Where to start with this? In this brave new world, due process starts at 35,000 feet:

On a fateful day in this war, airmen delivered justice to the al Qaeda terrorist Zarqawi, in the form of two precision-guided, 500-pound bombs. (Applause.)

Justice takes many forms, my friends. We like the ones that go bang the best. I love the way the transcriber included the applause as well. The rest of the speech, as usual, reads as if it was beamed in from a parallel universe.

What Zobaie wants is for the U.S. military to hand over full control of Fallujah. He believes Iraq’s current leaders are not strong enough. Asked whether democracy could ever bloom here, he replied: “No democracy in Iraq. Ever.”

“When the Americans leave the city,” he said, “I’ll be tougher with the people.”

Read the rest

Via the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns

There are known to be 39 refused asylum seekers from Iraq in detention and facing forced removal to Iraq tomorrow Thursday 27th March; 30 in Campsfield, 5 in Colnbrook and 4 in Oakington. We suspect the actual number detained is much higher.

5 years on from the invasion of Iraq, at a time when violence is rising in Baghdad and “heavy fighting” is being reported in Basra, the UK’s Home Office is making plans for a very special anniversary present for one group of Iraqis - an ‘Ethnic Charter flight’ to return refused asylum seekers to a country now deemed ’safe’.

NCADC has been reliably informed that an “Ethnic Charter Flight” to Iraq is planned for 19:00hrs on Thursday of this week (27th March 2008). We now know of 39 people in Campsfield, Colnbrook and Oakington, who are likely passengers on this flight.

What you can do:
1) Send urgent faxes/emails immediately to Rt. Hon. Jacqui Smith, Secretary of State for the Home Office asking that all those Iraqi’s currently detained are released and granted protection in the UK. Attached is a model letter Iraqi’sJS.doc which you can copy/amend/write your own version.

Fax: 020 8760 3132 If you are faxing from outside UK - Fax: 20 8760 3132
Email: jacqui.smith@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

2) As this is a general issue, you should also contact your local MP

Please notify campaign of any faxes/emails sent:
Swansea Campaign for Asylum Justice
C/o Flat 4 Brockley Court
103 St Helen’s Avenue
Swansea
SA1 4NW
Tel No: 0845 345 5768
keithmalcolm@ntlworld.com

I’ll tell you who are scum, right? Teachers. Wanting to stop teenagers being killed? Leftist, unpatriotic scum, that’s what they are. They make me want to puke. I tell you, bits of kids going off abroad and losing their lives and limbs, what could me more British than that?

And there was me wondering where the massed ranks of Little England had disappeared to. The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, weren’t it?

But these bastard teachers, passing knowledge onto children to give them better lives and stopping them getting shot, who the hell do they think they are? Isn’t it about time NUT members said ‘enough is enough’ and got rid of this insulting, leftist, unpatriotic nonsense of worrying about their students’ welfare? I tell you, it’s not on. Simple, innit?

So, it’s all kicking off…

Heavy fighting has erupted in Iraq’s southern city of Basra between Iraqi security forces and members of the Mehdi Army, a Shia militia.

Despite there being 4,000 tooled-up British soldiers sitting around just down the road at the airport, they’re sitting tight:

A British military spokesman said the operation was being directed by Iraqi forces and that UK troops, now based at Basra airport, were not involved.

This ‘overwatch’ role we’ve taken offers two benefits. It gives the newly-trained Iraqi army the ultimate in on the job training. It also allows us to observe just how effective our training methods are: if the Iraqi army takes a hiding, well, procedures will just have to be tightened.

This has me foxed, however:

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is reported to be overseeing the operation. On Monday he said the central government had decided to “re-impose security, stability and law” in the oil-rich city.

Hang about, didn’t the British do that already?

Here’s something I learned today via the estimable RickB.

In 1987, Saddam Hussein passed Law 150, outlawing trade unions in the public sector and preventing ‘public sector workers organising or going on strike. Law 150 also changed the status of employees in state-owned enterprises to civil servants, depriving public sector workers of the right to organise.’ Iraq having a small private sector, the law affected 80 per cent of the workforce.

The law has never been repealed.

The US State Department’s Iraq Country Reports on Human Rights Practices has this to say about workers’ rights in the newly liberated and democratized country:

The exercise of labor rights remained limited, largely due to insurgent and sectarian?driven violence, high unemployment, and maladapted labor organizational structures and laws. Union activity is also inhibited by the 2005 Decree 8750, which cancelled unions’ leadership boards, froze their assets, and formed an interministerial committee to administer unions’ assets and assess their capacity to resume activity.

