Day 3316: Lord Blarimort's Lesson for the Nation

Friday:

Addressing the Chilcot inquiry, the former Middle Eastern Invader warned of the danger to the World:

"If you let dangerous maniacs get their hands on weapons of mass destruction they WILL go around attacking people. After all, I did!"

He's right about one thing: there ARE some people in the World who are mad and dangerous and refuse to comply with the "club rules" that we need to live by if we are all to live together.

Lord Blairimort is one of those people.

Because the beginning, middle and end of everything about Iraq is this: IT WAS WRONG.


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Day 3309: Captain Clegg Leads the Agenda – Mr Balloon is Labour's Mini-Me

Friday:


If you want something doing, ask a LIBERAL DEMOCRAT.

Last week, Captain Clegg put the Prime Monster in a tight spot about the Iraq inquiry and now Mr Frown finds he'll be facing questions and answering for his actions BEFORE not AFTER the Election.

This week, Captain Clegg skewered Mr Frown AGAIN, with a timely question about the Royal Bank-that-we-own of Scotland funding the foreign takeover of yet another British institution.


And all Mr Balloon can do meanwhile is COPY Lord Blairimort and bring up his very own "Jamie Bulger case" as "proof" that Great Britain is "broken". Again.

Frankly, this "broken Britain" guff is beyond BORING and getting INSULTING. If you WANT to see a "broken" country… go and look at HAITI.

When Lord Blairimort seized on the tragic fate of little Jamie Bulger, it was with the express purpose of reinventing Hard Labour as a party that sounded tough on crime, sounded tough on the causes of crime; it was about taking a perceived weakness and turning it into a strength.

Obviously it was not just WICKED and MANIPULATIVE to use a horrible – but extremely RARE – crime for personal political gain, it was also a TOTAL FLUFFING DISASTER for law and order in Great Britain, because it led directly to a decade of Hard Labour Home Secretaries trying to appear MACHO in order to outflank the Conservatories ever further to the RIGHT. As a result, far from being the person who makes Britain feel SAFER, the Home Secretary has seen it as his or her job to SCARE people more and more and more. And look where THAT'S got us!

The Conservatories have merrily followed Hard Labour out there, clearly with the idea that "opposition" means "the same but more so". In contrast to Hard Labour though, they are ALREADY the "hang 'em and flog 'em" party – so, when Mr Balloon tries to get tough, far from being a clever piece of repositioning, he is singing to the choir, he is preaching to the converted, he is giving them some of what they want. Rather than reaching out to a wider electorate, it is his OWN SIDE he needs to convince. He is speaking from a position of WEAKNESS.

After messing up the marriage bribe policy and with his recent run of poor performance in the House, is the HEAT starting to get to him? We've seen it happen before, remember, when Mr Frown first became Prime Monster and before the election-that-never-was, a wobble over Grandma Schools turned into a full blown melt-down. And here he is, propping up to old, failed, Conservatory Core Vote strategy all over again.

He's not EVEN announcing any policies that would address monstrous events like this. Do not get me wrong, I think that the Government is already FAR TOO intrusive and NANNYING, but if Mr Balloon's speech is:

"We should stop this sort of thing! Something must be done! And I for one will make sure that the Government does LESS to stop it!"

…then someone needs to check his logic circuits.

This isn't opposition; this is HECKLING.


You've seen it all before, but once again the REAL opposition to this frightening Hard Labour Government – and their Conservatory Mini-Me – is coming from the LIBERAL DEMOCRATS.

You can see it in the way that Mr Frown's hand was forced, so that he wrote to the Chilcot Inquiry saying he was ready to face them sooner, lest people start to ask awkward questions about why he's getting special treatment.

You can see it from the way that Mr Brendan Barber, Head of the TUC, is respecting Captain Clegg for pointing out that the Government itself was helping to fund food megacorp Kraftwerk's takeover of British confectioner and bastion of good business practice Cadbury's. A genuine case of Mr Frown being as effective as a CHOCOLATE CHASTITY BELT. (Actually, I don't know what that means, but I heard it on Blackadder and it sounds good.)

You can see it with the Conservatories too. When their Ms Caroline "Magic" Spellman was on Questionable Time asked about Conservatory married couple tax allowance policy, she wasn't responding to Hard Labour's Mr Liam "Father Dick" Burn but to Captain Clegg's arguments that it PENALISES BEREAVED and ABANDONED mothers and offers no help to families who aren't RICH enough for one parent to quit work.

They're not just LOVE-BOMBING us; they are FRIGHTENED of us, because they know that we are SERIOUS and they know that we are spotting the BIG ISSUES and getting the answers RIGHT.

I don't need to remind you that Mr Dr Vince "the Power" Cable was first to warn about the BUBBLE BURSTING; AND that he was RIGHT to say that the Banks needed cutting down to size. Even the President of Americaland is on board with THAT one now!

But perhaps you've forgotten that we were FIRST to spot MR Frown's ten pence tax takeaway, hitting the poor to give a tax break to the better off. No wonder Mr Balloon is so keen to COPY him!

On issue after issue, from Green Taxes to Gurkahs (Captain Clegg was campaigning for them more than a year before Mr Balloon jumped aboard) the Liberal Democrats are right there, leading the way, not necessarily taking the POPULAR choices, but making the RIGHT ONES.

Yes, even on Iraq. It seems very FASHIONABLE nowadays, especially among a certain class of Conservatory commentator, to say that our opposition to the illegal Middle Eastern invasion was "populist". As though the Craven Conservatories in Parliament – including Mr Balloon – who voted to go along with Lord Blairimort's war were somehow doing the BRAVE thing. They were not.

The Country WAS divided, but the majority (slightly) were FOR the War. Despite a million people marching to say "not in my name" the "popular" option was to to support the invasion. And the Liberal Democrats took a hit in the opinion polls too. But we didn't oppose the war to be "popular". We didn't, like Mr Balloon and his chums, just jump on the bandwagon, cheering the Hard Labour warmongers on, and never mind the evidence – not Mr Alistair Henchman's made-up dossiers, the REAL evidence that Mr Hans Blix and Bumsidaisy was finding (or rather NOT finding) in Iraq. No, we opposed the war because it was WRONG. And now a LOT of people can see that, and they agree with us.

Do we get everything right? No, of course not. But you've got to admit a PRETTY GOOD batting average.

