• home • about • twitter • archives • subscribe • email •

Seven years ago today the invasion of Iraq began. No doubt its architects, along with the legions of armchair and keyboard warriors who cheered them on, will be raising a glass to the uncounted yet glorious dead.

It was, however, the events of the previous day that set the standard for how the rest of the war was to be conducted by the doughty liberators of Iraq.

This was the attack on Dora Farms outside Baghdad where some Iraqi whispered into his phone that Saddam Hussein was visiting his children. Down hurtled four 2000-pound bunker-busters and 40 cruise missiles. There were high fives in the White House situation room at news of a mangled Saddam being hauled from the rubble. It all turned out to be nonsense, like most military bulletins out of Iraq. The bunker busters all missed the compound. Saddam Hussein wasn’t there. Uday and Qusay weren’t there. Fifteen civilians died, including nine women and a child.

History, written by the victors of course, does not record their names. And so it went.

Clearly I’m no expert on foreign policy. That’s why I’m typing this in the spare room and not ordering the bombing of villages in Afghanistan.

That said, something bothers me about Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s plan for peace in the country:

This involves three things. First, the reintegration into Afghan society of low-level insurgents prepared to lay down their arms and accept the writ of the government. Second, political engagement with those disaffected by the current settlement, but prepared to renounce violence, split from Al Qaeda and accept the constitutional framework. Third, a wider regional political settlement that sees all Afghanistan’s neighbours and near neighbours supportive of an independent Afghan state.

It sounds like a plan although it does sort of fly in the face of the hardline ‘we don’t negotiate with terrorists’ thing we’re fed when some poor sod is kidnapped and is about to get his head sawn off by an al Qaeda affiliate somewhere. Define ‘low-level insurgents’. Is it those that only work weekends or don’t load their AK-47s?

What if Ken Bigley or Margaret Hassan’s murderers were ‘low-level insurgents prepared to lay down their arms and accept the writ of the government’ being merely ‘disaffected by the current settlement, but prepared to renounce violence, split from Al Qaeda and accept the constitutional framework’?

We need a moral philosopher of Miliband’s calibre to make the distinction between a beheader and a mere IED-layer or woman-stoner. Still, if we’ve learned anything in the last 14 years, it’s that there’s no moral, logical or rhetorical cul-de-sac out of which the likes of Miliband cannot handbrake-turn.

No, what bothers me is this. Hamid Karzai has been the elected leader of Afghanistan since 2004 and we’re only just coming up with this now? This plan’s six years and countless deaths late isn’t it? Mind you, only a cynic would suggest that the glorious liberators of Aghanistan are scrabbling around for this fix now because they’re saddled with a seriously bent partner in Karzai and a military campaign limping into its ninth year.

I for one cannot wait to see the fighters, extremists and women-haters that Miliband is hoping to coax onto our side (not to mention the ones already on our side) implement his much loved universal values.

No. 10 deny PM ‘hit’ Iraq. Allegations Gordon Brown pulled the country from its chair and ’shoved’ it are ‘lies’ said a spokesman.

Largely trampled beneath the deeply unedifying flurry of handbags that we must now call Bullygate was the announcement that the Prime Minister is to give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War on March 5. However, lost in the distant mists of time B.B. (Before Bullygate), was Gordon Brown’s launch of a pre-emptive strike on the Inquiry.

On February 19, 2010 at approximately 15:27 GMT explosions were heard in the Chilcot Inquiry. Special operations commandos from Number 10’s News Management Division, infiltrated throughout Westminster, called in the early air strike.

Getting his retailiation in first, Brown announced ‘the threat of weapons of mass destruction was not the reason he backed the invasion of Iraq’. ‘History will be kind to me for I intend to write it,’ said Winston Churchill. Brown hopes to ape him.

Mr Brown said weapons were not his prime motivation, and instead it was Iraq’s persistent disregard for United Nations’ resolutions which “put at risk” global security.

Ah, yes. Respect for international law and the will of the international community (or at least the five permament members of the UN security council) are important considerations. Although, how a disregard for United Nations’ resolutions in this instance puts global security at risk if we discount WMDs is for much more morally flexible minds than mine.