No mention of Law 150 that was left in place in 2003 by US viceroy Paul Bremer when he reverted the Iraqi legal system to that of the pre-Saddam years.

Iraq was going to be different. The US would count its own dead (now close to 4,000), but the toll the war was taking on Iraqis was not a matter the Pentagon or any other US government department intended to quantify. Especially once Bush had declared “mission accomplished” on May 1 2003 - after that, every new Iraqi who died by violence would be a signal that the president was wrong, and would show that a war conducted in the name of humanitarian intervention was exacting a mounting humanitarian toll of its own.

But even though the Americans were not counting, people were dying, and every victim had a name and a family. Wedding parties were bombed by US planes, couples driving home at night were shot at checkpoints because they missed a flashlight warning them to stop, and hundreds of other unarmed civilians were killed for no legitimate cause. In just the last three weeks of April 2003, after Saddam’s statue and his regime were toppled, US forces killed at least 266 civilians - a pattern of overeager resort to fire which has continued to this day.

read the rest

Little Warren Iraq is five today. He’s been something of a problem child. Never out of trouble, always in the papers, some people have said he’s symptomatic of what’s wrong with the world today. He’s something of a talisman to those who want to see a better and fairer society.

Others have said that Warren shows how we can extend our values to even the the most unfortunate. Educational psychologists have made themselves rich examining the behaviour of this singular boy. He is all things to everybody.

Here, in an exclusive extract, is a report compiled by concerned teachers and parents to the governors of Warren’s school recommending that he be expelled. Questions are also being asked about whether the governors can remain in their jobs after their handling of this affair.

(more…)

Aside from everything else, one of the things that stays with me about the Iraq war is how we’ve become inured, immune, to horror and death and suffering. Maybe it’s always been so, God knows as a country we’ve long been involved in causing and suffering them.

I suppose it’s a natural reaction or else you’d go mad under the weight of it all. I clearly remember getting upset only once, although I’m sure there were other times. It was near the end of April in 2003 when an exploding ammunition dump killed an unspecified number of Iraqis. It was a come-day-go-day story. It was the accompanying photograph that did it.

Reuters: “Kudeir, a 30-year-old Iraqi worker, carries his badly burned nine-month-old son Amir Yas to safety in the Zaafaraniya neighbourhood in the outskirts of Baghdad April 26, 2003. Up to 40 Iraqi civilians were killed and many badly hurt in a series of explosions near Baghdad on Saturday, an Iraqi medic said after an arms dump blew up on the outskirts of the capital.”

My small daughter was asleep in the next room when I read the story. Look at the expression on his father’s face. Maybe you have to have kids of your own to understand, I don’t know. I imagined how I’d try comfort a baby who could not be made comfortable, how I’d feel. I think of Amir Yas often. I wonder where he and his father are today.

When I used to link to such images on my old blog, one or two people would describe them as ‘pornography’ which I’ve always found offensive and suspect. If we’re going to be complicit in these events, then turning away from the consequences is a supreme act of cowardice in my opinion. It’s a moral abdication.

When Ann Widdecombe can tout a video of the treatment of Canadian bears to prick our consciences but we can’t bring ourselves to look at children burnt and blasted in a war we started, I wonder what’s gone wrong.

[W]hat a strange idea that the only true way to support someone is to cheer them into a situation that’s likely to get them killed. If these “supporters” ever find themselves looking up at a tower block, with someone 15 floors up threatening to jump off the balcony as friends delicately try to coax him back, they must shout, “Don’t undermine him – it’s up to all of us to support him – jump, man, jump! Go on – here’s Zoe, 22 from Clacton in a G-string and paratrooper’s cap. She supports you, so dive!”

Inevitably, once the supported boys started returning from war with bits missing, the governments and newspapers that backed them most enthusiastically decide that they’re an embarrassing nuisance.

Read the rest

You have to admire the way this government covers all the angles sometimes. By ‘covers’ I mean ‘papers over’, obviously.

Sending refugees back to Iraq? Don’t worry if it’s not as safe as you claim, get them to sign a piece of paper waiving your responsibility should any of them get bombed, shot, raped or drilled on their return.

Worried about whistleblowers highlighting the failures of government? Don’t fix the failures, fix the whistleblowers.