Start with your PRINCIPLES. Consider the EVIDENCE. State your policy CLEARLY and PLAINLY. Explain the costs. Make your CASE. And in the end, most people see that you got it RIGHT.

That's why the Liberal Democrats are setting the agenda for 2010.


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Day 3299: The Not-at-all-sexed-up Dossier Did NOT Mislead, claims Mr Alistair Henchman… so THAT'S all right then(!)

Tuesday:


Lord Blairimort's enforcer, Mr Alistair Henchman, is at the Chilcot Enquiry defending the Iraq Dossier.

That dossier: "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction – The Assessment of the British Government" (pdf), aka the SEPTEMBER Dossier (NOT the subsequent FEBRUARY Dossier "Iraq – Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation", aka the "Dodgy Dossier", which was a complete fabrication*) is the one that said Mr Saddam still had Weapons of Mass Destruction and could launch them within forty-five minutes.

"I don't believe the dossier in any sense misrepresented the position," said Mr Henchman.

Apart, obviously, from being COMPLETELY WRONG.

Asked about weapons of mass destruction, he said their alleged existence became such a "central issue" because of the sense of the "serious and credible threat" they posed to stability in the region.

But to the best of my fluffy knowledge, Great Britain is not IN the "region".

And the ONLY possible justification for Great Britain going to war under INTERNATIONAL LAW is an attack on GREAT BRITAIN.

According to Mr Henchman, Lord Blairimort had "a fundamental view about this."

Aren't we supposed to be AGAINST fundamentalists?

On the 45-minute claim, which was retracted after the war, he said the dossier "obviously" could have been clearer about it referring to battlefield munitions. But he insisted that Mr Blair had put forward a balanced argument in the House of Commons on the issue and the 45-minute claim was only given "iconic" status by the press.

But this claim doesn't JUST appear in the Prime Monster's foreword; it appears FOUR times in total – it's in the Executive Summary, and gets its own (black humour) bullet point; it's in Chapter 3 "The Current Position", listed as one of the "main conclusions" and repeated in section 5 of the same chapter under "recent intelligence".

In none of these cases is it qualified as referring only to "some battlefield munitions"; none of these cases clarifies that this is from ONE uncorroborated source of information; not once is the word "maybe" deployed.

We know NOW that Mr Saddam didn't HAVE any Weapons of Mass Destruction. There was nothing capable of being launched within forty-five DAYS let alone minutes.

Oh, you may claim that it's EASY to say that with HINDSIGHT.

Well the UN inspector, Mr Hans Blix and Bumpsidaisy, was saying it AT THE TIME – saying there was no evidence of WMDs and asking for more time to conduct more inspections.

And the LIBERAL DEMOCRATS were saying it AT THE TIME – saying that in the absence of ANY evidence this was an ILLEGAL WAR.

And this is why this sort of war IS illegal.

If you are FRIGHTENED of the FOREIGN GENTLEMAN living… well not even next door, but in different town altogether… you can't just go round to his house, beat him up and throw him out and then say: "oh, I really, really BELIEVED at the time that he had a GUN and he could have threatened his neighbours in that town, some of whom used to know me a long time ago."

And yet that is EXACTLY what Lord Blairimort DID do, and what he is now – it would seem – claiming as justification.


Doing his best to cover Lord Blairimort's fluffy bottom, Mr Henchman insisted that Lord B had wanted a DIPLOMATIC solution.

Lord Blairimort was clear that military action against Iraq should be regarded as a last resort if the diplomatic process failed and war only became inevitable when efforts to get a second UN resolution collapsed."

Sorry, let me just get that right – the war became inevitable because the UN wouldn't agree to a resolution that would allow the US and UK to go to war?

Isn't it time we just stopped PRETENDING and admitted that the invasion of Iraq was an ILLEGAL and COSTLY mistake, a hideous, ghastly mistake that cost the lives of thousands and thousands of people.

Dwelling on whether the dossier represents what people BELIEVED was the position is neither here nor there. IT WAS WRONG.

If you broke into someone's house because you "really, really believed" they were a threat you would be arrested and sent to prison.

What Lord Blairimort did was tens of thousands of times worse.



*Remember: it would be VERY WRONG to assume that the British Government might in any way have made up any of the intelligence in the September Dossier just because they completely made up the contents of the February Dossier.


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Day 3268: Government treats religious faith as an "eccentricity" practised by "oddities"… says man wearing frock*!

Saturday:

So, the Beardy-Weirdy of Canterbury wants to know why we don't like hearing about our politicians' beliefs and why, if we do, we think it makes them a bit… peculiar.

Two words for you, your weirdiness: LORD BLAIRIMORT.

Yes, Britain's most famous (living) GENOCIDAL THEIST, author of pamphlets: "How I Did It!"; "I would have did it ANYWAY!" and "Nozink in ze vorld can SCHTOPP ME NOWWWWW!", back in the news with the revelation that he DIDN'T GIVE TWO HOOTS about the legality of invading that Middle Eastern county.

Religious convictions? We'd settle for convictions for War Crimes!


We have been INCREDIBLY LUCKY in Great Britain to have got away with being only slightly sucked in to the centuries of religious conflict that have wracked Europe since… well, I was going to say the Reformation, but before that there was the Islamic Invasion and the Cursader Counterstrike and before that it was all barbarians and martyrs so it's pretty much since the Council of Nicaea and Emperor Constantine spotting a get-rich-quick scheme that involved seizing the wealth of all the religions in the Roman Empire by forcibly converting everyone to the unpopular one with no money (guess which).

That's not to say that we've avoided it entirely. Hen-er-ry the Eighth's Break with Rome (NOT a cheap holiday away-day) was a POLITICAL act. Everyone knows that. (Although of course ALL religion is a political act, really.) But his kids turned it into something of a personal cursade, what with Eddy going one way then Bloody Mary going the other.

And Earl Conrad Russell (of sainted memory) wrote of how the Bishop Wars of the early Seventeenth Century led into the English Civil War of the mid Seventeenth Century and how RELIGIOUS conflict was at the root of that strife too.

And even today there are STILL deep religious divisions in some parts of the country, not least Northern Ireland (obviously) and some parts of Scotland (often with the same roots again).