And isn’t it fortunate that Gordon now reveals he didn’t regard Saddam an imminent threat, just as that argument is shown (once again) to be a stinking pile of mendacious horseshit. If only Brown had had a quiet word in Alastair Campbell’s ear back in 2002, all of this unpleasantness might have been avoided. Brown seems to have had no consideration of Iraqi human rights (as Blair later tried to twist it) and admits Saddam could have stayed in power if only he’d come clean about the weapons he didn’t have.

If anything, Brown’s case for cluster-bombing children is even weaker than Blair’s. At least Blair tried to convince us of some threat that needed countering. Brown makes the deaths of – at the very least – 100,000 people, the destruction of a country, and the debasement of UK foreign policy sound like an early bed time for disobedience. I have children who have a ‘persistent disregard’ for what they’re told. God help them if I take up the Brown Doctrine.

Mission Accomplished.

Still, should Brown win the election I for one look forward to him taking to new theatres his intolerance of countries whose flouting United Resolutions ‘put at risk’ global security. What are the chances, do you think?

It was instructive to hear William Hague rendered speechless over the matter of extra-judicial murder on the radio today. And to think this moral coward wants to be Foreign Secretary after the next election.

At least he was asked the question. The actual Foreign Secretary emerged from a briefing with the civil servant who’d met the Israeli ambassador (the brave Miliband doesn’t seem to want to get his hands dirty with this one) to talk about the events of the last few days as if it was a few people losing their passports while on holiday…

The Permanent Secretary made clear how seriously we take any suggestion of fraudulent use of British passports. He also explained the concerns we have for British passport holders in Israel… We want to get to the bottom of the issue of the fraudulent passports or their potential use. That’s the most important thing for us.

That’s the most important thing for us. You’ll notice there was no making ‘clear how seriously we take’ the possibility of our so-called allies using death squads as tools of policy. There are no apparent ‘concerns’ that peace in the Middle East probably isn’t best reached by ostentatious liquidations in high class hotels (or the puchasing of arms in high class hotels either).

Is Miliband ignoring the issue or has he not thought of it? Is he chary of mentioning it or does he not care? Which qualities best suit a British Foreign Secretary in an age where we see to export our ‘values’ to other countries? There could be a third way: he’s accurately calculated that nobody gives a shit.

See also: Liberal Conspiracy – Mahmoud al Mabhouh: the ethics of state-sponsored assassination

Very late with this but then there are somethings that should never be allowed to go stale. Armando Iannucci, while researching his movie, In The Loop, hears some grim tales in Whitehall about how the liberation of Iraq proceeded…

Donald Rumsfeld weeded out from those going to help the reconstruction of Iraq anyone who could speak Arabic, on the grounds they would be pro-Arab. As a result, it took the Americans 18 months to realise that when marines held up the flat of their hand to oncoming cars to signal them to stop, they were actually using the Iraqi hand-signal for “come forward”. That’s why so many families in cars were shot.

Weren’t we told that we were invading because we are pro-Arab? You know, human rights, Saddam is a monster and have a look at this shredder? Still, no regrets.

Geoff Hoon, the Hammer of Iraq, is stepping down as an MP – not in 45 minutes unfortunately but at the general election. In announcing his flouncing he took the opportunity to have a whine about the media…

…newspapers do not always report fairly or accurately and [...] I always tried to take decisions in the best interests of the country…

Poor Geoff, suffering so at the hands of nasty newspapers. It’s good that he’s finally come to the conclusion that newspapers aren’t always the benign collaters of the public record, however late in the day it might be. He clearly thought ‘45 MINUTES FROM DOOM‘ headlines and the hounding of Dr David Kelly showed newspapers acting ‘fairly or accurately’. He’s certainly never felt compelled to make a public statement to the contrary. But then he did have a filthy hand in both squalid affairs.

Still, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents etc.

So anyway. While Alastair Campbell gets the collywobbles over being asked to give a straight answer to a straight question and Tony Blair is whinging about the ‘conspiracy theorists‘ that won’t leave him alone (it’s great to know it really bothers him), how are things in long-forgotten Iraq?

(You remember Iraq, don’t you? That place out east that this is all about in the first place. It’s easy to forget that what with all these politicians’ fragile egos, reputations and book sales to worry about).

It seems that, seven years after the war, achieving democracy in Iraq remains very much an ‘aspiration’ (New Labour, after all, loves a good ‘aspiration‘; they’re so pleasingly lacking in concrete and promise). When giving evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry, Blair said: ‘It is too early to say right now whether the Iraqi democracy will take root and will function effectively, although… there are really hopeful signs.’

