Iraq Follow

Whatever the outcome of the Hutton inquiry, it's clear that the Iraq war is putting not just the Blair government, but also its more powerful partner across the Atlantic increasingly on the defensive.

A RECENT advert placed in the British newspaper the Western Mail offered "excellent pay" for former soldiers "wanted for security work in Iraq". The add was placed by US firm Secureforce. The death of a private "security operative" in Iraq last weekend has highlighted the extent to which mercenaries are already being used in war zones.

CHILDREN AGAINST War held an angry demonstration against the use of cluster bombs last Sunday. They marched on Downing Street to protest against the use of the weapons by the US and British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

AS THE lies told to justify the war on Iraq unravelled in a courtroom in London, the reality of the occupation of Iraq by US and British troops was shown on our TV screens. For months we have been told that British troops, with their "softly, softly" approach to dealing with civilian populations, had won the trust of the Iraqi people.

US MARINE Corps fighter pilots and commanders who have returned from Iraq have confirmed the use of firebombs similar to napalm during the fighting. They were dropped near bridges over the Saddam canal and the River Tigris on the approaches to Baghdad.

Blair lied to start war on Iraq... Dossiers were fiction... No weapons of mass destruction found... Iraq did not try to buy uranium... Huge global movement against the war... 7,500 Iraqi civilians killed during the war...

A REPORT this week confirmed that US military casualties from the occupation of Iraq have been more than twice the number most Americans have been led to believe. The high number of accidents, suicides and other non-combat deaths have gone largely unreported in the media. Since 1 May, when President Bush declared the end of major combat operations, 52 US soldiers have been killed by hostile fire, according to Pentagon figures quoted in almost all the war coverage.

Tens of thousands of protesters marched against the US occupation of Iraq in Najaf last weekend. They chanted slogans such as "No Americans after today", "No to America. No to colonialism" and "Down with the invaders".

"TELL DONALD Rumsfeld the 2nd Brigade is stuck in Fallujah, and we're very angry," Sergeant Siphon Pahn told a major US news programme last week, in an extraordinary scene. Anger boiled over when the troops learnt they were staying in Iraq indefinitely after being told they would be home by September. The outburst gave a glimpse of the bitterness building up among US troops serving in Iraq.

THE TANKERS of the giant multinational oil companies BP, Chevron Texaco and Shell have begun transporting newly pumped oil out of Iraq. At least three quarters of the new oil is heading for the US.

A SENIOR US general has admitted that the war against Iraq actually started in the middle of 2002 - before any of the dossiers produced to try to justify the war. Lieutenant General Michael Moseley, the chief allied war commander, said the war really began with the intensification of US air strikes under the guise of enforcing the southern "no-fly zone" in Iraq.

TONY BLAIR is in a crisis for one reason - his whole case for war on Iraq was based on a great lie. To justify that lie, Blair lied again, and again and again. He constructed a pyramid of lies and now that pyramid is collapsing around him. Blair's government is in chaos. The BBC and the government are at each other's throats. More and more people, in the media, the Labour Party and the establishment, are calling for Blair to go.