HOWEVER, what we've managed to do is find a very British COMPROMISE. And in fact a very LIBERAL compromise, with successive Liberal Governments in the Nineteenth Century legislating to remove religious prejudice from the (Unwritten) Constitution.

The compromise is this: don't mention the RELIGIOUS war… I did it once, but I think I got away with it!

The thing about religious belief is that it TRANSCENDS rational argument. As a militant atheist baby elephant I would have to say that it HAS to. For most people, faith is something that they FEEL, not something that they DEBATE.

(I say most people; obviously the Beardy-Weirdy's PROBLEM stems from the fact that he is an ANGLICAN BISHOP – debating his faith is practically all the job description he's got!)

If you hitch the cart of policy to the donkey of personal faith, you end up with a simile from I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue… but also you make people invest literally their VERY SOULS in your politics (other fish are available); it makes debating IMPOSSIBLE and even agreeing to differ very, very hard.

So, extremely wisely, Britain has chosen to SEPARATE religious views from political ones. We call this a SECULAR STATE. There is a space for people to do religion (or to not do religion if you are a militant atheist baby elephant) and a SEPARATE space for people to debate politics and BECAUSE they are separate, no one needs to get burned at the stake over a disagreement about the interpretation of the Agriculture and Fisheries Bill!

Not that Archpillock Williams wants to get his hands dirty with the nitty gritty of the Agriculture and Fisheries Bill; Bishops almost NEVER turn up in the House of Lords Club when there's REAL work to be done (unless they're out to ban Gay Daddies from getting something everyone else already has!).

But what he means, when he says politicians are "side-lining" religion, is that he doesn't just want to play in his OWN place for doing religion but wants the special right to come and play in the political sandpit too when he wants to be able to give special little favours to his special personal friends.

(For more on how this "marginalisation" works, see HERE!)

Fortunately, and even more wisely, Britain didn't make that separation with the LAW but used the MUCH MORE POWERFUL force of FAUX PAS!

Ban something and you create underdogs and martyrs (again) and will strengthen and perpetuate it – just look at the Hunting Ban. But put mentioning religion on the same level as farting at the Christmas table and you kill it stone dead – look at the decline in smoking BEFORE Hard Labour legislated to ban it!

That's why we think that the Beardy-Weirdy is a bit, er, WEIRD!

That is why people associate Lord Blairimort "getting religion" with Lord Blairimort going BONKERS.

In all honesty, the former Prime Monster could have painted his bottom BRIGHT BLUE and called himself the Queen of Marzipan and people would have thought him less peculiar. THAT would have been "eccentric", but religion… it's just not CRICKET! No wonder Mr Alistair Henchman kept us from finding out about Lord B's "proclivities" with his "we do not do God" quote.

We're not dubious of Lord Blairimort IN SPITE of him turning out to be a closet Catholic.

We are dubious of Lord Blairimort precisely BECAUSE OF his turning out to be a religious whack-job!

His latest self-justification, which EVERYONE can see is because he's going to get hauled in front of the Chilcot Commission, is that Mr Saddam was "BAD" and so ought to have been removed.

But what MAKES a "bad" person "bad"? And who gets to decide and based on what rules and evidence? Because if it is merely "people Lord Blairimort SAYS are bad" then we are into VERY dangerous territory indeed. We're DANGEROUSLY CLOSE to a religious condemnation of the INFIDEL.

Suppose there is a particularly militant anti-Western Muslim in Iraq (I don't think that's TOO hard to imagine): from their perspective they could see Lord Blairimort as "BAD" – after all, he has (according to them) the "wrong" religion and he's certainly launched wars of invasion. Does that mean that the Iraqis would be justified in invading and occupying OUR country to catch HIM and put him on trial so that the Government that they pick for us can have him executed? In Lord Blairimort's world it does!

Look, I am NOT saying that Mr Saddam was all fluffy and nice. He was a TYRANT, a military dictator who invaded other countries (sometimes with our tacit support) and had lots and lots of people killed (even if stories of "people shredders" turned out to be made up propaganda).

But that's NOT a reason for invading his country and killing a lot of people who were frankly his victims. It IS a reason for not giving him lots of money and weapons and egging him on to attack Iran. Which, funnily enough, is something else we failed not to do.

Believing things to be true JUST BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE THEM is the very DEFINITION of a religious conviction. Which may be fine for Eternal Verities, but when it comes to impartial weighing of evidence, never mind deciding to take the Country to WAR, it's RUBBISH.


Bishops – like the Beardy-Weirdy of Canterbury – would like to have the POWER that comes with political control. Politicians – like Lord Blairimort – would like to have the UNQUESTIONING support that comes with FAITH.

Thank goodness our compromise keeps them apart!

PS:

*And what's wrong with men wearing frocks?


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Day 2910: In other news… Dracula rejects inquiry into theft from bloodbank

Friday:


Look, perhaps I'm not understanding this:

"The Metropolitan Police force has rejected calls for an inquiry into errors made by, er, The Metropolitan Police"

Since when was it up to the police to decide whether or not anyone should oversee their actions?

Meanwhile,

"Mr Frown has rejected calls for an early* inquiry into the Iraq war started by Lord Blairimort and paid for by, er, Mr Frown"

Is it me, or is there a PATTERN developing?

It is an ABUSE of POWER, if you are able to cover your own fluffy bottom by preventing inquiries into your own FAILINGS.

And the continued BLURRING of the lines between the Metropolitan Police and the Hard Labour Party (that began with that CLONE of Lord Blairimort being in charge, and appear to have continued with the TERRORISM Squad now enforcing the Hard Labour's anti-leak policy) must surely be TERRIFYING for those concerned about the encroaching power of the state.

Is it not about time that Parliament – notionally the "highest court in the land" and at least on some VAGUE level our actual representatives – had the power to COMMAND inquiries into the police, or courts, or army, rather than having to grovel and wait their turn? And shouldn't, in the interest of proper SUPERVISION, the Opposition parties be able to order their own inquiries so that Parliament is actually ABLE to OVERSEE the actions of the Almighty Executive?

Now, if you will excuse me, I must nip off to reject Daddy's inquiry into where all the sticky buns have gone!

PS:

*this, incidentally, is clearly some new and interesting definition of the word "early" meaning "more than five-and-a-half years after the event".

