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2002-03-08 Entry: "Friday Politics"

I was all set for a rant, but I can't work up the enthusiasm. I'll probably manage a few comments, but first read this including the Guardian article it comments on, and then see the more rational commentary here.

Right, now I was going to make lots of astute comments here. No, that's a lie, I was going to rant as usual. Unfortunately most of what I wanted to say has been covered. Both the Guardian article, and the direct response to it (the first article above) are fairly biased pieces of writing.

I'm a little concerned that we're going to get dragged into a war with Iraq in very short order. The americans seem keen to go ahead with it, and Fozzie will cave in and lend our support (as it allows him to spend another three or four months out of the country building a coalition, something Bush couldn't do, and avoid facing the mess that's being created by his government back here). There's no evidence that Iraq are currently developing weapons of mass destruction. If the US have such evidence, they should bring it before the UN but even the UN weapon inspectors don't think there's much chance that Saddam has developed these weapons in the time they've not been allowed in. Furthermore, with the mess going on in Israel (where Mr. Sharon seems determined to follow a policy of "kill all the Palestinians, then we can negotiate with them fairly") a war in Iraq could get very messy. Deposing Mr. Hussain could cause no end of instability in an area that's already fairly unstable.

I'd be slightly more willing to listen to US concerns about this if they listened to some of our concerns (steel tariffs, Kyoto agreements, International courts, missile defence, the list goes on), but I'm not going to countenance a war on Iraq without a reasonable amount of evidence that it's necessary. We haven't even finished with the last unproven invasion of a foreign country...