Wednesday 17 November 2010

Afghanistan: Time to Go SATURDAY 20 NOVEMBER * ASSEMBLE 12 NOON SPEAKERS' CORNER * HYDE PARK * LONDON MARCH TO TRAFALGAR SQUARE


RUGBY STOP THE WAR COALITION said...

Afghanistan: Time to Go

SATURDAY 20 NOVEMBER * ASSEMBLE 12 NOON
SPEAKERS' CORNER * HYDE PARK * LONDON
MARCH TO TRAFALGAR SQUARE
Called by Stop the War Coalition, CND and British Muslim Initiative.

TRANSPORT FROM COVENTRY

We will be running transport from Coventry, leaving the swimming baths in Fairfax Street at 9 am. Tickets are £12/£donations for unwaged. If you want to book seats, please email or call me on or by Thursday 18th (see number below).

A large banner on this week's huge protest against education cuts said it all: Spend on Education and Jobs - Not on War.

It's a message that is clearly getting through. With little over a week before the national AFGHANISTAN: TIME TO GO demonstration in London on Saturday 20 November, the Stop the War national office is being inundated with requests for leaflets and posters, details of transport being organised around the country to bring protestors to London, and people volunteering to help.

There is a promotional video on Stop the War's youtube channel featuring interviews with Tony Benn, Joe Glenton, and the parents of soldiers who have died in Afghanistan. You can also find it on facebook.com/stopthewarcoalition .

In peace
Andy Pettit
Chair, Coventry Stop the War Coalition
Tel: 07732 030231

Wednesday 27 October 2010

Stop the War Coalition Annual National Conference: 30 October


Stop the War Coalition Annual National Conference
Saturday 30 October 10.00am - 5.30pm
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square
London WC1R 4RL (Tube: Holborn)

For Stop the War members only: Join here... Book tickets... Resolutions...


Our past year

The past year has been very eventful for Stop the War Coalition, including our protest when Tony Blair appeared before the Iraq Inquiry, the two emergency demonstrations following Israel's murderous attack on the Gaza aid flotilla, which brought tens of thousands on to London's streets, the packed public meeting to welcome soldier Joe Glenton on his release from prison, and a series of public meetings in the House of Commons calling for the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan.

Around the country, local Stop the War groups have organised hundreds of events, including public meetings, debates, local protests and vigils.

Annual National Conference

Our annual national conference in London on 30 October will debate our policies, strategy and campaigns for the coming year. The continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the threat of an attack on Iran, the siege of Gaza, and the escalating Islamophobia in Britain, will all be part of our discussions.

The conference will include a number of notable guest speakers, including Tony Benn, former soldier Joe Glenton, who refused to fight in Afghanistan, Guardian journalist Seumas Milne and Joy Gordon, author of Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions.

Who can attend the conference?

The conference is open to all members of Stop the War -- whether they are delegates from local Stop the War groups and affiliated organisations or individual national members. Members who joined prior to January 1, 2010 will have full speaking and voting rights. National members who have joined since then can attend the conference as observers.

If you are not a member of Stop the War but would like to attend the conference as an observer, you will need to join before 30 October. Membership can cost as little as £2 per month: Join here...

Delegates

Delegations from local Stop the War groups and affiliated organisations attend on the following basis:
Up to 4 from each local Stop the War group
Up to 2 from affiliated organisations with less than 1,000 members
Up to 4 from affiliated organisations with 1,000-10,000 members
Up to 6 from affiliates with more than 10,000 members

Delegates details (name, full postal address, email, tel no.) should be sent to the Stop the War national office by Friday 22 October. If sent by email, please write "Delegate Registration" in the subject line.

To be entitled to a delegation, new affiliations to Stop the War must be registered at the Stop the War national office by Friday 15 October. Affiliate here...

Individual delegates and observers

Stop the War Coalition national members who joined prior to 1 January 2010 have full speaking and voting rights at the conference. National members who have joined since then can attend the conference as observers.

Conference fees

Conference fees are £10 for each delegate from an affiliated organisation or Stop the War group. The fee for individual members attending as delegates or observers is £10/£7 concessions. Registration fees can be paid in three ways:

• BY CREDIT / DEBIT CARD:
Phone 020 7801 2768

• BY CHEQUE:
Made out to "Stop the War Coalition" and sent to Stop the War, 231 Vauxhall Bridge Rd, London SW1V 1EH.