And even if the argument that "our boys are still on the battlefield (i.e. holed up at Basra airport)" wasn't wearing a little THIN so many years after "mission accomplished", you would still have to point out that it never used to stop people holding inquiries when millions (not thousands) were in actual battle.

e.g. Following the horrible mess made of the attempt to take Gallipoli in 1915, when a great many people were shot in the Dardanelles (©Comrade Nutski, "The Correct Way to Kill"), a commission was set up in 1916 and conducted an inquiry into the affair… while World War Part One was still in full thunder.

Mind you, there was a LIBERAL in charge back then, so what do you expect!

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Day 2444: America Declares Victory (and prepares to scarper)

Tuesday:


UNLIKE the Grand Old Duke of York, then, Mr General Patraeus has left his unfortunate troops in a hole in Iraq while he marched HIMSELF to the top of the Hill.

If it didn't involve a DEVASTATED Middle Eastern country, this whole business would be entirely PANTOMIME.

The "surge" is working, says the Monkey in Chief.

"Oh no it isn't!" say the people of Iraq.

"Oh yes it is!" says the General.

"Oh no it isn't!" say the Democrat Senators.

"He's BEHIND YOU! (in the opinion polls)" says EVERYONE…

Anticipation is high that – after weeks of US Generals calling the British "cowards" and "defeated" for withdrawing troops from Iraq – the Monkey-in-Chief will be appearing on television to announce the US will be withdrawing their troops from Iraq.

Okay, so the (first part of the) plan is only to go back to "pre-surge" levels, i.e. a-hundred-and-thirty-eight thousand targets troopers instead of a-hundred-and-SIXTY-eight thousand.

And don't ask for them to be sent home before the middle of 2008 (unless you want the country to implode)!

But I think it is PRETTY OBVIOUS to everyone (and that especially includes President Armageddon-jab in Iran) that we have reached that stage of the conflict when one of the powers decides to make a discrete series of STRATEGIC ADVANCES in the direction of THEIR OWN BORDERS, quietly leaving the locals to SLAUGHTER each other until they can pull themselves into a settlement.

This being the Iraq conflict, quite naturally NO ONE is thinking of coming up with an actual PLAN; they are all FAR too busy doing the important PR work of covering their shiny military asses, as they say in America-land.

If the BRITISH have anything to say about it, though, then it will no doubt result in PARTITION – see also Israel and Palestine; India and Pakistan; and Northern Ireland. The Kurds will get their Kurdistan (to the HUGE annoyance of the Turks); the Sunnis will get the westerly province of Anbar (though that looks a lot more difficult today) and the Shiites will get the rump of Iraq, but, hey, they will get most of the OIL! This will, as usual, result in many decades of hostility, feuding and open warfare before eventually… actually, we don't KNOW what will happen eventually as we've NEVER got past the hostility, feuding and open warfare – see also Israel and Palestine; India and Pakistan; and Northern Ireland (oh, all right, the last one seems to be working out now that after 9/11 the Americans have stopped funding the terrorists 'cos they don't see the funny side any more).

The factions continue to prepare for the day after the Americans go, while the ordinary Iraqi-in-the-street (or more likely NOT in the street, but hiding at home) is just exhausted by it all. 70% of Iraqis think their security is WORSE… and that's in the area where the surge actually IS! And a similar number think their government is rubbish too, and only being held up by the US army.

Things are NEVER going to get better while we are still there making things WORSE.

Isn't it time we all came home?


Meanwhile, while the Democrats go on the offensive, and the Monkey-in-Chief continues to be REALLY offensive, all the US army can hope for is some COVERING FIRE from their top brass.

Oooh, and look what an EXCITING collection of MERIT BADGES Mr General Patraeus has got!

Day 2436: They Think It's All Overwatch… It is now!

Monday:


Acting under the aegis of OPERATION: "SNAP GENERAL ELECTION", British Troops are falling back from Basra palace to the relative safety of the airport.

This withdrawal comes just a week after Mr Frown rejected Sir Mr the Merciless' call to draw up plans for a withdrawal.

Perhaps Mr Frown thinks it is better to retreat WITHOUT drawing up a plan first. Maybe his reputation for doing well in a crisis is GOING TO HIS HEAD!

The Prime Monster does insist that this is NOT A DEFEAT. Perhaps he could remind us what the conditions for VICTORY were, in that case.

Still, I think we can all say that this is A GOOD THING. We would all like to see our troops come home – ideally leaving a SAFE and DEMOCRATIC Middle East behind them… but since that's NEVER going to happen, we should be grateful for as many of them being in one piece as we can manage.

Sadly, we cannot say that this is the end of our overseas commitments, and any troops being withdrawn from Iraq may face the prospect of immediately being shipped out to Helmund Province in Afghanistan. But at least in Afghanistan there is (a) a sort of coherent government that (b) actually wants us there and (c) in accordance with a properly orchestrated United Nations mandate.

(Unlike the Iraqi sticking plaster that the US and UK managed to get the Security Council to stick over the mess they had made by illegally invading in the first place. The occupying armies were "authorised" to take charge of Iraq under Security Council Resolution 1511(paragraph 13) on the grounds that if there was to BE an Iraqi state then the occupying forces would jolly well have to put it back together.)

The "in-no-way-a-retreat" from central Basra can only have been helped by the recent and highly astonishing SURPRISE announcement from leading firebrand Mr Moqtada al-Sadr that his militia forces will be taking a temporary break from terrorising all and sundry.

In fact, this announcement was SUCH a VERY astonishing surprise that a VERY CYNICAL person might wonder if this wasn't some sort of QUID before the British PRO QUO.

Coincidentally, those horrid Taliban in Afghanistan released their South Korean hostages when South Korea promised that they would be withdrawing their forces.



Meanwhile, recriminations over the total Horlicks of the Iraq campaign continue to be hurled back and forth across the Atlantic.

After retired generals from the United States had a go at bad-mouthing the UK, and Pentagon envoy retired General Keane spoke of the US "frustration" with the British, now Britain has deployed her own retired generals in a counter-offensive – or at least an attempt to be offensive in return – with retired General Mike "who's bad!" Jackson calling the US post-invasion policy "intellectually bankrupt" while Major General Tim "quite" Cross called US policy "fatally flawed".


I do not think that this SNIPING at each other is going to HELP very much.

It was WRONG to invade in the first place – we had not got the evidence, we would not wait for the UN Inspectors, we did not gain the support of the international community and most of all, for all Mr Saddam’s BLUSTER, Iraq was not a threat to us.