And now, worried about coroners pointing out the mistakes, incompetence and political mendacity on the part of the Ministry of Defence that led to the deaths of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan? Don’t worry about the mistakes, incompetence and political mendacity, just shut the coroners up.

Problem solved. A lack of body armour, or radios, or Snatch Land Rovers led to soldiers’ deaths ? It can’t be the MoD’s fault if nobody says so, can it? If Iraqi militias had dragged Private Jason Smith through the streets of Basra, Des Browne would have gone mental.

He sees nothing wrong however with dragging Private Smith and his family through the courts to spare a few blushes and avoid ‘civil liability’. A liability, let us not forget, which would mean a bit more cash for the families of dead soldiers killed because fat, self-serving Des Browne is more interested in covering his arse than the torsos of his men heading into battle.

(Via Mike.)

As Flying Rodent points out, it was five years ago yesterday that Robin Cook resigned from the cabinet over Iraq.

Here’s how Cook made his name. It’s gripping stuff if you’re a fan of politics. It’s also a timely reminder that no-one is innocent in any of this, no matter how much wriggling they do.

Part two and part three.

(Cook’s resignation speech: part one and two.)

It was good to get an update on Ali Abbas, the Iraqi boy who came to Britain after a US missile liberated his arms, family and home.

I know this probably wouldn’t look too from a public relations angle in the short term, but now that Ali is making the same progress as his home country (according to the Home Secretary), isn’t it time we sent him back? I mean fair’s fair.

It’s Iraq week everybody! Columnists, bloggers and pundits: look no further for this week’s muse. It’s a part work obviously, gotta catch ‘em all.

Those of us who were against the war will have our say, those who were for it will have theirs. At the end of the week nothing will have changed, hundred of thousands will still be dead and those responsible will still be at large. Still, I’m sure Britain’s wordsmiths will find some kind of catharsis, so maybe a little good will come of it all until next year.

Anyway, at this early stage, I’m tempted to say that nobody will better this from Flying Rodent:

Because that’s the deal… It’s not about us, dipshits. Britain is long beyond the point where anything we say or do can ameliorate the situation, and frankly, if our reaction to the Iraq invasion clusterfuck is to bleat about how it has shit in our ideological chili, maybe it’s time we ordered a tall drink of shut-the-fuck-up.

Have a good week. Don’t forget the March 19 Iraq War Blogswarm on Wednesday. Just try to be a little more practical and original than ‘I told you so’.

Why This Rush?

A diplomatic battle raging at the UN where the British and Americans are intensely lobbying for a second resolution that will authorise war. They are met by fierce hostility and resistance by countries who want to give the weapons inspectors more time in Iraq.

See the other films here.

(via Crooks and Liars)

I’m eagerly awaiting Jacqui* Smiths announcement that she once bought a kebab in Basra. Like in London, she wouldn’t walk the street of Iraq’s third largest city after midnight, but then does anyone know anybody who would choose to do so? Ms Smith would admit she is fortunate that she doesn’t have to do that.

That said, she’ll state categorically that people are ‘much less likely to be a victim of crime’ in Basra since New Labour took over.

* Jacqui. What is she, like, 12 or something?

‘Is it safe?’ asked Smith

Excellent news for Mehdi Kazemi who’s been given a (quite literal) stay of execution by the Home Secretary. Was it pity or compassion that touched her cold heart? Was she shamed into it or did she simply want to get him off the telly and out of the papers where he was making her look bad?

The 1,400 asylum seekers that Jacqui Smith wants to return to the newly ’safe’ Iraq should take heed. They should get organised, start queueing outside the Home Office, and get themselves on the telly like Northern Rock pensioners.

It’s a double-pronged attack. The asylum seekers get to demonstrate their embrace of British values by showing how much they love a good queue. The government get to demonstrate their embrace of public relation values by showing how much they hate a good queue.

No doubt Ms Smith took an evidence-based approach in making her decision. Let’s look at some of the evidence she must have considered when declaring herself the new Safety Elephant.

As Bookdrunk points out, the Ms Smith’s colleagues at the Foreign office judge the situation in Iraq as:

…highly dangerous with a continuing high threat of terrorism throughout Iraq, violence and kidnapping targeting foreign nationals, including individuals of non-western appearance.

Iraq is so safe, that earlier this week, as Philip says, Defence Secretary Des Browne had to be smuggled into Basra in a ’surprise’ visit. Surely he should have announced his intentions in the tabloids with a ‘Hey! I’m off to the new safe Iraq! Who’s with me?’

