Iraq: The Plan That Dare Not Speak Its Name

There is very little consideration in the mainstream media that the only viable option in Iraq is to leave. I think this is for a couple of reasons. First, that this would be an admission by the political class, not just Neo-Labour, but all who supported the war before it happened and now support the occupation, that Iraq was a colossal mistake of titanic proportions. Second that the original aims of the war; control of the geo-strategic oil supplies in the region, would be lost to the west. I blogged about a recent TV show where the Neo-Labour Harriet Harman tried to defend the (bullshit) position that Iraq was the best decision with the information that they have available. I read a great article that rips this defense to tiny little bits;

"...late that July, Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 (the British equivalent of the CIA), returned to London from high-level meetings in Washington to report to Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top officials. In a secret meeting, he told them that the decision for war in Iraq had already been made by the Bush administration and that now, in a memorable phrase, 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy'....On May 1st, 2005, notes from this meeting, dubbed 'the Downing Street Memo,' were leaked to the London Sunday Times. Thanks to that memo and other documents, it's now commonly accepted that the Bush administration 'fixed' the intelligence around their war of choice..."

Harman tried to bleat on that TV show that it's easy to say in hindsight it was not a great decision. As can be read above, they KNEW it was a bullshit decision but went along with it anyway. What hindsight shows us is how much of a gamble they took and how scared they were of popular opposition to the war. I think this can be seen in the recent victory of the Fairford Coach actions and ongoing Fairford Five Trials. I wonder if the clamp down of dissent we have been seeing stemmed from a fear that is would give a focus to the unraveling of the plot that had been hatched. (If you don't know, the Fairford Coach Trials relate to a couple of coaches of people to were on their way to protest the war at the Gloucestershire US airbase but were illegally detained by the police.) Here is what the appeal court verdict said;

The court accepted (para 48) that in some situations a breach of the peace could only be prevented if action were taken which would risk affecting wholly innocent individuals. As to the Chief Constable's appeal, the court considered (para 52) that the passengers were "virtually prisoners" on the returning coaches, that (para 53) the action taken went well beyond anything held to be justified by the existing common law authorities and that (paras 54-55) it was not shown that there were no less intrusive measures that could have been taken.

Check that, the cops made people "virtually prisoners" for no other reason than they opposed the imperial ambitions of Tony Bliar and is Neo-Labour stogies. Welcome to the war of terror. What is staggering is how much further than this Neo-Labour have been able to go; banning protest outside parliament, ID cards, terror act upon terror act and so on. This juggernaut is out of control.