It is NO GOOD to say that it was all America’s fault – we went along with them. Would we go jump in a lake if they said they were going to do it too?

Accepting our fault – not trying to PASS the BUCK to Uncle Sam – is the only way to start HEALING our battered reputation.

Day 2426: American President Rouses Veterans: “Let’s finish what we started… in Vietnam!”

Thursday:


Is anyone else getting just a bit BORED with gung-ho right-wingers from America bad-mouthing our British Troops in Basra? Accusing our forces of having “failed” and of “running away”… it not very POLITE to the one country that was DUMB enough to stick with as you got yourselves into this mess, now is it? And it is DOUBLE IMPOLITE when we are only doing, in handing control back to the Iraqi people, what you said the plan was SUPPOSED to be!

If you do not WANT us as your allies, just say so! I am sure that our troops will be happy to come home the moment that you do.


Meanwhile, the Monkey-in-Chief has, for the first time, acknowledged that Iraq is HIS Vietnam. He is making arrangements to be the first Commander-in-Chief to serve out his term AWOL as I type.

In fact, the American Monkey’s position is that the US pulled out of Vietnam TOO SOON. Like the movie version, “Apocalypse Now”, isn’t ten years long ALREADY! This presumably comes from the same Pentagon school of analysis that used GAME THEORY to “prove” that they had WON the Vietnam War in 1965… so the Viet Minh were just CHEATING to carry on like that!

Actually, I suspect that by “too soon” what the Monkey-in-Chief means is that the US Army was stupid not to wait until there was a DEMOCRAT in the White House. Because OBVIOUSLY this is just the Monkey’s latest excuse for not facing the FACTS and pulling out right away. HE wants to leave that particular HUMILIATION to Ms Hillary-Billary. (Other US Presidents are available… just not from the Replutocrats.)

And likewise, all those American Generals blaming the British are ALSO – in the TASTEFUL American Jargon – covering their ASSES. They know that the SURGE has not really succeeded, or rather it has only succeeded in DISPLACING the violence in Iraq, not ending it.

So, a HUGE part of the US Army has decamped to Baghdad: do the militias and insurrectionists and jihadis throw themselves at this army? Or do they slink off to the north and the south and step up new campaigns of terror there? Or do they quietly bide their time waiting to give the occupiers a REALLY spectacular send off?

The answer is OBVIOUS: they do ALL THREE!

But America’s generals, like their Monkey-in-Chief, now seem more interested in saving FACE than saving LIVES. So they look to pass the buck to the British and refuse to admit that this is their FAILURE and their FAULT.

We were WRONG to invade the Middle East, wrong to do it on a FALSE prospectus, wrong to do it without the support of the United Nations and a clear mandate and a clear plan. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, we have made – in Mr Jack Man O’Straw’s phrase – a TOTAL Jack Man O’Straw of the aftermath!


Oh, and a small historical/geographical note for the Monkey-in-Chief: the Killing Fields, the horrible murderous campaign of Mr Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, took place in CAMBODIA not in VIETNAM. This is what we who support the United Nations call “A DIFFERENT COUNTRY”!

(I know it would be SIMPLISTIC to suggest that there is no connection AT ALL between the communist regimes in two neighbouring countries, but you cannot overlook the fact that it was the Vietnamese invasion in 1979 that actually put an END to the Khmer Rouge reign of terror.)

Day 2411: Foreign Debt

Wednesday:


Sir Mr the Merciless has written to me to ask me to get behind his campaign to make the Government do the DECENT THING and rescue the Iraqis who have been helping our brave soldiers by translating all of the things that the people of Basra have been shouting at them.

Without their help, who would have known what the Iraqi was for: "Please depart like swift angels, you kind and gentle foreign barbarians for we are filled to overflowing with gratitude for your despoiling of this hellhole that was once our prosperous and peaceful land"?

Or indeed how to give our traditional cheery reply of: "We come in peace; shoot to kill!"


Try to understand the Government's position for a moment, though. After they have spent four years spreading PEACE and DEMOCRACY in Iraq, they do seem to think that it is a little UNGRATEFUL of the people who have been helping us to say that WE HAVE MADE IT TOO DANGEROUS for them to live there any more!

Day 2327: Do the Harry Cokey

Wednesday:


You put the Young Prince in…
You pull the Young Prince out…
You send him back to barracks and you mess us all about…
You do the Harry Cokey and get egg upon your face…
That's what it's all ahh…bout!
Hey!

Be FAIR: it's DANGEROUS out there!

Day 2286: The Best of News; the Worst of News

Thursday:


No sooner do we have the GOOD NEWS that the Iranians have released our sailors and marines, than we get the TERRIBLY BAD NEWS that four more of our soldiers have been exploded in Iraq.

Both of these stories in their contrasting relief and horror remind us that our armed forces are brave and loyal and doing the very best that they can. But that we should NOT have sent them out there in the first place and that so long as we make them stay in a dangerously unstable region then we are making the situation worse and not better.


For a week, the Iranians put our people onto the television one at a time to “confess” and “apologise”, milking it for all that they could, and once they had got all the propaganda they thought that they could get, they go for a surprise release to make themselves look even more like the good guys.

It is probably more complicated than that, of course. There are factions within Iranian politics that we do not properly understand. Although Mr Ahmadinejad is President and sort of in charge, the real authority comes from the RELIGIOUS powers, under supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Another key figure is the spokesperson for the Supreme National Security Council, Mr Ali Larijani, and he gave an interview to Channel Four news during the week. That was when he said that the British sailors were NOT going to be put on trial.

You might guess that once President Armageddonjab heard that a SHOW TRIAL was off the cards, he decided that his EASTER GIFT would be the next best way to get a final PR stunt out of the crisis, before it started to look to the rest of the world like Iran was just holding the sailors as HOSTAGES.

I asked my daddies why Iran would think that they could get away with forcing the sailors and marines to tell fibs on television. After all, we were bound to find out what really went on as soon as they were released and allowed to tell of their ORDEAL.

(Funnily enough, the thing that I thought was most insulting – and I mean insulting to ME with my Western ideals; I was sure even then that the sailors themselves had worse things to worry about – was that when they put Leading Seaman Faye Turney on the telly, they took away her uniform and made her wear a headscarf. Just think if we have made an Iranian woman appear WITHOUT a headscarf! They were totally rubbishing our belief that Ms Turney is completely equal to the job of being a frontline sailor. And that was WRONG!)