Tuesday 31 August 2010

Forget the tomfoolery: America is not leaving Iraq


Don't be taken in by the claim that the last US "combat" troops departed from Iraq two weeks ahead of schedule. The Americans are not leaving, says Robert Fisk, and the occupation is not over.

By Robert Fisk
The Independent
20 August 2010


When you invade someone else's country, there has to be a first soldier – just as there has to be a last.

The first man in front of the first unit of the first column of the invading American army to reach Fardous Square in the centre of Baghdad in 2003 was Corporal David Breeze of the 3rd Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment. For that reason, of course, he pointed out to me that he wasn't a soldier at all. Marines are not soldiers. They are Marines. But he hadn't talked to his mom for two months and so – equally inevitably – I offered him my satellite phone to call his home in Michigan. Every journalist knows you'll get a good story if you lend your phone to a soldier in a war.

"Hi, you guys," Corporal Breeze bellowed. "I'm in Baghdad. I'm ringing to say 'Hi! I love you. I'm doing fine. I love you guys.' The war will be over in a few days. I'll see you soon." Yes, they all said the war would be over soon. They didn't consult the Iraqis about this pleasant notion. The first suicide bombers – a policeman in a car and then two women in a car – had already hit the Americans on the long highway up to Baghdad. There would be hundreds more. There will be hundreds more in Iraq in the future.

So we should not be taken in by the tomfoolery on the Kuwaiti border in the last few hours, the departure of the last "combat" troops from Iraq two weeks ahead of schedule. Nor by the infantile cries of "We won" from teenage soldiers, some of whom must have been 12-years-old when George W Bush sent his army off on this catastrophic Iraqi adventure. They are leaving behind 50,000 men and women – a third of the entire US occupation force – who will be attacked and who will still have to fight against the insurgency.

Yes, officially they are there to train the gunmen and militiamen and the poorest of the poor who have joined the new Iraqi army, whose own commander does not believe they will be ready to defend their country until 2020. But they will still be in occupation – for surely one of the the "American interests" they must defend is their own presence – along with the thousands of armed and indisciplined mercenaries, western and eastern, who are shooting their way around Iraq to safeguard our precious western diplomats and businessmen. So say it out loud: we are not leaving.

Instead, the millions of American soldiers who have passed through Iraq have brought the Iraqis a plague. From Afghanistan – in which they showed as much interest after 2001 as they will show when they start "leaving" that country next year – they brought the infection of al-Qa'ida. They brought the disease of civil war. They injected Iraq with corruption on a grand scale. They stamped the seal of torture on Abu Ghraib – a worthy successor to the same prison under Saddam's vile rule – after stamping the seal of torture on Bagram and the black prisons of Afghanistan. They sectarianised a country that, for all its Saddamite brutality and corruption, had hitherto held its Sunnis and Shias together.

And because the Shias would invariably rule in this new "democracy", the American soldiers gave Iran the victory it had sought so vainly in the terrible 1980-88 war against Saddam. Indeed, men who had attacked the US embassy in Kuwait in the bad old days – men who were allies of the suicide bombers who blew up the Marine base in Beirut in 1983 – now help to run Iraq. The Dawa were "terrorists" in those days. Now they are "democrats". Funny how we've forgotten the 241 US servicemen who died in the Lebanon adventure. Corporal David Breeze was probably two or three-years-old then.

But the sickness continued. America's disaster in Iraq infected Jordan with al-Qa'ida – the hotel bombings in Amman – and then Lebanon again. The arrival of the gunmen from Fatah al-Islam in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian camp in the north of Lebanon – their 34-day war with the Lebanese army – and the scores of civilian dead were a direct result of the Sunni uprising in Iraq. Al-Qa'ida had arrived in Lebanon. Then Iraq under the Americans re-infected Afghanistan with the suicide bomber, the self-immolator who turned America's soldiers from men who fight to men who hide.

Anyway, they are busy re-writing the narrative now. Up to a million Iraqis are dead. Blair cares nothing about them – they do not feature, please note, in his royalties generosity. And nor do most of the American soldiers. They came. They saw. They lost. And now they say they've won. How the Arabs, surviving on six hours of electricity a day in their bleak country, must be hoping for no more victories like this one.

