the new Palestinian government to respect all three of the international community’s principles,” but she declined to say whether the new Palestinian government had met any or all of those benchmarks. Israeli officials say that would require further evaluation.

It is ironic that the Israelis are insisting that any future Palestinian government should recognise Israel's right to exist whilst the Israelis have yet to concede any similar right for a future state of Palestine.

In this way the Israeli's appear to be adopting a similar stance to the one adopted by the US regarding any future talks with Iran. They insist that their opponents agree to all of their terms before any negotiations can take place. In other words, surrender and we'll talk.

This is very good way of avoiding any agreement whilst convincing oneself that one is being reasonable. However, everyone knows that agreement can only come through both sides making compromises.

By implicitly recognising Israel through it's embrace of the Prisoners Document, Hamas are taking a huge step. This is a serious compromise on their previous position.

If the Israelis reject this and insist on more, then it can be concluded that the Israelis are not interested in peace.

Israel have long sought the destruction of Hamas, just as Hamas have long sought the destruction of Israel. Neither will ever succeed in their aims.

However, the Palestinians have come to a power sharing deal that ignores the fact that Hamas were democratically elected by the Palestinian people. What more can we ask of these people?

It is time the Israelis started dealing with the Palestinian government that exists, rather than insisting on some government that they feel will be "reasonable", by which they mean a government that will accede to Israel's requests as it pertains to illegal settlements on the West Bank.

The Palestinians have already effectively ignored the democratic wishes of their people in order to meet the demands of Israel, the US and the EU. We can ask no more of them. We should recognise this historic compromise and lift the sanctions now.

We have already shown our disdain of democracy by refusing to recognise the democratic choice of the Palestinian people, are we now to compound that idiocy by refusing to recognise a Palestinian compromise? If we do so, then we will find ourselves playing the Israeli game of the last forty years, where they claim to be desperately seeking a peace that always just eludes them. And, after forty years, one is entitled to ask, "Just how serious they are about this peace they claim to be seeking?"

Click title for full article.

tag: Israel, Palestine, Road Map, Hamas, peace talks

Iran to Hit U.S. Interests if Attacked

The Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned the United States that if they are attacked by the U.S. that they will respond by striking U.S. interests all over the world. He has chosen to say this at a time when many of us believe that this is exactly what Bush has in mind.

Khamenei's comments came on the same day that Tehran's ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zari, wrote in the New York Times warning that attempts to isolate Iran would fail.

The United States is reaping "the expected bitter fruits of its ill-conceived adventurism," he said.

"But rather than face these unpleasant facts, the United States administration is trying to sell an escalated version of the same failed policy. It does this by trying to make Iran its scapegoat and fabricating evidence of Iranian activities in Iraq," he said.

This is exactly what Bush is seeking to do. There were many of us who predicted that 130,000 "liberators" would very quickly turn into 130,000 targets and that is exactly what has happened.

Bush is attempting to blame Iran for this for two totally predictable reasons.

Firstly, he hopes to shield himself from the anger of the American public by presenting this - not as a disaster of his own making - but rather, as something that would be going swimmingly were it not for those meddling Iranians.

And secondly (and this really does show how insane Bush and his pro-Likud, neo-con thugs are) because he really, really, really would like to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. This, despite the disaster that is the Iraq war, is why Bush, Perle and Netanyahu continue to talk of Iran in only the starkest of terms.

Indeed, Perle promises the Israelis that the U.S. will attack Iran if it acquires a bomb.

Khamenei then goes on to display a faith in Bush's intellectual capacity that the rest of the world have long given up on:

"Some people say that the U.S. president is not prone to calculating the consequences of his actions," Khamenei said in remarks broadcast on state television, "but it is possible to bring this kind of person to wisdom."

"U.S. policymakers and analysts know that the Iranian nation would not let an invasion go without a response," Khamenei added.

I know Khamenei is a religious man, but his God must be a very powerful one indeed if he can bring George Bush "to wisdom".

As far as miracles go, that really is up there with the parting of the Red Sea.

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tag: Bush, Iran, Ahmadinejad, Khamenei, Richard Perle, Netanyahu

Watada Court-Martial Ends in Mistrial

Oh, this is simply too good for words. The case against First Lt. Ehren Watada, the young American who refused deployment to Iraq on the grounds that the war was illegal, has had his case withdrawn from court and the judge has decided that a mistrial has taken place.

In a stunning defeat for military prosecutors, Lt. Col. John Head, the military judge presiding over Watada's court-martial, said he had no choice but to declare a mistrial because military prosecutors and Watada's defense attorney could not reach an agreement regarding the characterization of a stipulation agreement Watada signed before the start of his court-martial.

