WHILE I have never been a supporter of New Labour and Tony Blair, I must give him some credit for his stance on Iraq.

In many ways, he is being derided in the same way as Winston Churchill was in the 1930s.

All this tub-thumping and marching! Take Manchester, for instance -- a pathetic 10,000 took to the streets out of a possible seven million within the area. But what publicity they received!

Many of those taking part belonged to the same tired old brigade -- political agitators, Socialist Workers, CND, Greenpeace, lefties and anarchists; not forgetting the students, of course.

What the protesters fail to appreciate is that for ten years the RAF and American airforce have been protecting two thirds of the Iraqis from genocide -- namely the Kurds in the north and Shi-ite Muslims in the marshlands to the south.

The Royal Navy along with others has been preventing Saddam Hussein from sanctions-busting.

How long has this to go on for?

Then there is the propaganda nonsense that the Americans are after Iraq's oil. It is just ridiculous, for it would make more sense for the Yanks just to buy it, as was the case.

The reasoning is simple -- and Iraq is only the first -- others will follow if they fail to toe the line -- that any rogue state producing weapons of mass destruction will be taken out to prevent the holocaust that would certainly follow if ever those states unite with terrorists to form a common front.

What would the position be today if the Yanks had not bombed Libya and quietened Gaddhafi? Or if the Israelis not bombed Saddam Hussein's French-built atomic plant in the Eighties?

If Saddam had this up and running and producing bombs, would there have been a Gulf war?

Now is the time for support to be given to the British armed forces who have been given this task.

WALT MEADOWS, Whalley New Road, Blackburn.