To liberals, libertarians, isolationists, Little Englanders, pacifists and other opponents of the perfectly legal 'illegal war' in Iraq:
This is what our tax pounds and many British and Allied lives were spent to end forever...
To liberals, libertarians, isolationists, Little Englanders, pacifists and other opponents of the torture of waterboarding.
This is what the victims of torture need in order to recover and rebuild their lives when the torture has been ended - say by the 'illegal war 'against Saddam Hussein.
This is what the victims of waterboarding need to recover rebuild their lives when the waterboarding has been ended, say by the victims telling our Allies' intelligence agents who the other terrorists are, and where they trained and what their plans are..
And just to underline the point of my Political Class Post below, the new blog of Lawson Narse -Let Fly The Pigs OF War - demonstrates the Political Class's utterly cavalier attitude to cabinet government - as it mistreats suborns or destroys any of our ancient institutions (formerly known variously as checks and balances, separation of powers, or simply The British Constitution) that obstruct its undending change-fetish.
There was no Cabinet debate on going to war with Iraq.
Just think of that; the lives of many thousands of our servicemen, their families' security, and the fate of the hundreds of Iraqi lives that would be lost by accident in any mechanised war were not considered by the official and traditional supreme policy-making body of Her Majesty's Government.
I supported the war from the start - and I support it now and for the exact same reasons (and for additional reasons that emerged as events unfolded during the war and occupation), but the Government should have used the proper persons - political as well as diplomatic and military - to come to that decision.
One of the things our brave servicemen are fighting and dying for is to preserve a world in which democracy and the rule of law mean something.
New Labour, Tony Blair and his pals...not so much.Home