The judge characterized the stipulation agreement as an admission of guilt by Watada for "missing movement" and making statements against the Iraq war. Eric Seitz, Watada's attorney, said the stipulation Watada signed, however, was by no means an admission of guilt by his client. Rather, it was a statement of fact that his client believed the Iraq war was illegal, and that he refused to deploy to the region with his unit because of his beliefs.

Lt. Col. Head said he wanted to question Watada regarding the agreement to gain a better understanding of what Watada's state of mind was when he signed it, but Seitz would not allow the judge to question his client unless he knew the questions in advance. Head said if he could not question Watada to ensure the accuracy of the document he signed prior to the start of the court-martial, he would have to throw out the agreement, meaning the charges against Watada would become null and void.

Seitz then asked for time to speak to his client. After a 30 minute recess Seitz informed the court that he had advised his client to not answer the judge's questions, but Lt. Watada had agreed to answer against his legal advice.

Issues surrounding the stipulation agreement came up when military prosecutors asked the judge to provide the military panel (similar to a civilian jury) deciding Watada's fate with additional instructions before they returned a verdict. Head said the basis of the additional instructions could result in questions about the "stipulation of fact" regarding Watada's reasons for refusing to deploy to Iraq.

The judge did not indicate the substance of the additional instructions the defense asked him to provide. Head excoriated military prosecutors in open court for producing the stipulation agreement hours before he declared the mistrial. He said he would allow the government to reopen the case against Watada, but it's unclear whether the military will do so.

I am finding other reports that differ from this one and state that a new trial date has been set for March 19, although it is understood that Watada's lawyers are planning to argue that this amounts to double jeopardy - more than one prosecution for the same alleged crime.

After the mistrial was declared, Seitz said he didn't think his client could be tried again because it would be the equivalent of double jeopardy. Should the Army proceed with a second trial, Seitz said he would seek dismissal of the charges with prejudice so they could not be refiled.

If that request is not granted, he will appeal, he said.

"Our hope is, at this point, that the Army will realize that this case is a hopeless mess," Seitz said.

Lt. Col. Robert Resnick of the Judge Advocate General's office at Fort Lewis said double jeopardy does not apply.

In their opening statements Tuesday, prosecutors said Watada abandoned his soldiers and brought disgrace upon himself and the service by accusing the Army of war crimes and denouncing the Bush administration.

Seitz countered that Watada acted in good conscience, based on his own convictions.

I am sure that the army will fight this all the way; however, if they had any sense this would be a really good time just to let this one go. It serves no purpose to jail this young man for taking a principled stance.

I, for one, am delighted that the case against him has collapsed. Hopefully, this will be the end of the matter. Although, from the behaviour of the US Army up until this point, I won't be holding my breath.

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tag: Ehren Watada, Iraq, Iraq war, mistrial,

Israeli and Lebanese troops clash at border

In a worrying development, gunfire has broken out between Israeli and Lebanese forces on Israel's northern border. This is the first time hostilities have broken out since the end of the Israeli-Lebanon war last summer.

The Israelis are saying that they were searching for explosive devices that Hizbullah may have planted on the border.

The incident followed a day of tension, as IDF troops entered the area between the fence and the internationally-recognized border with several bulldozers, in order to search for explosive devices Hezbollah planted there.

Earlier this week, four explosive devices were discovered in the area. IDF sappers detonated them from a distance.

The IDF carried out yesterday's operation after informing the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the Lebanese Army of its intentions.

In response, the Lebanese Army warned the IDF that if its forces violated Lebanese sovereignty, it would open fire.

The IDF said that it did not intend to cross into Lebanese territory, but if its forces were attacked, it would respond.

Israel rejected Lebanese claims that it had violated Lebanese sovereignty, saying that the force was south of the international border - inside Israel - as delineated by the United Nations following the IDF pullout from southern Lebanon in May 2000. In some places, the border and the fence are several dozen meters apart.

Lebanese officials said an IDF bulldozer crossed the international border and entered about 18 meters into Lebanon.

I don't want to read too much into this at this stage but I find it interesting that the Israelis claim that they "didn't intend" wandering into Lebanese territory. Borders are so clearly defined that I find it hard to believe that one could wander into someone else's territory and be unaware that you were doing so. Especially as the Lebanese army were on the other side of the border watching. And had threatened to fire if their territory was breached. How can a mistake like this occur without it being a deliberate provocation?