Monday 2 August 2010

A badge of honour to have gone to prison says soldier


Joe Glenton, the only British soldier who has refused to fight in Afghanistan, told a packed public meeting in London celebrating his release, it was "a badge of honour to have gone to prison. I have come to the conclusion that the real enemy is not the man in front who is facing your rifle, but the man directly behind and above telling you to pull the trigger."


By Robin Beste
Stop the War Coalition
28 July 2010


Over 400 people packed a Stop the War meeting in London’s Conway Hall on 26 July 2010 to welcome soldier Joe Glenton on his release from prison, following his refusal to fight in Afghanistan.

The meeting could not have been more timely, coming on the day that the whistleblower Wikileaks published 91,000 secret US military documents which validated all the reasons that Joe Glenton gave for disobeying orders to deploy to a war he believed to be unjustified and unwinnable.

Tony Benn, the president of Stop the War, said, "For a soldier to agree to go to prison rather than to fight is a great tribute to him and a reminder that he made a formidable personal sacrifice."

MP Jeremy Corbyn summed up why Joe Glenton has been such an inspiration to the anti-war movement: "What we've heard tonight from Joe Glenton is a testament of decency, of humanity, of honesty, of perception of what the real causes and the real effects of this ghastly war in Afghanistan are about: Joe, we owe you a great debt of thanks."

In his speech to the meeting, Joe said: "In the current climate, I regard it as a badge of honour to have served a prison sentence.

"I've come to the conclusion that the real enemy is not the man in front who is facing your rifle, but the man directly behind and above you telling you to pull the trigger."

He added: "I really do believe that today the conditions exist for us to bring the government to heel: the wheels have truly fallen off the pro-war bandwagon."

This is reflected, as Lindsey German, national convenor of Stop the War, said in her speech, in the numbers of soldiers and their families who are now contacting Stop the War, concerned about the consequences of fighting in Afghanistan.

Yasmin Khan, from War on Want, spelt out what those consequences have been for the Afghan people, whose country is designated by the United Nations as the world's poorest. War, she said, does not bring development, as the government claims: "You can't get development and security by dropping bombs. This war is wrong and unjust, it needs to end now."

The determination of people attending the meeting to help raise the profile of the anti-war campaign was seen in the bundles of leaflets they took away for the national Time To Go demonstration on 20 November – 15,000 in total taken for distribution to their friends, work colleagues, fellow students etc.

Another indication was the tremendous collection at the end of the meeting, with £1,200 donated towards Stop the War's current £10,000 financial appeal to help fund the intensification of our campaigning in the autumn.

Hundreds of people signed up to be actively involved in our campaigns, in recognition that the anti-war movement has a central part to play in helping to bring to an end a war which is opposed by 83 percent of the British public.

As Mark Steel said in the meeting, "We must keep campaigning against the war, firstly because that's the right thing to do, and also because we are, bit by bit, making a huge difference."

As well as the 20 November national demonstration, upcoming events include a protest and lobbying of parliament on 9 September, when MPs will debate and vote for the first time on the Afghanistan war, a Students Against the War conference, a debate between leading pro-war and anti-war advocates, and the organising of local meetings across the country.

What you can do

Leaflets

Help spread the word about the Time To Go demonstration on 20 November. Leaflets are available from the Stop the War national office: Email: office@stopwar.org.uk Tel: 020 7801 2768

Donate or Join

Make a donation or join Stop the War here...

Lobby your MP

You can lobby your MP online. It takes a couple of minutes and they are obliged by law to respond. E-Lobby your MP here...

If you are a school student...

If you are a school student and would like to get involved with School Students Against the War, contact the Stop the War national office: Email: office@stopwar.org.uk Tel: 020 7801 2768

Afghanistan - time to go - Tony Benn - London 27 July 2010

Afghanistan - time to go - Lindsey German London 27 July 2010

Joe Glenton - afghanistan: time to go London 27 July 2010

Afghanistan - time to go - Mark Steel - London 27 July 2010

Jeremy Corbyn MP - Stop the War Coalition - Afghanistan Time to GO! - 2...

Afghanistan - time to go - Yasmin Khan, War on Want - London 27 July 2010

Wednesday 21 July 2010

A report of the day when Gordon Brown went before the Iraq Inquiry by a Rugby STWC member


GORDON BROWN AT IRAQ INQUIRY 05/03/10

I attended the Chilcot Inquiry the day Gordon Brown appeared before it. Here is my report.

