Iraq Follow

If a writer was jailed for 30 years for exposing government corruption in Iran or Syria, there would be outrage in the US and Britain and demands for military strikes. But when that happens in Iraq there is silence.

While George Bush was announcing an end to US efforts to "rebuild" Iraq’s oil industry and basic services this week, contracts were being awarded to build a $1 billion US embassy complex in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone.

"This work has been especially difficult in Iraq — more difficult than we expected. Now there are only two options before our country — victory or defeat." George Bush

The central aim of the Iraqi National Foundation Congress is to unite the anti-occupation organisations in Iraq. Iraq has just emerged from dictatorship, only to find itself under occuption by foreign powers. We need a voice to combat an occupation that actively tries to further fragment the Iraqi people.

The war in Iraq is a complete and utter disaster. For the people of Iraq there is more suffering today than under the previous government. You have unlimited torture, the use of chemical weapons, limitless killing of civilians by the occupation forces in Iraq.

One of the most inspiring parts of the conference was the session on the campaigns by military families against the war in the US and Britain.

Surely one of the most nauseating spectacles in an era that has provided us with so many was the "civil rights tour" that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hosted for her partner-in-war-crimes Jack Straw in late October. During it, they had the incredible cheek to invoke the history of the black freedom struggle to rationalise their ongoing slaughter in Iraq.

Hassan Jumaa Awad of the General Union of Oil Employees in Basra addressed a meeting organised by Manchester trades council and Greater Manchester Coalition to Stop the War on 24 November.

Hospitals targeted Health workers in Iraq have launched an international campaign demanding an end to harassment by US troops and their allies.

It has become impossible for anyone with half an eye on Iraq over the last six months not to recognise the widespread presence of death squads, especially in Baghdad and the ring of towns surrounding it.

One of the activists coming to Britain for the International Peace Conference is Cindy Sheehan, whose son — US soldier Casey Sheehan — was killed in Iraq.

When George Galloway was interviewed on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme a few weeks ago, John Humphreys taunted him with the suggestion that Respect was a single issue party whose issue — the war in Iraq — would have disappeared by the time of the next general election.