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22 March, London: Biggest wartime demo ever

THE ANTI-war demonstration on 22 March attracted hundreds of thousands of protesters. It was the biggest wartime demonstration ever organised in Britain. The protest was dominated by the determination of the young school students and students who walked out on Day X (see pages 4, 5 and 12).

"This war is wrong" said John from Coventry. "It's mainly for oil. That's not a genuine reason at all. They've gone ahead without any backing from anyone else."

Grace, Paloma and Tania, school students from London told us: "The only way to stop the war is to protest and make it as hard for Tony Blair as possible."

"Most Muslims like me think Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator", said Nasreen from London. "He's committed crimes against people, just like Bush. But Bush just wants to control the oil.

"It's all part of the USA's designs on the Middle East. This war is another piece in the jigsaw of American domination of the region. And it's not the first time the USA invaded a country on the pretext of freedom and democracy."

Turkish state threatens Iraqi Kurds

BUSH AND Blair hope that the battle for Baghdad will not be too long and too bloody. They also have the problem of the Turkish troops mustering on the border of predominantly Kurdish northern Iraq.

Some four million Kurdish people live in northern Iraq - at present they have won a degree of autonomy under the no-fly zone. The Turkish state rules over - and represses - 12 million Kurds.

The Turkish government is preparing to invade northern Iraq to try to prevent the Kurdish people from carving out an independent Kurdistan in Iraq. They want to stop the 'virus' of national independence infecting Turkey.

The US's military commanders say they oppose such a move but they may not be able to control the situation completely.

This could mean another war either before or after Saddam is removed. Washington's nightmare of a divided Iraq imploding, with nearby powers like Iran and Turkey grabbing the spoils, could come true.

The Kurdish people have suffered more than any other in Iraq over the Saddam years and before. At the time of the last Gulf War, US forces first encouraged the Kurds to rise against Saddam, then abandoned them when Iraqi forces crushed them (see page 13).

This time Saddam may go but the Kurds could still suffer from the political needs of Washington's Turkish government allies.

A socialist plan of production and land could start to solve most of the national problems caused by capitalism. But US imperialism's interests are in maintaining its power, prestige and profits - they consider all else as irrelevant.

Caterpillar workers say follow in our tracks

WORKERS AT the Caterpillar steel factory in Gosselies near Charleroi in Belgium downed tools on 24 March in protest against the war with Iraq.

The strike began at 5.45 in the morning. A general assembly will decide later if the strike continues. The workers have decided to distribute leaflets against the war, stopping cars at the area's main roads.

Hypocrisy on prisoners of war

IRAQI FORCES took five American GIs prisoner near Nassiriya on 23 March. The Arabic Al-Jazeera satellite (followed by most of the world's media) showed them being interviewed by Iraqi TV. Next day Iraq paraded two US helicopter pilots, shot down by Saddam's forces, on television.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld latched on to this sickening treatment to accuse Iraq of violating the Geneva convention, the international law on the treatment of prisoners of war (PoWs).

Rumsfeld must think we have incredibly short memories. Only last week his government stuck two fingers up at the United Nations and 'international law' when they invaded Iraq. And what major country refuses to sign up for the International Criminal Court because it fears prosecution? The USA.

US forces showed how they treated prisoners of war after the Afghan war. 30 drugged Taliban fighters were hauled, bags over their heads and shackles on all parts of their bodies, from a US military aircraft at Camp X-Ray, in the US enclave of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They were kept in open-air chain link cages.

Bush and his friends didn't recognise these men as PoWs but instead dubbed them "unlawful combatants" so they'd have no rights under the Geneva Convention. Poodle Blair wagged his tail and agreed to this shocking treatment.

The Pentagon posted these pictures on its website - pictures of detainees without hope of a fair trial who could still be tried by emergency military tribunal, which has the power to pass the death sentence.

Capitalist dictators like Saddam's can easily ignore the niceties of the Geneva Convention. Bush's regime is just as careless of 'international law' when it is fighting an imperialist war for profit and prestige.

Bush's billions for bombs

PRESIDENT BUSH is to ask the United States Congress for $74 billion (some £47 billion) to fund the war in Iraq.

War is not only horrific in its effects, it is also very expensive. The US let loose a barrage of 1,000 bomb sorties loose over Baghdad on 22 March. That included at least 320 cruise missile strikes. As each individual cruise missile can cost up to $1 million, one day's artillery may have cost the US Treasury up to $1 billion.

The 1991 Gulf War cost $50 billion ($80 billion at current prices), but Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Japan etc contributed $48 billion. This time US imperialism is having to pay for this war itself.

Bush's absurd plan for tax cuts for better-off Americans could be an early partial casualty - $100 billion of the $726 billion he'd set aside for this has been deferred. The rest of the cost is likely to be met by more cuts in US public services spending.

Around $63 billion of this $74 million goes to the Pentagon to cover about a month of combat. The rest goes to a few months of reconstruction, homeland security and humanitarian relief.

But as the war gets bogged down, people will start to remember the estimation by Bush's former chief economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, that the US war against Iraq could cost as much as $200 billion (£129 billion).