The UK amount taxpayers pay out each year for the Iraq war has doubled despite the troop cut, but seeing as this means their withdrawal might occur with less casualties - all around - , seeing as we have got into this mess, its worth trying to save a bit of pain as we get out.
The bigger question is WHAT SPUN US INTO THIS WAR.
That question has a few UK retorts - what newspapers said what, who voted what way, who the long-term functionaries were that tried to use the elected political types or their spin-doctors as fall guys. . . . a serious, informed re-look at all these factors, with a special scepticism about how whose words appear in whose mouths might get disguised . . . . drafts, when additions occur in speeches, who are the "neighbours" of the people that actually put the direction into the speeches or preserve the "blindspots" or logic jumps in them, or their commentators in the newspapers etc.
This aint old hat. This is crucial. It might prevent new wars or the sabotage of new peace processes.
But it is the spin in the USA that meant the UK "had" to try to preserve a certain amount of "bridging" influence to have open, "earned" input into the USAs decisions - to use the last semi-plausible Foreign Office reasoning for it. ( To a certain extent this did mean the strengthening of the USAs State Departments somewhat more sensible attitude at times against "the crazies". As a few might explain, if the UK wasn't with the USA in Iraq, the bad effects of the chaos caused by the so called "War on Terror" could have affected us here too all too soon either way . . . .keeping the USA "within" the UN, despite the attempts of some of the "neo-con" puppet-types to terminally torpedo multilateralism of all coherent sorts - the "Western" equal to swapping the sherriff, the court, the vote, the judges, etc for letting the biggest cattlemen or railroad whip up a posse each time to go after the bad guy with a lynching rope. Or after the little farmers.
Trying to prevent the idiocy of trying to call it a "war" in comparison to tragic crimes - thus creating a fake "legitimisation" of "horror-as-a-tactic" for people that were against what they saw as that current USA administrations other policies.
Much of this is explaining the most re-al of "good" re-al-politic . . . . also - its quite possible to argue that we could have said all these things from "outside", or that "going along with it" - for whatever reason - allowed it all more credit at the time. For example, I think we should have stayed out of it. But the reason to explain the above is to allow those that "went along with" the war - for all sorts of reasons* to get together to look at HOW WE GOT SPUN. If these things dont get explained, a few people allow themselves to get used to "move us on" at a precise time when IT IS POSSIBLE for us to uncover the facts, In time, almost out of embarassment.

* remember - the fake "al-quaida/saddam" link. check the polls!
remember - the forging of the "NIGER URANIUM" documents !
remember - launch-in-45minute WMDs to hit Europe
remember - they didnt exist.

then - remember that the UN inspections WERE WORKING.
REMEMBER - with CLEVER suspensions of global relations - different from the stupid "starve-the-people-into-the-arms-of-their-dictator" strategy - there ALWAYS WERE other ways to get rid of the dictator.
Remember people had to wait about so that the big bogeyperson got away . . . .
Remember the USA State department DID have a whole set of worked out "what do we do afters" . . . . that got torn up . . . .so there was this quagmire.
Remember a lot of the Iraqi army were bought off - so criminalised - with suitcases of dollars - then demobbed - without social support or jobs - but allowed to keep their guns

Y O U C O U L D N T I N V E N T I T.
. . . . then they wonder why we ask where the cash went, why we need enquiries . . . .

REMEMBER each eleventh. Once a year ISNT ENOUGH.



by the way, to a certain extent, the old "hippy" types etc used to say "beds not bombs" . . . . in the short term, you might think - actually, stop the "nukes", but strengthen the armour under the seats, get a few more choppers, etc, THEN hospitals, flowers, nice things etc. But look again at that top number, the total cost so far for the Iraq war - then look at the sort of amount the UN has said it might take to TOTALLY sort a lot of the problems of the world out - that often cause the wars etc later.

Then ask what sort of weird dystopia you were existing in . . . .
Lets wake up, hey . . . .



pass this around
its amazing what you come across on these "lefty" websites these days
re (last) post (s)
remember "to remember"
but mean it
cheers