[jaguar]

Don't tell me UT - it's was that good old liberal media bias that means everyone is picking on poor george and the republicans, poor liddle george.

It's amazing what spin can do, i seem to remember a few months ago the CIA had Iraq as a 'low' threat, unless threatened. Yet somehow, on the basis of fucked if i know what, they became a bigger threat - apparently - than say....al queda. Who despite continuing to bomb things and a hand grenade turning up in heathrow airport (which certainly hit home with me, i go there regularly) are clearly nothing compared to a few aluminum tubes and a dozen antique warheads in a disused corner of a warehouse in Baghdad.

What i don't get is the purpose of this war. It's not oil, if you get into the figures (as a very good article in the financial times last week did) it does not make (at least short term) economic sense to attack Iraq for oil, in the long term it seems still a questionable venture. I would not put it past bush to start such a war purely for domestic political reasons but why would the Blair gable his career on it as well as our own Jonny Howard. My assumption is there is something that we don't know, something big that they can't tell us without blowing their source.

THe other possibility is more realistic but more cynical. If you look at the political climate in Britain, America and Australia all 3 share some similar traits - popular parties with an opposition in disarray. Such an opposition is therefore unlikely to be able to really reap much from the antiwar movement, thus they lose little and Britain and Australia get to strengthen their relationships with America. Britain's opposition is further right anyway and thus not in a position that appeals much to antiwar types and the Labour party here has ben so weak over the issue (we maybe kinda sorta could maybe sort some kind of military type action if there was a UN resolution) that they've totally alienated their best opportunity to gain ground of the Liberals in the first place. The political faction that well benefit from this will be protest parties, further left movements, which are often aligned with green movements. The kind of tweedledum-tweedledee syndrome that plagues many western democracies and two mostly centralist parties slog it out on buggar all only helps such movements.

In the end though i think this war will go down as the most morally bankrupt war of the age of pax americana. We're doing it to help the kurds! (who we previously abandoned), destroy evil weapons of mass destruction (which we posses some of the largest stockpiles of, and which we sold to them in the first place, even after they used them on the kurds), after all they're allies of Al Queda! (who decry them as infidels and whose 'links' appear to mostly fabricated.)

On the other hand when you refuse to sign the land mine treaty, i guess you don't exactly ahve much moral fiber to lose in the first place.

It's all very depressing.