And that’s before we point out a new rise in the death toll across the country. And the fact that northen Iraq, controlled by the Kurds, and previously judged safe enough to return asylum seekers to (with precautionary helmets and flak jackets), has just seen an incursion by the Turkish military.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Jaqui Smith considered all this in making her decision. It’s just hard not to have the feeling that her conclusion was pretty much, ‘meh‘. Judging by the lack of coverage, let alone outrage, in the British media over all this, who can deny that her’s was the correct response?

‘Starved or shot, what’ll it be?’ said Smith

DEAD-EYED Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has declared Iraq safe and told 1,400 Iraqi asylum seekers to bugger off back or be forced to live in the gutter.

Ministers hope that by making life for Iraqi asylum seekers similar to that in downtown Baghdad, they will acclimatise and take the hint. In keeping with British policy in Iraq, support for Iraqis in the UK is being withdrawn.

Those refusing to return to the tranquil haven of new Iraq will have their shitty accommodation, piss-poor food and look-at-me-I’m-an-asylum-seeker vouchers reallocated.

Despite 78 deaths in Iraq since Saturday and in a move that will please racists and sociopaths everywhere, Ms Smith will implement a plan to cover her arse should any of the returnees be shot, bombed, drilled, raped, tortured, disappeared or otherwise fail to integrate into the newly rebuilt Iraqi society.

Each asylum seeker will be asked to sign a waiver ‘agreeing the government will take no responsibility for what happens to them or their families once they return to Iraqi territory’. ‘Iraq is safe but we’re not complacent about these matters,’ said a morally-compromised source close to the Home Secretary.

A spokesperson for Ms Smith told reporters, ‘The current cabinet is stuffed to the rafters with proper bastards. Really evil bastards. You have to get up early to beat the likes of Jack Straw and John Hutton. The Home Secretary feels that it takes something really, really special to stand out. We believe these new measures will demonstrate the emotionally-detached thuggery that modern politics demands.’

No Iraqi asylum seekers were available for comment.

Number of MPs signing Early Day Motion 401 in support of Iraqi Employees helping the British Military: 79

Number of MPs signing Early Day Motion 1756 in support of the Canadian bears helping the British Military: 207

Apparently the bearskin hats worn by certain army regiments have ‘no military significance and involve unnecessary cruelty’. The same could be said about the treatment of the Iraqi employees, just don’t expect many Members of Parliament to say it. Not least my own, MP Celia Barlow, who’s fully aware of the situation with the Iraqi employees and has made respresentations to ministers on the matter, but gave her name only to the bears.

Still, as has been said before, the Tories won’t push this issue because it means letting more darkies into Britain and that doesn’t play well with the Daily Mail-reading core vote they have. New Labour won’t push it because it means letting more darkies into Britain and that doesn’t play well with the Daily Mail-reading core vote they want.

In other news, Ann Widdecombe is a grizzled and bitter old hypocrite. Early Day Motions, she says, ‘have no more impact than a feather landing on a mattress’ unless they’re chasing an issue she’s bothered about of course.

And if you’re an ickle baby foetus, Ann’s got your back. If you’re an ickle baby foetus who grows up to be drilled to death by an Iraqi death squad or executed for being an Iranian homosexual, well, sorry but Ann’s got bears to worry about. Oh, and selling pasta along with her dignity as well.

Join the March 19 Blogswarm Against the Iraq War.

Yes it is, it’s the magic number:

The costs of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq this year are likely to almost double to £3.3bn, a committee of MPs has warned.

Now that’s a lot of money. Suddenly you see why Mozambique and Bosnia are going to have to live with stray landmines and loose machine guns for a while longer.

Of course, it would be nice to know just where all this money is going. Nice, yes. Necessary? What do you think?

While the committee recommended that the House of Commons should accept the estimates, it said the Ministry of Defence needed to provide more information on how the additional cash was being spent.

No doubt the government can’t release this information for reasons of security. The cabinet’s job security. The thing is, with this shower you can’t be sure whether they’re covering up or they genuinely have no idea. The paperwork could have been given to David Miliband to crayon on. Or recycled to meet some Whitehall target or other.

Whatever the reason, it’s time to get your magic wallet out again.

Well, slap my thigh and call me Roger, you’ve got to hand it to them. This is amazing. So amazing, I almost danced around the room in elation at being alive to see such a thing. Honestly and truthfully, this is one of the most stupendous, awe-inspiring things I have ever seen.