It reminds me of the deliberately provocative behaviour that Israel used to display when dealing with Syria over the Golan Heights. As Moshe Dayan explains:

It would happen like this: We would send a tractor to plow someplace of no value, in the demilitarized zone, knowing ahead of time that the Syrians would begin to shoot. If they did not start shooting, we would tell the tractor to keep going forward, until the Syrians in the end would get nervous and start shooting. And then we would start firing artillery, and later also the airforce, and this was the way it was. I did this, and Laskov and Tzur [two previous commanders-in-chief] did it. Yitzhak Rabin did it when he was there , but it seems to me that it was Dado, more than anyone else, who enjoyed these games.

There is also a noticeable change in Israeli rhetoric.

The IDF officer said the army intends to clear all salients between the border and the fence of explosives.

"Our way of thinking has changed," the officer said. "Before the war, the approach was that confrontation was bad for us, and therefore we kept away from the fence. Now the approach is that we will operate up to the Blue Line [the international border] and if the other side seeks a confrontation, it will get it," the officer said.

So, we have Bush making noises towards Iran, and now we have the Israelis crossing international borders and saying "if the other side seeks a confrontation, it will get it."

Indeed, Israel have also threatened to take action against Syria.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz on Wednesday accused Syria of allowing the rearmament of Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and said Israel has the right to act forcefully against the Shiite militia to counter the threat.

Speaking to visiting U.S. Jewish leaders, Peretz said Syria, Hezbollah's main ally, is continuing to allow weapons shipments to the group to cross its border with Lebanon.

"We can't under any circumstances ignore the transfer of weapons and ammunition to Hezbollah," Peretz said. "While Israel remains committed to the cease-fire we reserve the right to protect the citizens of the State of Israel and we will do this forcefully without any compromises."

The one thing that Bush and the Israelis have in common at the moment is they are both very keen to indulge in fighting talk.

As I say, I don't want to read too much into this at the moment, but the people who dream of a wider Middle Eastern war are today a small step closer to having their wish granted.

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tag: Israel, Lebanon, IDF, UN, United Nations,

How the US sent $12bn in cash to Iraq. And watched it vanish

After six years of the Republicans refusing to hold the administration to any form of Congressional oversight the first hearings on the Iraq war and it's financing have been held and they have proven to be eye popping.

The US flew nearly $12bn in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent.

The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a US congressional committee.

In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tonnes, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22 2004, six days before the handover.

Details of the shipments have emerged in a memorandum prepared for the meeting of the House committee on oversight and government reform which is examining Iraqi reconstruction. Its chairman, Henry Waxman, a fierce critic of the war, said the way the cash had been handled was mind-boggling. "The numbers are so large that it doesn't seem possible that they're true. Who in their right mind would send 363 tonnes of cash into a war zone?"

Who indeed? But more importantly, what does it say about the Republicans that cash transfers of this size were taking place and they felt under no obligation to hold the administration to account for any of it. Not a single hearing, not a single investigation whilst the largest cash transfer in the history of the Federal Reserve took place.

This is the same spineless acquiescence that allowed them to stand aside whilst Bush dispensed with Habeas Corpus, that allowed them to aid the administration to legalise torture.

As Bush's popularity tanks, as the neo-cons desert the sinking ship that is his administration, Republicans will attempt to portray Bush as an aberration. As someone who wasn't one of them.

However, the fact is that Bush was only allowed to govern in this way because the Republican majority refused to ever make any attempt to hold him to account. The dispensing of cash in Iraq is in many ways a crude metaphor for the entire way that Bush has been allowed to govern. With what one can only describe as reckless abandon.

"One CPA official described an environment awash in $100 bills," the memorandum says. "One contractor received a $2m payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped bundles of currency. Auditors discovered that the key to a vault was kept in an unsecured backpack.

"They also found that $774,300 in cash had been stolen from one division's vault. Cash payments were made from the back of a pickup truck, and cash was stored in unguarded sacks in Iraqi ministry offices. One official was given $6.75m in cash, and was ordered to spend it in one week before the interim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds."

The minutes from a May 2004 CPA meeting reveal "a single disbursement of $500m in security funding labelled merely 'TBD', meaning 'to be determined'."

The memorandum concludes: "Many of the funds appear to have been lost to corruption and waste ... thousands of 'ghost employees' were receiving pay cheques from Iraqi ministries under the CPA's control. Some of the funds could have enriched both criminals and insurgents fighting the United States."

This is the work of the President who had the gall to run a campaign on national security. He allowed this reckless squandering of funds which may or may not "have enriched both criminals and insurgents fighting the United States" and the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, believes that "the lack of accountability and transparency extended to the entire $20bn expended by the CPA".

