Iraq – lame duck leaders have no solution

WHILE ACTING Prime Minister John Prescott was amusing himself on the
croquet pitch, the real thing was in Washington D.C. for talks with his
partner in crime – the senior partner, that is -George Bush.

Keith Pattenden

At a joint press conference at the White House the two leaders finally
acknowledged that they’d been wrong about Iraq. Not wrong about the
decision to go ahead with the invasion and occupation, you understand –
though the official reasons for that decision, Saddam’s possession of
weapons of mass destruction, have long been refuted – only wrong about
the aftermath.

They claim to have under-estimated the potential for resistance and
the level of the insurgency, which they say nobody could have predicted.
Actually the insurgency was predicted, not least in the pages of the
socialist. The idea that imperialist powers can simply march in and take
over a sovereign nation without the people of that nation fighting back
is the height of colonialist arrogance.

Still, one good thing to come out of this is that Bush has recognised
his immoderate use of language may have made things worse – meaning his
tendency to quote lines of corny dialogue from B-movie westerns. "I
learned some lessons about expressing myself in maybe in a little more
sophisticated manner, you know". It doesn’t show, George.

The other theme of the press conference was the future of Iraq. They
attempted to put an optimistic gloss on the outlook for the new
government, hinting at an eventual military and political withdrawal by
western forces: "As Iraq stands up we will stand down".

Yet the new government is still without ministers of defence or
internal security and the violence, both anti-occupation and sectarian
religious conflict, has actually increased since the elections and shows
no sign of abating. Last weekend was the bloodiest for some time.

With the death toll among US troops now approaching 2,500 and renewed
violence in Afghanistan as well the military adventure of these two lame
duck leaders looks worse by the day.

Since the Iraq war began in 2003, about 1,000 British soldiers have
gone absent without leave, according to recent figures. A panicky
parliament has been debating a draconian law, which could carry a maximum
penalty of life in prison for military personnel who refuse to serve in
the occupation of a foreign country.


Haditha massacre – another My Lai?

A US government report is expected to find US marines responsible for
a massacre of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha last
November.

This revelation will be as politically damaging to George Bush’s
administration as the exposure of a regime of torture at the Abu Ghraib
prison in 2003.

The Haditha massacre could also have similar repercussions for US
domestic opinion on the occupation of Iraq as the 1968 My Lai massacre of
hundreds of civilians by American forces in Vietnam had.