Not in my name

On Saturday 15th February, 2 million people marched through London on one of the coldest days of the year in order to demonstrate their total opposition to the impending war against Iraq. The next day Tony Blair said he would not be paying any attention to the demonstrators.

Since then, 124 Labour MPs have voted against their own party in the House of Commons and demonstrated their total opposition to the impending war against Iraq. Such an unprecedented parliamentary revolt has not occurred in the last hundred years. The Labour Party hierarchy have made it quiet clear that they couldn't care less and will not be heeding their own backbenchers.

This is the state of democracy in Britain today.

Our local MP, our Prime Minister, our government are not interested in what we, the people of Britain, have to say about a highly illegal and a highly immoral war that our country seems to be inextricably drawn into. Instead, our MP, our Prime Minister and our government seem to be taking their orders directly from the White House. Parliament, the seat of British government and 10 Downing Street, the residence of the Prime Minister of Britain, have become, to all intents and purposes, the out houses of the White House. To say that our foreign policy has been sold to the highest bidder is something of an understatement.

The Stop The War march in London on 15th February was a defining moment in British political life and it's reverberations will be felt for a long time to come. This was the most extraordinary example of people power in British history and to have been a part of it will be a memory that I will treasure for the rest of my life. Hundreds of thousands of people travelled from the length and breadth of the country and converged on London to show their utter opposition to this 'Blood for Oil' war.

I must stress that these were ordinary people from all walks of life - the unemployed, doctors, factory workers, barristers - and represented all hues of political opinion and religious and ethnic backgrounds.

The fact that we are being lied to and manipulated is beyond contention. Look at the recent 'new dossier' put out by the government to justify it's war mongering. After the initial fanfare had died down, closer scrutiny revealed that the government had copied the bulk of the 'dossier' from a student's thesis (complete with spelling and grammatical errors!) that was twelve years out of date.

The rest of it was copied from two articles published in a freely available military magazine. Meanwhile, Colin Powell was putting out similar distortions before the UN and he would have got away with it too had not Hans Blix firmly rapped his knuckles in front of a world wide audience. And don't forget the sight of Tony Blair squirming in his seat as his lies were torn to shreds by Jeremy Paxman during a recent televised debate on Iraq.

We are being lead to believe that this is a war on terror. This is a war to disarm Saddam Hussain. This is a war about the weapons of mass destruction.

The Stop The War Coalition wholeheartedly rejects this. This is not a war on terror. This is not a war to disarm Saddam Hussain. This is not a war about the weapons of mass destruction.

So, forget the lies. Forget the deceit. Forget the hypocrisy. There is only one real reason for this war: oil.

Bush and Blair seem to think oil is far too precious a commodity to leave in the hands of the Arabs. It's much safer with Texaco, Exxon, Shell, BP and the people who have huge personal investments in the oil industry: namely George Bush, Dick Chenney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice. The grateful oil corporations have even named an oil tanker in honour of Condoleezza Rice. For services rendered, no doubt.

What is now on the cards is further mass murder. What Bush and Blair are now saying is we will rescue the Iraqi people. How? By killing them and by destroying their country, of course! This is an insult to anyone's intelligence.

The impending war is about testing new weapons of mass destruction (ours) and control of oil (theirs). Forget the Iraqi people; the real beneficiaries will be the arms manufacturers and the oil companies. And it is for their benefit that thousands of Iraqis are to be slaughtered.

No matter what Iraqi's level of compliance, no matter if the UN is with them or not, no matter how many millions take to the streets, Bush and Blair still want war. Bush and Blair's logic for war goes like this: if the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction, we bomb them. If they have no weapons of mass destruction, we still bomb them. If there is a U.N. resolution, we bomb them. If there is no U.N. resolution, we still bomb them.

We need to distinguish between propaganda and fact. Propaganda: this is a war on terrorism. Fact: this is a war for oil. Propaganda: George Gush says "We prefer a peaceful solution." Fact: they continue to pour in more and more weapons of mass destruction and more and more soldiers in to the Middle-East. That's their peaceful solution.

If there can be a moral reason for this war then shouldn't our weapons of mass destruction also be pointing towards Israel? But we mustn't talk about Israel because Israel is a friend. We mustn't talk about Israeli war crimes, Israeli abuses of human rights or their weapons of mass destruction or their disregard of UN resolutions.

PARVAIZ AWAN

Spokesperson, Blackburn with Darwen Stop The War Coalition