Really hopeful signs?

Last month, an unelected commission held over from the early days of the US occupation of Iraq, the Justice and Accountability Commission, issued a shocking ruling banning more than 500 candidates from taking part in the election, including a number of members of the current parliament running for reelection… Secular politicians, nationalists, former Baathists with low-level positions, dissident Baathists who left the party in the 1970s (such as Allawi and Mutlaq), and many others are painted as blood-stained criminals and “Saddamists.” The fact that Maliki has descended to such bitter and petty name calling signals that the prime minister has abandoned any pretense of trying to rise about sectarianism to become a national leader. For the election, at least, Maliki has thrown his lot in with the pro-Iranian clique. *

The Justice and Accountability Commission is run by Ahmed Chalabi. He, for those who don’t remember, was the Iraqi exile and ‘convicted fraudster‘ who helped supply the piss poor intelligence on Iraq’s WMD that made the ‘case’ for war. Funny how all the comedians with a hand in doing that are still around and doing well.

So much for the ‘really hopeful signs’ for Iraqi ‘democracy’ (does that jackass even read the newspapers, do you think?) How are things for ordinary Iraqis? Let’s have a look…

More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels or radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found. Areas in and near Iraq’s largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and ­Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years…

Just super. Anyone see ‘really hopeful signs’ there? And to think Tony’s worried about his toxic legacy.

* Thanks to Mr P for the link.

Hello you. How are things? What have I missed?

I didn’t see much news in the last couple of weeks but the headlines from the Chilcot Inquiry managed to waft their way to my holiday bolthole. Claire Short and former Foreign Office lawyer Elizabeth Wilmhurst may have got the applause but for me the stars of the inquiry so far have been two other faces from the squalid past, namely Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell.

(more…)

Fans of barely restrained fury and sneering condescension should make a note in their diaries for next week. That’s when Alastair Campbell makes his appearance before the Iraq Inquiry. I just hope for his and the inquiry members’ sakes that he remembers to visit the stationery cupboard beforehand…

One of the most vivid details to emerge from the [David] Kelly affair was that Alastair Campbell had used a pin held in the palm of his hand to control his temper while testifying to the foreign affairs committee. Each time he felt the explosive urge, the story went, he would squeeze on the pin and the pain would distract him from the immediate provocation. Like many stories about Campbell, this one wasn’t entirely accurate – it was actually a paper clip – but the gist was true.

It’s good to know this man spent so long at the heart of government.

Welcome to the United Kingdom, 2009…

Reading the high court judgment, you have to pinch yourself and remember that this isn’t Kenya under Daniel arap Moi, but good old Blighty, where the police are impartial, the civil service disinterested and a minister’s word is his bond. In a civilised country, at least half a dozen senior officials would now be charged with perjury, the secretary of state for defence would be facing impeachment hearings and a number of soldiers would be on trial for torture and murder. But in the United Kingdom, where we see only what we choose, the judgment sinks without a ripple. We carry on believing what we have always been told: that unlike other countries, we do things properly here.

But anyway. What’s Jordan been up to lately?

…The Sun was one of the principal cheerleaders and propagandists for it.

See also, courtesy of Alex Ross.

An ‘eccentric‘ ‘rant‘ given by a ‘crackpot‘. Oh how we laugh at this buffoon, Gadaffi. Hahahahahaha. Who’d want to be seen dead in such a thundering arse’s company?

Oh wait…

- Political help behind Libya arms trade, says official
- Al-Megrahi’s release ‘would free BP’ to join the rush for Libya’s oil
- Libya oil deals were factor in Megrahi talks, says Straw

Yes, let’s all laugh at the funny man while he gives our balls a squeeze.

Let us read between the lines of the way the Iraq inquiry is to be conducted…

[Iraq Inquiry chairman, Sir John] Chilcot repeated his insistence that evidence would be heard in public, and perhaps live on television, “wherever possible”.

But he said some sessions would remain behind closed doors, “consistent with the need to protect national security, sometimes to ensure complete candour and openness from witnesses”.

‘To ensure complete candour and openness from witnesses’. To be fair, it doesn’t take a genius to translate this. What Chilcot is saying, in other words, is some prominent members of the British Establishment cannot be trusted or expected to tell the truth in public. How marvellous.

