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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: Ish who wrote (132579)	5/11/2004 7:48:20 AM
From: Harvey Allen	Read Replies (1) of 281500

But like an airline captain reassuring passengers that their flight is only suffering from short-term turbulence when in fact they can see smoke pouring from one of the engines, the defence secretary appeared unable to recognise that the crisis in Iraq has gone beyond the point when it can be solved with claim forms. His statement opened with a bleak description of the violence that is overwhelming the country. But it did nothing to address the essential task now facing the government, that of resetting the moral compass directing coalition actions in the country. It left even Labour MPs who endorse the occupation, such as Anne Clwyd, the prime minister's personal envoy to Iraq, critical. They will not have been encouraged in their support by Mr Blair's astonishing admission yesterday that he had not found the time to read the ICRC report that his defence minister dismissed so easily before MPs. The prime minister's problem is that he is being damaged by association with people he appears powerless to control. Those people are being directed from Washington, not London. The mentality that led to the grim images from Abu Ghraib prison is the same mentality that led to the assault on Falluja and has left coalition claims to be concerned only with the reconstruction of Iraq in tatters. It is a mentality that led General Mark Kimmitt, the deputy director of coalition operations, to tell an Iraqi journalist earlier this year that the children of Iraq should not be terrified by low-flying US helicopters. "What we would tell the children of Iraq is that the noise they hear is the sound of freedom." It is a mentality that has caused a dark stain to spread across the country as resistance moves from hardline defenders of Saddam's legacy to a far wider movement fuelled by popular despair at their occupation. politics.guardian.co.uk

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