After being completely let off, and being allowed to say that we invaded Iraq to sort out Saddam Hussain who was a sponsor of international terrorism, some people phoned in to complain.

Their points were brought up during a later interview with John Reid. Reid said there's no point in bringing up these two year old arguments anymore (unless in the context of MacShane's lies). The interviewer Humphries apologized for his impertinent points -- that Invading Iraq caused more terrorism, not less -- and blamed it on the listeners phoning up and asking these questions to get asked.

So that's what we gotta do, folks. The BBC can't do it's job of presenting the facts to politicians no longer. They need to be told.

Also, it would have been nice to think that it was not only British war-mongers going down to Madrid to plaster their brand all over that demonstration, and that the BBC could have found one guy on the anti-war side.

It was important for them to state that yesterday's Madrid demonstration was bigger than the anti-war marches. Once the message of the Madrid demo has been safely defined by the powers that be, all the anti-war people who may have made it the size that it was, by at least the balance of people who made it bigger than their marches, were now on message.

I want to throw up.

And another thing. Reid thankfully knew not to give out the too far discredited lie about the Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussain connection, clutched at the idea that Iraq supported international terrorism because Abu Nidal had retired to Baghdad. That's all he could say to back up MacShane's lie.

Now why does Reid know anything about Abu Nidal? Abu Nidal was so greatly supported by Saddam's regime that he died in jail 18 months ago:

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2206991.stm


The timing is interesting. The threats against Iraq were working and were taken seriously. Because it was a key plank of the justification of invasion, Saddam must have heard of this allegation, and dealt with it in his usual bone-headed way. (It would have been a lot more effective to have deported him to the Hague -- an action that would have been very difficult to explain away -- but dictators are rarely imaginative.)

In 2002, the most hazardous place to be, even if it was only your daughter's boyfriend's uncle's drinking chum who was the terrorist, was Baghdad.

The interview can be found here:

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today2_spain_20040313.ram

its 5 minutes into the clip

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, this guy is really a grade one tosser.