So, in an attempt to restore the smashed trust in our political system and our politicians, to give us the ‘different type of politics, a more open and honest dialogue‘ he promised upon becoming prime minister, Gordon Brown has said the inquiry into the Iraq war will be held in private and will not report back until Summer 2010 (that is, after the general election).

In parliament today he was unable to say whether the inquiry will have the power to compel witnesses to appear before it or whether they will have to give evidence under oath. Brown did his best to blame the Tories for the way the inquiry will be conducted. ‘The opposition wanted a Franks style inquiry [the inquiry into the Falklands war] and that’s what we’re having,’ he said making it sound like a generous concession to Tory lobbying. You’re all in this one together, lads.

One of the members of the inquiry’s committee is Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of War Studies at King’s College, London. Writing in the Independent in 2003 at the outbreak of the war, he had this to say…

Even if it takes time to dislodge Saddam’s regime, the US – and also Britain – will emerge from this conflict hardened in their power and ready to exercise far greater influence over not only the development of Iraq but also the wider Middle East.

Let’s hope Sir Lawrence is better at recording history than he is at predicting it.

Update: Jamie: ‘Let the assistant gravedigger bury the dead‘. There aren’t any words, really. Not longer than one syllable at any rate.

Update updated: A good point from Bob:

But at the end of the day I suspect few will change their opinions because of the inquiry, in public or private. And I’m one of those. To me, Blair either lied on WMD or was conned by the US. Fool or Knave, it makes no difference, both were things for which he should have been made to resign, and if he had some evidence which would persuade me otherwise I’m damn sure he would have put it in the public domain by now.

Updated update updated: Here’s inquiry committee member Martin Gilbert comparing Bush and Blair to Roosevelt and Churchill.

Here’s a fun little story from the government’s News Distribution Service…

Plot to keep Iran’s ‘Top Gun’ jets flying … …with parts from eBay!

I like the exclamation mark. Hahaha Iran hahaha with its hahaha crappy airforce hahaha needing part from hahaha eBay!

Three men were jailed for a total of ten years for their part in a plot to supply military equipment to keep Iranian F-14 ‘Tomcat’ fighter jets airborne and combat ready in contravention of an embargo on military exports to Iran.

The thing is, I’m not sure if the British government should be crowing about this, to be honest. Not with our soldiers being killed because we’re too incompetent (or, in the case of former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, too evil) to make sure they got body army. Not with our Snatch Land Rovers which in Iraq and Afghanistan are called ‘mobile coffins‘. Not when US troops in Iraq called our lot the ‘borrowers’. Not with our welcoming of a greater deployment of US troops into Helmand in Afghanistan because it finally means our troops might get some decent helicopter support.

No, instead of jailing Mohsen Akhavan Nik and his son, along with Nithish Jaitha, for breaching the embargo, we should be making them heads of equipment procurement for the Ministry of Defence.

Iraq’s Marsh Arabs suffered long under Saddam Hussein. In punishment for the failed Shia uprising incited and then betrayed by the Western powers after the first Gulf War, Saddam diverted water away from the marshes. This destroyed food sources and the Marsh Arabs, the Ma’dan, were forced to flee.

After the second Gulf War in 2003, the marshes were re-irrigated. The Ma’dan could return. On February 21 2007, Tony Blair proudly told the House of Commons…

In an extraordinary development, the Marsh Arabs, driven from one of the world’s foremost ecological sites by Saddam, have been able to resettle there.

So, two years later, how are the Ma’dan faring, now that their homelands have been liberated from drought and despotism?

Experts say the rivers that flood the marshes today are too brackish and polluted to support life.

[A resident of the marshes, Ali Jassim al-] Battat sees the “undrinkable” water as a symptom of the official failure to rehabilitate the Marsh Arabs. As a father to 13 children, he says he wants better road and electricity links and improved access to education, healthcare and clean water.

“Water is the source of all our suffering,” he shouted angrily. “The water tankers do not get to us, we have no electricity. Our young men are crushed by destitution and our children grow up like savages, without schooling.”

[...]

Satellite images taken in 2006, three years after the overthrow of Saddam, showed the marshes had been restored to 70 per cent of their size in the early 1970s, before the major drainage projects began.