THE INVASION WAS THE RIGHT DECISION FOR THE RIGHT REASONS ACCORDING TO GORDON BROWN

  • Saddam Hussein was not abiding by international law
  • There is no alternative but to intervene where there are risks to the post Cold War world: state terrorists and rogue states/aggressive states like Iraq cause instability
  • It is the message we send to other rouge states if nothing is done when diplomacy fails – the world becomes less safe – this was his main reason for supporting the invasion
  • Intelligence evidence in March 2003 suggested Iraq was a threat
  • He had been committed to the diplomatic route until then
  • The problem was that some countries which had supported UN resolution 1441 would not support military action in any circumstances, so Britain had to act
  • When it was put to him that UN Inspectors felt more time was needed, he argued diplomacy had been exhausted
  • He made it clear none of the military options should be rejected on cost grounds
  • He disagreed that diplomacy and containment should have lasted longer in order to resolve the Middle East peace process as ‘it was difficult to get agreement in the Middle East’

WAS GORDON BROWN SATISFIED THE INVASION OF IRAQ SATISFIED INTERNATIONAL LAW?

  • He gave an unequivocal “Yes” – he was satisfied by the Attorney General’s advice that the invasion was lawful – the Attorney General had himself been unequivocal in his advice
  • Replying to a question, he was not aware that advice from the Attorney General would have been different a couple of weeks earlier
  • He would not have changed his mind even if he had known the Attorney General had changed his own mind because the Attorney General was so certain an invasion was legal, and Iraq was not responding to diplomacy
  • The Attorney General’s advice was accepted by military chiefs
  • He accepted he did not see the formal legal advice given to the Prime Minister in March
  • He agreed that, in retrospect, history may want to look at the way the advice was given
  • The Cabinet had made a collective – and correct – decision despite the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and Attorney General being the only ones with all the knowledge – but he accepted Parliament could have been more involved, and would be in the future
  • He was happy with the way Blair put the whole issue before Parliament
  • He agreed it might have been different if the UN had been in a position to make a quick decision – but it could not do that because of the opposition of a number of countries on the UN Security Council. When pressed to explain which ones, he initially said Germany (which is not on the Security Council), then France
  • The Cabinet had simply decided “Enough is enough” – Britain was defending the international community
  • Everything Blair did was done properly – although he accepted that in future Parliament would require more information
  • When told the UN Inspectors had felt more time was needed, he felt the Cabinet had made a judgement that enough was enough
  • On ‘Regime Change’, which he was told Blair and Bush supported “if necessary”, but Jack Straw had said was unlawful and improper, he answered it became essential to change the regime, but that was not the aim to start with

HOW MUCH WAS BROWN, AS CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER AND A SENIOR GOVERNMENT MINISTER, AWARE OF EVENTS AS THEY UNFOLDED?

  • He claimed he was regularly kept in the loop by Blair in ad-hoc discussions
  • He would not answer whether he knew Blair was talking to Bush in 2002
  • From June 2002, he started to discuss what would happen if diplomacy failed
  • He claimed he only became aware of the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003
  • He was not directly involved in discussions about whether sanctions were working, but he was kept informed
  • As Chancellor he was aware of the military option
  • When asked, he did not say whether the Cabinet had discussed the military option. He did say Cabinet had discussed diplomatic solutions as it was keen to avoid war
  • When asked whether senior Cabinet Ministers had been adequately briefed, he said he had been in discussions the previous weekend, as well as there being financial discussions about possible alternatives
  • Despite being a senior member of the Cabinet, he was not shown the Cabinet Office Review of Iraq Policy drawn up in March 2002, although he said he was aware of the issues

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (WMD)

  • At the time he was convinced WMDs were present
  • Iraq had consistently refused to dismantle the weapons it was believed they possessed, a serious violation of international law
  • He admitted he had received intelligence briefings on five occasions

BROWN’S WAR ROLE AS CHANCELLOR

  • From June 2002 he had started to discuss what to do if diplomacy failed
  • His view had always been that any military engagement must be without financial restraints – any military solution must be based on the best military option, whatever the financial cost
  • Although Officials raised the issues of military costs, reconstruction costs and other financial implications, he had been keen that finance was not an issue in any decision
  • He claimed the Treasury did not interfere on possible military options
  • He stated that Chancellors did not traditionally sit on War Cabinets: his role was purely to ensure the funding was there for war once that became the option

