One out, all out

Even the Daily Telegraph is saying Prince Harry shouldn't go to Iraq. It is too dangerous for the third in line to the throne to risk capture at the hands of the Iraqis. But surely if it's too dangerous for Prince Harry, it's too dangerous for the rest of the British army as well.

Testimony from British troops returning from Iraq paints a very gloomy picture. Private Paul Barton, who returned from his second tour of duty this week, spoke out almost immediately on his return, telling his local Tamworth newspaper: 'Basra is lost. They are in control now. It's a full-scale riot and the government are just trying to save face.' Barton was one of the soldiers based in the Shatt al-Arab hotel, now handed over to the Iraqi army. The Ministry of Defence quietly announced some months ago that the hotel and another base in central Basra were two of the three most dangerous bases in Iraq.

Barton confirms that: 'of 40 tents in the base only five were left at the end of his tour of duty. 'We were just sitting ducks...Towards the end of January to March, it was like a siege mentality. We were getting mortared every hour of the day. We were constantly being fired at. We basically didn't sleep for six months. You couldn't rest. Psychologically, it wore you down.' His conclusion is 'We have overstayed our welcome now....We should pull out and call it quits.'

Incredibly, this information - which tallies with much information from Iraqis over recent months- did not appear in the British press until Barton went public. Yet British journalists and politicians have visited Basra in recent months. The media, which cheered this war to the echo and the politicians who voted for the war, are remarkably quiet.

Instead, they throw up their hands and say, we must stay because to go will make things worse. But the presence of the troops is making things worse. Many of the assassinations and killings taking place in Iraq today are carried out by government backed death squads - that's the government supported by George Bush and Tony Blair and propped up by the occupation troops. The US is cementing sectarian division - quite literally with the building of a wall in the Baghdad neighbourhood of Adhamiya.

The wall and others like it are described as 'gated communities' for all the world as though they were properties on an Islington estate agent's books. They have more in common with the 'apartheid wall' erected in the Occupied Territories to keep the Palestinians penned in, and have the same purpose - to isolate areas of resistance.

They are part of George Bush's 'surge' which - as with every other part of his strategy in Iraq - is not going to plan. The US and British military death toll is rising, with nearly 100 soldiers being killed in the first three weeks of April. The Iraqi death toll is rising much faster, with more than 160 killed with a single car bomb last week.

In the US, the Democrats have passed a bill in Congress called for withdrawal to begin this October. They know that the war is lost and is deeply unpopular with the majority in the US. George Bush is threatening to veto the bill. Meanwhile in Britain little stirs. Parliament says nothing on this central issue, and MPs drift towards the election of a new prime minister
seemingly in a trance.

Time for Harry to stay home but time too for a surge for peace which brings all the troops home.