OFFICIALS AT the Bloody Sunday inquiry in London weren't certain until the last minute that General Michael Jackson would give evidence as scheduled on 7 April. He's the man in overall command of British forces in Iraq, and so had other compelling commitments.
THE UN weapons inspector Hans Blix now believes the war on Iraq was "planned well in advance" of his inspectors' last visit to Iraq. He says, "You ask yourself a lot of questions when you see the things they did to try to show that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons programmes, like the fake contract with Niger."
The real looters are now arriving in Iraq. They do not want to grab a TV or a computer – nothing so trivial. They are after great chunks of the economy. Oil is top of the list. The US defence department is setting up an advisory board to run Iraq's oil industry.
THE WARMONGERS in the White House feel flushed with success. The most hardline are already threatening to extend the slaughter they have inflicted on the people of Iraq to other states on George Bush's "axis of evil". They always said toppling Saddam Hussein was a stepping stone in a permanent "war on terror".
"ON ONE side was the richest country in the world, with the most powerful arsenal assembled in human history. On the other side was an impoverished Third World country that didn't even have control of its own air space. There was never any doubt who would win. Now there is an armed staging post where once there was a sovereign country.
Hamdeen Sabahy
When Doreen Lawrence asserted that no police officer had tended her dying son because they didn't want to get "black" blood on their hands, the reverberations shook British society. Stephen Lawrence's stabbing in April 1993 followed a series of other murders and racist attacks in south east London, where the Nazi British National Party (BNP) had opened its headquarters.
THE BBC's political editor, Andrew Marr, last week tried to claim that the anti-war movement had melted away. His "proof" was that the day before war started thousands of protesters filled Parliament Square but a few days later the square was empty. What he didn't mention was that no demo had been called for that day! A meeting of Socialist Workers Party members last Sunday discussed building the anti-war movement.
FOR THE next nine months, every penny of the money which the government is taking from workers in extra national insurance will go to pay for the war on Iraq. That's if the war "only" costs the £3.5 billion that chancellor Gordon Brown has already set aside.
ISRAEL IS heavily involved in Bush and Blair's war on Iraq. Top White House hawks like Richard Perle identify strongly with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and his hard right Likud Party. Perle and other White House hawks want to reshape the Middle East to fit Israel's interests.
GEORGE BUSH and the gang who run the White House are waging a second war - at home on the majority of ordinary Americans. The names of those behind that war are the same as those ordering the bombers to pound Iraq. They include US government figures like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, right wing thinkers like William Kristol, and wealthy, corporate-backed groups they are linked to like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
THE INVASION of Iraq is the third time in only six years that Tony Blair has sent British armed forces to war alongside the United States. Before Iraq were the wars in Afghanistan and the Balkans. And before those many can remember two more wars in which British forces have fought - the 1991 Gulf War and the 1982 Falklands War.