POST INVASION PLANNING

  • He said from the start that here lessons needed to be learnt. He had been pushing for such planning since June 2002, although a Planning Unit was not set up until Feb 2003
  • He accepted Britain could not persuade the USA to take such planning seriously
  • He only realised planning was defective after the event
  • Britain should have moved more quickly to involve Iraqi people, and build up the Iraqi army, police, government and employment
  • Delays in reconstruction were due to internal strife and the appearance of Al Queda after 2004
  • Democracy can not just be ‘conjured up’
  • When asked whether the USA’s failure to make planning for reconstruction a priority could have delayed the invasion, he did not answer.
  • He accepted that the level of violence in Basra had held back reconstruction.
  • The increase in Iraqi police and armed forces helped security and thus economic prosperity – the so-called ‘peace dividend’ – and this enabled Britain to reduce troop numbers.

  • British businesses were encouraged to invest in Iraq and good trade relations were established with Iraq: the same needs to be done in Afghanistan.
  • Britain did not want to be seen as occupiers and therefore withdrew their operational area from Basra Palace to the airport.
  • He accepted there was a potential for corruption amongst the police in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
  • When asked if British policy had really helped, when, after 7 years of terror, democracy remained fragile and the USA retained large numbers of troops there, he asked what would the alternative have been. Life has improved in terms of jobs, health, education and wealth from oil. He recognised that the price was the cost of life, saying ‘war may be necessary but tragic.’

THE COST OF THE WAR

  • The initial estimate was £2.5 billion, which was revised to £4billion with one billion as a special reserve. The total cost ended up being £8 billion.
  • The special reserve was for security and to counter terrorism – over 3 years this was raised from £1 – 3 billion.
  • The total cost of reconstruction for the international community was £45 billion shared between Britain, USA, Iraqi resources and world institutions like the IMF.
  • Every application for military resources was met and anything up to £10 million was approved without there having to be a process.
  • The military were never turned down in any request for equipment.
  • £90 million was provided when Snatch land rovers were requested.
  • No limits were set on Urgent Operational Requirements (UORs) and the forces were told to come back if they wanted any more.
  • All this was in addition to the normal defence budget.
  • He confirmed that the total cost of the war and reconstruction had risen from £8 to £9.2 billion. No cuts were made elsewhere to pay for it.
  • In total, £17 – 18 billion had so far been spent on Iraq and Afghanistan with additional costs on pensions, compensation etc.
  • More resources were needed as the insurgency increased.
  • Spending depended on circumstances not known in advance.
  • They had to adapt to circumstances including biological and chemical issues.
  • The defence budget rose every year from 2001 and more was given than agreed in spending reviews.
  • The MOD budget rose more than other departments in addition to what was given to Iraq.
  • Involvement in Afghanistan at the same time as Iraq did not affect the Iraq budget.

CONCLUSION – GORDON BROWN’S FINAL REFLECTIONS

  • He paid a full tribute to both the forces and civilians who died in the conflict, as he did at the start of the day.
  • Difficult decisions were needed and the war divided public opinion.
  • The decision to go to war was the right decision, but it is our duty to learn lessons.
  • Europe and the USA must work closely together and develop international institutions to intervene when necessary.
  • Instability is a constant worry, and we need internationally to be better prepared for reconstruction.

Pete McLaren Convenor, Rugby STWC 06/03/10

Tuesday 20 July 2010

MI5 Chief confirms that protesters were right over Iraq war

Iraq inquiry: Ex-MI5 boss says war raised terror threat

Baroness Manningham-Buller said the Iraq war "undoubtedly increased" the level of terrorist threat.

The invasion of Iraq "substantially" increased the terrorist threat to the UK, the former head of MI5 has said.

Giving evidence to the Iraq inquiry, Baroness Manningham-Buller said the action had radicalised "a few among a generation".

As a result, she said she was not "surprised" that UK nationals were involved in the 7/7 bombings in London.

She said she believed the intelligence on Iraq's threat was not "substantial enough" to justify the action.

Baroness Manningham-Buller said she had advised officials a year before the war that the threat posed by Iraq to the UK was "very limited", and she believed that assessment had "turned out to be the right judgement".

Describing the intelligence on Iraq's weapons threat as "fragmentary", she said: "If you are going to go to war, you need to have a pretty high threshold to decide on that."

The Chilcot inquiry is continuing to hear evidence about decisions taken in the build-up to the invasion and its aftermath.