My daddies pointed out to me that while we here in Britain were NEVER going to believe the Iranian version, it wasn’t US that the Iranian government was trying to convince.

Iran has now dismissed the sailors’ version, calling it “staged” and “theatrical propaganda”. (Which, oddly enough, reminds me of the Labour complaining about the police being “theatrical” when they arrested Ms Ruth Turner. I wonder, from whom have the Iranians been getting their propaganda lessons?)

So, now we have two sets of televised statements and how can people be expected to tell the difference between OUR propaganda and THEIR propaganda?

Thanks to Lord Blairimort in the House of Commons and Mister Alistair Henchman and the dodgy dossier and the downloaded dossier, people have every reason to believe that the British government tells LIES. Never mind that we have a free press that can dig the dirt and usually ends up finding out when the government fibs, our reputation for honesty has been trashed.

So, the people in the Middle East have been given a SHOW AND TELL that says: “look how good and how put upon we are here in Iran; we are your friends and the West is your enemy.”


There are also those COMPLETE COINCIDENCES that an Iranian diplomat held hostage in Iraq has suddenly been released, and that the Americans have suddenly allowed the Iranians to have consular access to several people that the US was holding in Iraq on allegations of helping terrorists.

Now, actually, since NOT letting our British consular officials have access to the captured sailors was one of the things that we thought Iran was VERY WRONG for doing, then it is only right that we should tell the Americans that they have to let Iran have consular access when things are the other way around. So, even if it had nothing to do with our sailors, then it is GOOD that this has happened.

As for the diplomat being released, that is probably a good thing too. Let us just hope that it was NOT because the British government paid a ransom on the Iranians’ behalf.

And the worst thing is that we are GIVING all of this PR to Iran as a GIFT, just by all the dumb things we have done ever since the Monkey-in-Chief persuaded Lord Blairimort that flattening Iraq with an army was the best way to “spread democracy”.

It IS all about hearts and minds – and this week, they’re all being won by the religious ideologues in Iran.

Day 2269: This is Just Happy Slapping with Hawk Jets

Monday:


To commemorate the fourth anniversary of Lord Blairimort invading a Middle Eastern country, the BBC tonight presented the Ten O'clock News from Iraq. Or more precisely from inside heavily defended military installations inside or floating just off of Iraq.

While Mr Huw was stood in a dusty desert CAR PARK being drowned out by TANKS as they drove off to go and do tank stuff in the night, Mr Jeremy Bowen was reporting live from the USS Eisenhower in the Gulf, apparently being filmed by one of the fighter pilots on his mobile phone.

Which is where Daddy came in.

I do wonder what is the POINT of all of this PRESENTING the news from Basra. If you want to stand in a car park there is one at Television Centre. It seems a rather extravagant and, may I say, MACHO way of going about things. And it puts your news presentation entirely in the hands of whichever army/navy/airforce/AT-AT crew on whom you are relying upon for protection. The army call it "embedding"; I wonder if it isn't "keeping under our thumb".

In fact, the only person not surrounded by HEAVY METAL and a FLAK JACKET was Mr John Simpson who was dressed in casual slacks and a shirt reporting from a market place in Sadr City. He was safe there because he was being protected by the Mardi Army rather than by the Americans. His terribly sad news was that the insurgency has not gone away – they are just waiting patiently until the Americans declare peace and go home – probably some time this summer. Then it will be business as usual all over again.

Mr John gave us a better feel for what is going on in Iraq than any number of no doubt impressively exciting pictures of Mr Huw surrounded by tanks. These anecdotes reflect the figures from the BBC's opinion poll that shows a dwindling of optimism among the Iraqi people as the years grind on and their country remains BROKEN.

The BBC have also produced this GRAPHIC MAP of death and destruction in order to show all of the terrible explosions that have blasted Baghdad apart over the years. Well, I say "all of" but actually it only shows explosions where more than ten people have been exploded. Smaller explosions are either too numerous or just not newsworthy enough. As Mr John remarks: "To get on the news, or the front page of the newspapers nowadays, a lot of people have to die. I would say the current figure is 60 or 70; and it certainly wouldn't be the lead."

Even worse, though, is the Ethnic Areas maps that show how a once mixed cosmopolitan city has become segregated by a wave of ethnic cleansing, polarising it into religious factions.

Deep wounds have been caused to Baghdad, and to the rest of Iraq, wounds that will take years to heal.

We were promised that we were going into Iraq to create a "beacon of hope and democracy" that would lead inspire countries in the region. As Mr Bowen put it in another report, this time from the border with Saudi Arabia: "No country wants to be like Iraq today."

Day 2244: Iraq – Time to Go, Lord Blairimort

Thursday:


"In my view, we will beat them when we realise that it is not our fault that they are doing it."

That was Lord Blairimort sharing his WISDOM on the Iraq insurgency with the House of Commons.

This is one of those times when SATIRE cannot compete with REALITY, isn't it.


The GOOD NEWS is that our troops are coming home. Well, some of them anyway.

The BAD NEWS is that Lord Blairimort still won't say sorry for the war he started.

Or as Lord B would put it:

"No, I am sorry, we should not apologise"



Lord Blairimort has set out a TIMETABLE for the gradual reduction of our presence in the Middle-Eastern WAR ZONE.

Sir Mr the Merciless reminded Lord Blairimort that LAST MONTH the Liberal Democrats had called for a timetable to remove our troops from harm's way.

Lord Blairimort had RUBBISHED the idea then… and rubbished AGAIN today:

"I cannot for the life of me see how it can be right, when those elements are conducting themselves in such a way, and the alternative has been voted for by the Iraqi people and backed by the UN, to say that we should walk away and leave them to get on with it."

said Lord Blairimort AS HE WAS ANNOUNCING that we would be walking away and leaving them to get on with it.

Does anyone else think our Prime Minister may be TOTALLY LOSING IT?

(Answer: YES – his own former SPECIAL ENVOY TO IRAQ, for starters)

Sir Mr the Merciless pressed the PM on a number of points:

• The government has supported both the Iraq Study Groups recommendation of a phased withdrawal of US troops AND the Monkey-in-Chief plan to SURGE in a whole lot more. Which is it?