That's $20billion we're talking about. Spread around Iraq without any accountability or transparency. And this all happened whilst the Republicans controlled both Houses. And they didn't think to ask a single question about the administration's behaviour.

To oversee the expenditure the CPA was supposed to appoint an independent certified public accounting firm. "Instead the CPA hired an obscure consulting firm called North Star Consultants Inc. The firm was so small that it reportedly operates out of a private home in San Diego." Mr Bowen found that the company "did not perform a review of internal controls as required by the contract".

However, evidence before the committee suggests that senior American officials were unconcerned about the situation because the billions were not US taxpayers' money. Paul Bremer, the head of the CPA, reminded the committee that "the subject of today's hearing is the CPA's use and accounting for funds belonging to the Iraqi people held in the so-called Development Fund for Iraq. These are not appropriated American funds. They are Iraqi funds. I believe the CPA discharged its responsibilities to manage these Iraqi funds on behalf of the Iraqi people."

And this was not even their own money that they were dispensing in this haphazard fashion. This was the Iraqi people's money. Although that appears to be the very reason it was treated with such contempt. Bremer's financial adviser, retired Admiral David Oliver, is even more direct.

The memorandum quotes an interview with the BBC World Service. Asked what had happened to the $8.8bn he replied: "I have no idea. I can't tell you whether or not the money went to the right things or didn't - nor do I actually think it's important."

Q: "But the fact is billions of dollars have disappeared without trace."

Oliver: "Of their money. Billions of dollars of their money, yeah I understand. I'm saying what difference does it make?"

David North does not think it is important that $8.8billion is unaccounted for. Or for the fact that it may have gone to help the insurgency. This mindset is simply staggering.

But it is a mindset that was fuelled by the fact that Republicans back home were never going to hold any hearings or ask anyone to account for their actions.

The culpability for this is not simply Bremner's - nor the people that he employed. It is symptomatic of the entire neo-con culture, a corrupt obscenity that was allowed to flourish because the Republicans were willing to turn a blind eye as long as this cabal delivered them power. A power that they then refused to use to oversight these same people as they ransacked Iraqi funds, squandered billions of dollars of Iraqi money and failed to provide the Iraqis with even the amount of electricity that Saddam had managed to give them.

This type of reckless abandon typifies the Bush administration. It is the same mindset that sends 21,500 more troops into a war zone, when most sane individuals have long conceded that the war is lost. Bush now gambles with young men's lives with the same reckless disregard that he distributed Iraqi funds.

And he is only able to do so because the Republican Party continue to support him no matter how insane his behaviour becomes.

So no, this is not the fault of a few individuals, culpable as they may be. They have been aided and supported by the entire Republican party and the almost criminal way in which they turned a blind eye to what was being done in their name.

That should never be forgotten.

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tag: Iraq, Bush, Republicans, Oversight, Reconstruction, Waxman, Cummings, Accounting, Bremer

Iraq Reconstruction Hearing: Accounting

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Chairman Henry Waxman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform question witness on the accounting arrangement that led to $8.8 billion in missing funds.

At last these people are being held to some form of account.







tag: Iraq, Oversight, Reconstruction, Waxman, Cummings, Accounting, Bremer,

Blair's defence of special relationship with US has hollow ring

As he nears the end of his time in office, Tony Blair is beginning to sound almost delusional as he attempts to justify his track record as it relates to Britain's "Special Relationship" with the United States.

An unrepentant Mr Blair told MPs the relationship had given Britain more clout at the world's top table during his 10 years in power and insisted that it had resulted directly in progress on climate change, the Middle East and Africa.

Just what progress Blair thinks has been achieved on "climate change, the Middle East and Africa" that justifies the kind of relationship that has caused the destruction of his political credibility, he fails to elaborate upon.

Don't get me wrong. I am not some rabid anti-American who thinks Britain should cut off all ties with the United States. I am, however, deeply sceptical about Blair's position where he argued that the US could not be left isolated. Why, when George Bush's government were pursuing totally isolationist policies, was it so vital that Britain offer them the fig leaf of internationalism?

Why were we not allowing Bush to be seen as the international pariah that he was? Many Americans, I am sure, swallowed Bush's lies because Blair was also parroting them. Had he chosen not to do so, many Americans might have woken up far sooner to just how extreme Bush's regime was. Indeed, the shameful portrayal of the French and Germans as Saddam's stooges would not have been possible without Britain siding with an American policy that we now know was based on falsehoods.

A good friend, as Harold Wilson proved, does not offer automatic support. Wilson refused to allow British troops to aid the US in Vietnam and the Special Relationship did not suffer.