Baroness Manningham-Buller, head of the domestic intelligence service between 2002 and 2007, said the terrorist threat to the UK from al-Qaeda and other groups "pre-dated" the Iraq invasion and also the 9/11 attacks in the US.

'Terrorist impetus'

However, she said the UK's participation in the March 2003 military action "undoubtedly increased" the level of terrorist threat.

Analysis

The former head of MI5 chose her words very carefully.

Baroness Manningham-Buller was giving her evidence in public, although 35 witnesses have previously testified to the Iraq inquiry behind closed doors in order to protect national security or international relations.

Key to her evidence was the release of the declassified assessment which she wrote in March 2002, a year before the invasion of Iraq.

This played down the direct threat to the UK from Saddam Hussein's regime, and its possible links to al-Qaeda.

As was expected, the focus of her evidence remained on the implications of the 2003 invasion for Britain, rather than the actual decision to go to war.

Given the gravity of the situation, with 16 suspected terrorism plots uncovered in the UK between 2001 and 2008, it may be a surprise to some that she did not have direct conversations with Tony Blair during her time as head of MI5.

A year after the invasion, she said MI5 was "swamped" by leads about terrorist threats to the UK.

"Our involvement in Iraq, for want of a better word, radicalised a whole generation of young people, some of them British citizens who saw our involvement in Iraq, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam," she said, before immediately correcting herself by adding "not a whole generation, a few among a generation".

The ex-MI5 chief said she shared her concerns that the Iraq invasion would increase the UK's exposure to terrorism with the then home secretary David Blunkett, but did not "recall" discussing the matter with Prime Minister Tony Blair.

MI5 did not "foresee the degree to which British citizens would become involved" in terrorist activity after 2004, she admitted.

"What Iraq did was produce fresh impetus on people prepared to engage in terrorism," she said, adding that she could produce evidence to back this up.

"The Iraq war heightened the extremist view that the West was trying to bring down Islam. We gave Bin Laden his jihad."

Budget increase

Lady Manningham-Buller said MI5 was given a budget increase after 9/11 and again in 2002 but the agency still needed far greater resources as a result of the Iraq invasion.

"By 2003 I found it necessary to ask the prime minister for a doubling of our budget," she said. "This is unheard of, certainly unheard of today, but he and the Treasury and the chancellor accepted that, because I was able to demonstrate the scale of the problem that we were confronted by."

Baroness Manningham-Buller was part of the government's Joint Intelligence Committee before the war, which drew up the controversial dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction in September 2002. The dossier stated the weapons could be activated with 45 minutes of an order to do so.

Asked about the dossier, she said she had very limited involvement in its compilation but it was clear, with hindsight, that there was an "over-reliance" on certain intelligence.

She added: "We were asked to put in some low-grade, small intelligence into it and we refused because we did not think that it was reliable."

'Containable threat'

She said MI5's responsibility was to collect and analyse intelligence and to "act on it where necessary" to mitigate terrorist threats, but stressed it was not her job "to fill in gaps" in the intelligence.

A year before the war, the former MI5 chief advised Home Office officials that the direct threat posed by Iraq to the UK was "very limited and containable".

In a newly declassified document, published by the inquiry, Baroness Manningham-Buller told the senior civil servant at the Home Office in March 2002 that there was no evidence that Iraq had any involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

While there were reports of links between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, there was no intelligence to suggest meaningful co-operation between the two.

In that letter, she said the possibility Iraq might use terrorist tactics to defend its own territory in the event of an invasion could not be ruled out.

But she stressed Iraqi agents did not have "much capability" to carry out UK attacks, adding her view of this never changed.

In his evidence in January, Tony Blair described Saddam Hussein as a "monster" and said the world was a safer place with him no longer in control of Iraq.


From BBC NEWS

Wednesday 14 July 2010

Rally Monday 26 July 7pm: Afghanistan - Time To Go


Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL

Speakers include: Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, just released from prison following his court martial for refusing to fight in Afghanistan, ex-soldier Ross Williams, jailed in 2008 for refusing to fight in Iraq,Caroline Lucas MP and other MPs. More speakers TBA.

The war in Afghanistan is in crisis. The strategy for the US-led occupation is crumbling. Violence is increasing, with deaths of Afghan civilians and Nato troops at higher levels than at any time since 2001. But the ConLib coalition government continues to send troops to kill and die in a war that has no purpose and is being lost, ignoring the two thirds majority of people in Britain who want them brought home now.


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