You thought the Blair years saw the pinnacle of high-handed contempt for human life masquerading as political economy? Of moral bankruptcy. Of the pathology that can turn away from human suffering. WELL GET THIS, BABY:

Money set aside to clear landmines and remove arms from conflict zones is to be raided to pay a private defence contractor to keep Tornado jets flying in Iraq, according to a confidential memo seen by the Guardian. The Ministry of Defence plans to pay BAE Systems from the multimillion-pound Conflict Prevention Fund - which covers projects such as destroying weapons in Bosnia and landmines in Mozambique - to subsidise the £5m-£10m cost of servicing each of the six planes.

See what I mean? Read it again:

Money set aside to clear landmines and remove arms from conflict zones is to be raided to pay a private defence contractor to keep Tornado jets flying in Iraq.

GODDAMN. You’ll tell your grandchildren about this one. Doesn’t it make the head spin? They’re going to take money used for conflict prevention to pay for conflict permission. They’re going to divert money allocated to saving lives into taking them instead.

Imagine the twisted, stunted, mutilated, suppurating morality of the people who came up with this. Picture that instead of going home, getting into a hot bath and opening a significant vein or two, they kissed their children, ate a good dinner and slept the sleep of the just.

I mean, what next? Making a woman who turned a blind eye to child abuse Children’s Minister? Oh, I forgot, they already did that.

But wait, this is a good bit:

Defensive news briefs are being developed to counter adverse media comment.

Translation: Yes, we know we’re massive bastards, but we need to persuade the media otherwise.

I don’t doubt they’ll succeed.

You know, I once said that I refused to believe that this government was truly evil. What a naive, ingenuous fool I was. If Gordon Brown were to go on live television tonight and pull off his mask to reveal himself Satan, I doubt many would turn a hair. The Daily Mirror would still say ‘at least he’s not a toff like that David Cameron’.

I could go on about this all day and there’s a very real possibility that I might.

From this angle, one suddenly wonders whether the Conflict Prevention Fund isn’t merely a job creation scheme:

The UK’s Global Conflict Prevention Fund has helped to destroy over one million weapons around the world in addition to providing advice on stockpile security and management.

Get rid of the old ones so the likes of BAE can make shiny new ones. War! Huh. Good God, y’all. What is it good for? Well, it’s quite good at fostering corruption in the name of the national interest. BAE shareholders, yes, it’s quite good for them. The deformed egos of small and otherwise mediocre and unremarkable men, it’s just what they need.

Say it again.

(Via Philip)

Baby Jesus and the orphans, it gets worse. If the Taliban have been watching British news channels today they know what fiendish new weapon to bring to bear on our brave boys during the Spring Offensive: harsh language.

If I was an RAF servicemen I’d be absolutely livid tonight. British politicians have rallied round today and worked hard to paint the flyboys as a bunch of pansies frightened of a bit of name-calling.

Listen to Tory Liam Fox, shadow minister for something or other, subtly painting our armed forces as pussies:

We cannot have our armed forces personnel intimidated for wearing the uniform they are so rightly proud of.

Intimidated? These guys are trained to face bullets and bombs, to kill or be killed. Have any of them been crying themselves to sleep or frightened to leave the barracks? If they have, I’d dare to suggest they’re in the wrong trade and should try something else with alacrity. Being a Member of Parliament perhaps?

Why didn’t Fox go the whole hog and send the servicemen’s mums into Peterborough to have it out with the bullies? You know, if he’s bent on stripping these men of their dignity entirely. I’d say that Fox is in politics because he’s too weak to carry furniture but he’s clearly incapable of carrying an argument either.

To be honest, I think discretion is the better part of valour in this instance and the commander has made the right choice in banning RAF personnel wearing uniforms outside their base. Like I said earlier, when you bear in mind what some servicemen will do in a provincial pub at the slightest provocation, I wonder if the commander didn’t have the public’s rather than his men’s interests at the front of his mind.

Defence minister Des Browne is doing his utmost to protect his men from verbal slurs will all due ‘urgency’. Whether this involves body armour and if Des can get it into theatre in a timely manner before someone is hurt or killed isn’t clear.

(See Philip as well.)

This can’t be right. RAF servicemen are being abused in the street because of the Iraq war? That’s bollocks. As we’ve been told time and time again, Iraq is not an excuse for anything. The roots go much deeper.

The armed forces should make how to behave in a pub part of basic training. I bet you’d half this public abuse overnight.