Blair was not a good friend. Of course, I don't pretend to myself for an instant that Blair's withdrawing of support would have prevented the Iraq war. It would not have. It would however, have made many Americans uneasy that even friends like Britain did not share Bush's messianic vision of Saddam and his WMD. Sometimes, as we all know from personal experience, the job of a good friend is to say no and protect us from our worst excesses.

Nor did Blair gain anything like the influence that he is now claiming. He was told - and he held it aloft like a banner before the Iraq war - that the road to a Palestinian state lay through Baghdad.

Yet, since the fall of Saddam, Bush has paid almost no attention to the plight of the Palestinians.

So what actual influence does Blair think he has had? He spouts this nonsense even whilst admitting that the Special Relationship has harmed him personally:

"I am the person who above all can give evidence as to the difficulty and sometimes the political penalty you pay for a close relationship with the US, but we shouldn't give that up in any set of circumstances," he said. Mr Blair told the Liaison Committee of senior MPs that the links were an advantage rather than a problem for Britain in the Middle East. "The relationship with America is what opens lots of doors everywhere, including the Middle East. For better or worse, this country for the last 10 years has been right at the heart of every single major international agenda - whether it is terrorism, climate change, Africa, whatever it is," he said.

This is highly delusional. The recent Chatham House Report found that Blair had failed to influence Bush's policy in any way and advised that no future British PM would ever again be able to offer such unconditional support:

The root failure of Tony Blair’s foreign policy has been its inability to influence the Bush administration in any significant way despite the sacrifice – military, political and financial – that the United Kingdom has made.

Tony Blair’s successor(s) will not be able to offer unconditional support for US initiatives in foreign policy and a rebalancing of the UK’s foreign policy between the US and Europe will have to take place.

Indeed, even Kendall Myers, a senior State Department analyst, has stated:

That for all Britain’s attempts to influence US policy in recent years, “we typically ignore them and take no notice — it’s a sad business”.

He added that he felt “a little ashamed” at Mr Bush’s treatment of the Prime Minister, who had invested so much of his political capital in standing shoulder to shoulder with America after 9/11.

Speaking at an academic forum in Washington on Tuesday night, he answered a question from The Times, saying: “It was a done deal from the beginning, it was a one-sided relationship that was entered into with open eyes . . . there was nothing. There was no payback, no sense of reciprocity.”

Myers speaks a truth that Blair is anxious to ignore. There has been no payback for Britain's unstinting support. There is no Palestinian state. There is no deal on climate change. There is, quite simply, not a single thing that Blair can point at and say, "We wouldn't have this, had we not supported the Americans".

I am not for a moment saying that one assists an ally merely for what one can get out of the deal. Indeed, I believe that one should intervene in certain situations simply because it is the morally right thing to do. However, it is Blair who is claiming that his support for the US has produced tangible advantages, advantages that the rest of us simply cannot see and that Blair himself seems to find impossible to name. The advantages that he has named, on "climate change, the Middle East and Africa", are laughable as they simply do not exist.

Labour MP's have reacted with scorn to Blair's latest pronouncement:

Peter Kilfoyle, a former defence minister, said: "It is delusional. It could be self-justification. It is a special relationship in one sense - it is one-way traffic. In the depths of night, he must realise how very wrong he has judged where Britain's national interests lie."

Alan Simpson, the MP for Nottingham South, said: "This is the politics of dangerous self-delusion. Even the White House laughs at the notion that Britain has influence over American foreign policy. The only door Bush opens at the moment is the one marked 'exit.' He [Mr Blair] has clearly entered the David Icke phase of his political career."

American readers will be unfamiliar with David Icke. He was a respected British sports commentator who, during a TV interview with Terry Wogan, announced that he was the son of God and that the Earth was run by a group of reptilian humanoids.

This, obviously, made him the subject of public ridicule. However, as TV editors refused to allow him on television to espouse his theory, the more convinced Icke became about the conspiracy to silence him.

In a similar fashion Blair has always regarded Old Labour as dinosaurs. The more we oppose him, the more convinced Blair becomes about the rightness of his cause.

And inevitably, like Icke, he now is saying things that are manifestly untrue. And the more we scoff, the more convinced he will become that he is right.

It's a sad ending to what should have been a brilliant political career. And it's all come about because of his relationship with George Bush. But that's a reality that Blair will never accept. However, if he thinks any of his successors will repeat his folly - as he is insisting that they must - then he's even madder than Icke is.

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tag: Bush, Blair, special relationship, United States, United Kingdom, Iraq, war on terror, most right wing administration ever