• Is he going to agree that there should be more engagement with Iran, or will he be going along those Neo-Cons in Washington who say it's time to start bombing Iran too?

• Has any thought been given to what the terrorists might do if you put a lot more troops into Baghdad and take a lot of troops away from Basra? Does he have a plan in case the obvious occurs?

• And, perhaps most importantly, has anyone remembered we we're supposed to be using diplomacy to settle the Israel-Palestine conflict since before this whole 'let's have a war' thing kicked off?

Lord Blairimort's reply was: look, the important thing about what the Americans are doing is that Prime Minister M'lackey has been told to give their strategy his full support and that's exactly what he's doing. And so would you if you were in Prime Minister M'lackey's position, i.e. trapped in the green zone with a hundred thousand heavily armed Americans telling you what to do.

As for the Baker-Hamilton report, I'll say no more than I've already said to Mr Balloon, namely, yah boo sucks to you.


Lord Blairimort popped up again this morning on the The Today Programme. The BBC describe him as being DEFIANT, but I would say he was just using as many TWISTY WORDS as he could to avoid having to say he was SORRY!

"I don't think we should be apologising because we are not causing the terrorism."

Well, except in the sense of smashing up Iraq; destroying the forces of law and order that might have kept the country intact; allowing in the foreign terrorists who had got away because we didn't bother to finish the job in Afghanistan properly; sacking the entire Iraqi police force so that they had to start accepting Iranian money or corruption; sending the whole Iraqi army home – with their guns – in order that they might set up the insurgency…

Hang on, Lord Blairimort's thought of that:

"There was no way that the Iraqi police force that was there under Saddam was going to be able to keep order in the country properly. [It was] an instrument of Saddam's dictatorship and therefore you were always going to have to build the Iraq police and army from scratch."

Right! So if you knew that you were ALWAYS going to have to replace the police and the army, you must have had a PLAN for what to do in the meantime, yes?

"These forces that are operating in Iraq at the moment, it's not a fault of planning or administration, it is a deliberate attempt by external extremists, like al-Qaeda"

So it was a COMPLETE surprise to you that al-Qaeda might be operating in Iraq? Didn't the Monkey-in-Chief have some big bee in his bonnet about Saddam being bestest buddies with Osama?

And didn't the CIA originally set up al-Qaeda anyway, back when they wanted them to fight the Russians… and we backed the Taleban when they were beating the Soviets in Afghanistan too. Mind you, we supported Saddam when we wanted him to fight the Iranians for us.

I must remember to look up the word FICKLE.

So, Lord Blairimort was accepting no responsibility for making terrorism worse, then.

"There is no justification even within their own terms for saying that when you remove, for example, the Taleban... it somehow justifies or excuses them blowing up wholly innocent people on the London Tube.

… Of course we shouldn't alter our foreign policy as a result"

What was that SHOCK AND AWE all about then?

Were you throwing HIGH EXPLOSIVES into HEAVILY POPULATED areas of Baghdad in order to TERRORISE the Iraqi government into changing its policy or were you just EXPLODING PEOPLE for FUN?


Didn't this all come back to the fact that in 2002, you and the Monkey-in-Chief just decided you were going to get rid of Saddam and hang the consequences, Mr Humpy asked.

"Look, if we'd decided it back then, why would we have gone back to the UN and tried to get the second resolution?"

Why does Lord Blairimort ALWAYS use this as though it proves he HADN'T already made his mind up – it proves THE EXACT OPPOSITE! Yes, they went back to the United Nations. And the United Nations said: NO. And then Lord Blairimort and the Monkey-in-Chief INVADED ANYWAY.

Doesn't that look to YOU like they'd made up their minds already?????

The REAL TRAGEDY is that we probably WON'T be able to get Lord Blairimort on the WAR CRIMES charges that he clearly deserves. We may have to settle for the AL CAPONE option of seeing him dragged off in chains for the lesser crime of PERVERTING THE COURSE OF JUSTICE.

Oh dear, his nice Director of Government Relations, Ms Ruth Turner, has been grilled by Inspector Yates again.



Incidentally, in spite of the impending HAPPY DAY when Lord B finally goes (willingly or otherwise), there was bad news for his apprentice evil emperor, Mr Frown (or Darth Gordo, Dork Lord of the Smith Institute, as he prefers to be called*): a COLOSSAL GIANT SQUID has emerged from the depths of the sea off New Zealand and is going to challenge for the Labour Leadership!

[*] for reasons of BALANCE, this gag requires that we mention that Dale Winton is a trustee of the Pets Win Prizes Exchange.

Day 2240: DOCTOR WHO: Human Resources

Sunday:


Lord Blairimort was on Mr Andy’s breakfast show, and was asked whether he was ever SORRY for all the people who were dying in Iraq. Lord Blairimort said how very DEVASTATED he was, but that it wasn’t British or American soldiers who were killing them.

“Look Andy… clean conscience, carefree laughter, sociopathic twitch… not my fault, guv,”

And then he got to sit on the comfy sofa with one-time credible anti-war songmeister Art Garfunkel and joke about doing a duet together.

I think I can suggest a song for them…

[tune: “Mrs Robinson” Simon&Garfunkel; lyrics Millennium Elephant]

Lying to the Commons on a Monday Afternoon
Would you like a Peerage with your cupcakes
Laugh about it, cry about it, if you’ve got to care

While the rest of us despair

What’s that you say
Mister Blairimort
Conscience says it wasn’t down to you
Woo woo woo

But people died
Mister Blairimort,
Abu Grahib just will not go away
Hey hey hey
hey hey hey


Or maybe we’ll stick to “The Boxer”

Lie la lie
Li la lie lie lie lie lie
Lie la lie
Lie la lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lieeeeeeeee

Meanwhile, I will get Daddy Richard to review another duet: the final two episodes of the (we all hope) first series of Radio Doctor Who.

Take "The Office", "The War Games", a soupcon of Monty Python and an army of Cybermen: stir liberally and serve. In spite of what you might think, the result is a spectacular and occasionally hilarious triumph, with special credit to Roy Marsden. Whoever would have expected Commander Dalgliesh to do such brilliant deadpan?

