MOD madness

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

After the gruesome twosome's dance of death in Iraq, where Condoleezza Rice told reporters 'the international partners, particularly the US and Great Britain and others who have forces on the ground and have sacrificed here, have a deep desire and, I think, a right to expect that this [political] process will keep moving forward', we should be in no doubt who runs Iraq's 'sovereign government'.

In the undergrowth things are stirring at the Ministry of Defence. A meeting yesterday discussed the impact of an attack on Iran, while John Reid wants that boring old 20th century international law changed. The Geneva Conventions just tie governments' hands, allowing prisoners of war rights and standards of treatment. And then people start complaining about camps like Guantanamo Bay, or about torture flights and extraordinary rendition.

Even worse, they are hampering us from carrying out pre emptive strikes. True, we did launch one against Iraq in 2003 but that had to be dressed up as countering the threat of WMD. Dr Strangelove Reid wants to be able to do that everywhere. Iran, Venezuela..the world's our oyster.

Our protests at the BBC today have had some impact. Went down to Broadcasting House for our London event where we got a lot of press but mostly from abroad (and to be fair BBC local radio). One interviewer was amazed that we should think the BBC biased. Well, after Greg Dyke admitted that before the war the BBC went out of its way to get pro war voices on Question Time, opening up extra phone lines to get more pro war opinions,prevented its senior editorial figures from going on anti war marches, setting up a special committee to monitor coverage of the Iraq war, can you blame us for being suspicious?

Especially since he was sacked for his pains.

4/04/2006 04:20:00 PM | Permalink