In 2009, environmental officials said the marshes were shrinking again, and now covered only 30 per cent of their spread in the 1970s. Dams built upstream in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey are blamed for reducing the volume of water feeding the wetlands. A prolonged drought in Iraq has only made matters worse.

According to Alaa al-Badran, head of the union of agricultural engineers in Basra, the marshlands will continue to shrink, reversing recent gains. “Salinity rates will keep rising,” he added. “Once absorbed by the soil, salts are very hard to eradicate.”

There’s currently no message of support for the Marsh Arabs on Tony Blair’s official website, a state of affairs that will no doubt be rectified as soon as he’s back from collecting his $1 million prize for leadership.

At 8.30am today I will be locked in, with some of the other survivors and families impacted by 7/7, looking at the second Intelligence and Security Committee Report, which was commissioned in May 2007 after public outcry after a trial revealed what had been hidden; the links between the 7/7 bombers and a wider terror network. The families and survivors 7/7 Inquiry Campaign group that I am part of did not ask for this second report: we asked for an inquiry independent of Government and security services and police with the power to compel witnesses and cross examine them and make recommendations; we have asked for this for almost 4 years. This we were not given. We told the Home Secretary we did not think the ISC were equivalent to an inquiry. The ISC meet in secret. They do not have an independent investigator any more. They did not find out much about the 7/7 bombers in their first report, published in May 2006. Why, how could we trust them to go over it again, now that public outcry after public trials had found their first findings false?

Read the rest

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: ‘In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country’.

US Military: ‘In the army we don’t have homosexuals like in your country’*

* Via The Daily Show

More souls delivered from evil (and unto God) in The War Against Terror:

The Pentagon yesterday promised to launch a joint investigation with the Afghan government into reports that dozens of civilians were killed in US air strikes on Monday night.

…

Villagers brought truckloads of bodies, most of them women and children, to the provincial capital.

In response Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai made the welcome observation that you so rarely hear from our so-called top political strategists and military tacticians (not to mention the legions of elite keyboard warriors of the pro-war bloggerati):

This war against terrorism will succeed only if we fight it from a higher platform of morality

In other words, we can’t beat the beast by becoming a beast ourselves. Strange then that Karzai, only the other month, was backing a law legalising the rape and house arrest of women, and has chosen for one of his two vice-presidential running mates the bloodsoaked warlord Muhammad Qasim Fahim.

Tony Blair earned 12 million pounds last year.

Update: ‘Washington “deeply, deeply” regrets the death of Afghan civilians killed by an air strike, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said.’

That extra ‘deeply’ makes all the difference.

ORIGINAL DOWNING ST SMEARS VICTIM RETURNS TO HAUNT NEW LABOUR

Thatcher Room
Portcullis House
Tuesday 28 April 1.45pm
Formal Evidence Session on UK Complicity in Torture
Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights
Witness: Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan
(currently Rector of the University of Dundee).

In 2004, Craig Murray told us that:

- The British Government was complicit in the most vicious forms of torture
- He had been the victim of a lurid smear campaign initiated by New Labour
- The government was lying about all this

In 2004, much of the public and media was not willing to accept that the government would cooperate with torture or with false allegations against an innocent man. Many still had trust in the basic honesty and decency of government.

The evidence that Craig Murray was telling the truth about torture has now become overwhelming, including from the case of Binyam Mohammed. The UK “benefited” continually from intelligence passed on from the CIA waterboarding programme and from torture in countries including Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Egypt.

Craig Murray suffered the most high profile sacking of any British Ambassador for a century. But in 2005 the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee refused to hear him in evidence, despite allowing Jack Straw to appear and attack him.

Astonishingly, this is the first time Craig Murray will ever have been allowed to give formal evidence in the UK on his grave allegations, and be questioned on the truth of his testimony.

As the Scotland Yard investigation proceeds into MI5 and MI6 collusion in 16 cases of torture, Craig Murray will argue that it is not the security service operatives, but the Ministers who set the policy – and specifically Jack Straw – who should be facing criminal charges.

Contact: Craig Murray on 07979 691085 or craigmurray@mail.ru
Transcript of Craig Murray’s formal evidence statement is at http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03/trying_again_my.html

Renowned military strategist and humanitarian interventionist Tony Blair is in the news again. In a not-at-all-self-serving speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, to mark the 10th anniversary of the formal coagulation of his oh-so-successful ‘Blair Doctrine‘, he said if at first you don’t succeed, kill, kill again:

Tony Blair has said the case for using military force to topple oppressive regimes is as strong as it ever was – despite events in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said intervention was needed to tackle the growing “menace” of Islamic “extremism” across the Middle East.