As you may have gathered, Big Finish's series of audio adventures for the eighth Doctor on BBC7 digital radio has come to something of a top conclusion. Nicely wrapping up the story arc concerning Lucie, the Time Lords and the Headhunter brings us back, most unexpectedly, to Lucie's first day at work. If that's not got you confused then the escalating sequence of ever more bizarre revelations will soon have you totally bamboozled. And yet also engrossed.

The Doctor's story begins completely separated from Lucie, with a meeting with a perfectly charming Time Lord called Straxus, but he swiftly weaves himself back into the tale, rather marvellously establishing himself in a position of authority while remaining fairly baffled as to how he's doing it.

The logic of the story actually makes it all seem to unfold perfectly naturally – like a well written Douglas Adam pastiche – and the pace and charm keep tugging you along, enjoying the ride wherever it takes you.

Between them, Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith really carry this story along, the repartee between them, the relationship that they have built over this series between the Doctor and Lucie, working like a pair of jugglers to keep the disparate and perplexing plot elements all moving and all in the air at once.

As the Doctor probes further, it becomes apparent that all the seeming oddness is actually a pretty dastardly plot by Roy Marsden's Mr Hulbert to exploit a lot of ambitious office workers as, er, unwitting interstellar mercenaries. With giant robots. Obviously.

Equally obviously, the Doctor decides to put a stop to it, just in time for the cliffhanger ending to part one: oops, Doctor, you should have checked to see just who Hulbert's mercenaries were fighting against! It's…

…no surprise to anyone who peeked at the cast lists for the CD releases! It's the Cybermen.

Having expected the cyborg baddies to tie in with the opening story – if you recall, the colony of Red Rocket Rising having just beaten off the Daleks were about to be rescued by saviours from planet Telos… no luck there then! – it actually was something of a relief that this story had no connection to "Blood of the Daleks" after all. Instead it's set in a previously unheard of by-water of Cyberman history, between the destruction of their first homeworld, Mondas, and their conquest of their second homeworld, Telos. Oh all right, third homeworld it'll have to be now.

The Cyber-voices are… er… interesting. Alex spotted at once that they were a blend of the Mondasian sing-song from "The Tenth Planet" and the bleeping deletes of the new series. (Points deducted for smugness when Nick Briggs said as much, in the same words no less, on the making of after part one!) Actually, they worked rather well, adding personality to what can be otherwise robotic villains. Oh and they've got the new series stomping march too – which is great as it really gives the Cybermen an identifiable sound and a presence that moves through the action, adding to the soundscape. We're not quite sure how it fits with their "we don't reference the new telly series" rules, though.

Having the Cybermen familiar with Planet 14 but not with Telos is a tiny touch naughty, too, as there's a reasonably good theory that they are one and the same planet. And the rowing and politicking between the Time Lords' High Council and the Celestial Intervention Agency is perhaps a little bit too comic given the dignity that the television series and the Time War has miraculously managed to restore to the Doctor's people post "Arc of Infinity". (Or you could say it plays into the idea that the CIA are going to do a runner, hiding out as the Celestis, as soon as the Time War breaks out.)

The all out warfare that breaks out during the second episode is remarkably effective, not least because of the excellent sound design and a real sense of how the Cybermen's strategy is working and advancing relentlessly. The resolution is rather delightful too – very Time Lord in its execution and (again it's Alex's thought) very satirical of the TV series' rabbit-from-hat endings. Basically, it's a machine that always pulls the right rabbit from the hat. Delightful.

Enough threads are left open at the end – about the Time Lords, the Headhunter, and just where Mr Hulbert got his technology from in the first place – to give a second series something to get its teeth into. Or not. There's no need if they've got other ideas as inventive and absorbing as this. Though I do rather hope that Mr Straxus doesn't end up having to regenerate – Nickolas Grace is always such a pleasure to hear.

I earlier accused this series of being rather up and down. I'm happy to say that I've been proved wrong: there are a couple of glitches early on – okay, really only "Horror of Glam Rock"; "Phobos" only problem was being just a bit average – but this ending (following on from "No More Lies") has really lifted the arc as a whole. And they've rapidly grown into the fifty-minute time slot. It seems so natural now; it's surprising how the traditional old four-parter, which we all loved so much, has so easily been superseded.

I'm very much warming to Lucie – she's just so bubbly you can't not like her, but she's shown increasing depth too, especially in the scenes here when she thinks her life has been totally messed with but would have been even worse if it hadn't been.

And McGann continues to give great Doctor: vivacious and wise, but also old and cranky, the characterisation Chris Bidmead wanted as early as the fifth Doctor: old man in a young body.

These radio adventures have really filled a gap, specifically that gap between the Christmas special and the start of the series proper (yes, yes, there's another month to go, but it's no longer so… impossible). Here's hoping they've been a huge boost to BBC7's ratings and that they'll commission another run to fill the same gap next year.

Wadda ya mean they've not announced next year's Christmas special and fourth series yet?!

Next time… meanwhile, in his tenth incarnation and with no Rose at his side, how will the Doctor cope? Enter Miss Martha. "Smith and Jones". 31st March.

Day 1898: Mystery

Tuesday:


Daddy has been watching the Newsnight show again.

It appears that BILLIONS and BILLIONS of Dollars supposedly sent to rebuild Iraq have mysteriously disappeared. Where can they have gone?

In business news: HALLIBURTON announces record profits…




It seems that Mr Balloon (who seems to be better after his BIRD FLU) is not as popular in the polls as he used to be. Horrible contagious NOSE PLAGUE can probably do that to you.

In order to feel better, he has tried to get EVEN MORE like Mr Blair by voting for Mr Blair’s education policy. And then got a bit confused by voting AGAINST him.

Nick MATE-OF-DAVE Robinson says that this is supposed to be embarrassing for Mr Blair.

I SHOULD SAY SO! Honestly. I’d be embarrassed if someone who forgot which way to vote kept HANGING AROUND trying to be like me!

According to Mr Mate-of-Dave, this was NOT a shoddy, opportunistic tactic by Mr Balloon. OH NO! It’s just that Mr Balloon wants to be able to say to the country that he supports Mr Blair and to say to the Conservatory Party that he is opposed to Mr Blair. And this is NOT TWO FACED. Mr Mate-of-Dave said so!



Meanwhile, it appears that MILLIONS and MILLIONS of Pounds supposedly sent as secret loans have mysteriously appeared in Mr Blair’s bank account. Where can they have come from?