But he also stressed the need for engagement with “progressive” Muslims.

‘Back in April 1999,’ said God’s Comic, ‘I thought that removal of a despotic regime was almost sufficient in itself to create the conditions for progress.’ Well, you know what ‘thought’ did, Tony? It followed a muck cart and thought it was a wedding. But hey, what can you do? Hundreds of thousands of people died but Tony’s doctrine was ‘almost’ sufficient. ‘But this battle cannot so easily be won,’ he said. No shit? Took you a while Tony but it’s good you finally realised.

Really though, it’s the basis of any experimentation. Your theory not fitting the results? Revisit it and make changes. Blair’s refined his and wants someone else to have another crack with it now he’s not allowed to kill people any more.

Then again, maybe he knows something we don’t. Maybe at this very moment, on a secret weapons testing range somewhere, they’re putting the final touches to a bomb that can distinguish between progressive and extremist Muslims…

On April 9, about the arrest of 12 people in the north west of England, Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom had this to say…

We are dealing with a very big terrorist plot. We have been following it for some time. There were a number of people who are suspected of it who have been arrested. That police operation was successful.

On April 22…

All 12 men arrested over a suspected bomb plot in the UK have now been released without charge by police.

The Prime Minister’s response to this news, is not yet recorded.

Oh, and despite 11 of them – Pakistani nationals – being ‘here lawfully on student visas’, they have ‘been transferred to UK Borders Agency custody and face possible deportation’. Well, you wouldn’t want them hanging around embarrassing us all, would you?

Iraq war: Gordon Brown aims to delay inquiry report until after election
‘Gordon Brown will announce by the autumn a “long” inquiry into the Iraq war, indicating that the potentially embarrassing report will be delayed until well after the general election expected next year’

Kneejerk policies a strain on prison system, says charity
‘The government is failing to rehabilitate offenders, leaving charities to pick up the pieces and running the risk of further strain on the overstretched prison system, according to damning research published today.’

Mass arrests over power station protest raise civil liberties concerns
‘Police have carried out what is thought to be the biggest pre-emptive raid on environmental campaigners in British history, arresting 114 people believed to be planning direct action at a coal-fired power station.’

This is my Hillsborough
‘Twenty years after Britain’s worst football stadium disaster, in which 96 people died, Mike Bracken shares his painful memories for the first time – and describes the ongoing fight for recognition of what really happened’

Afghanistan:

Hamid Karzai has been accused of trying to win votes in Afghanistan’s presidential election by backing a law the UN says legalises rape within marriage and bans wives from stepping outside their homes without their husbands’ permission.

Iraq:

Urgent action is needed to halt the execution of 128 prisoners on death row in Iraq. Many of those awaiting execution were convicted for the ‘crime’ of homosexuality, according to IRAQI-LGBT, a UK based organisation of Iraqis supporting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in Iraq.

As Nick Barlow says: ‘could someone remind me why all those people had to die to bring this about?’ Anybody? Tony?

So, this week the British Army handed over its last command post in Basra to Iraqi forces, signalling the beginning of our glorious formal withdrawal from Iraq. In an exchange of gifts, Major General Andy Salmon was given a ‘magnificent golden fish‘.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere but I’m blowed if I can pin it down. Something about the handing over of Iraq’s precious resources, perhaps? An obscure reference to New Labour and a fish always rotting from the head down, do you think?

Is the fish, perhaps, a reminder of those brave keyboard warriors who helped make the case for war – the Alastair Campbells with their faithful megaphones the Nick Cohens, the David Aaronovitchs, the Harry’s Places, the Oliver Kamms and the Norman Gerases of this world? They once swam free in deep waters of certitude attacking enemies with quicksilver ferocity. Now? Frozen and silent. Yellow.

Maybe it’s a reference to what’s happening to the people elsewhere in Iraq. A fish painted gold as an indictment against the damage we do to the environment and ourselves? How the civilised US weapons used in the humanitarian intervention in Fallujah has now left the women there bearing children with two heads, missing limbs and other birth defects?

Still, it’s for the Iraqis to start shouldering the burden, isn’t it? Thanks for the present.