Comments London Bombing

Some comments on the bombings in London.....many of them right on.

Mycos
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It's really sickening how most of the media here tend to accept Blair's absurd view, echoing Bush's about 9/11, that they are irrational and want to impose their beliefs on us.

I managed to get this read out on Radio London:

Ted Welch
Jon,

when am I going to hear this kind of Londoner's view, not from a middle-class liberal, but an older cockney guy in a pub near Wembley: "It's terrible. But, to be fair, we had it coming. What do you expect when you invade someone country and kick the shit out of them.?"

You have admitted you were conned by Blair about WMD, which Blair claimed created a terrorist threat. It was a lie - there were no WMD and Blair was warned by the intelligence services that attacking Iraq would create a greater terrorist threat. His attempt to escape blame by claiming it was an attack on all civilised countries is ludicrous - but the media repeated it endlessly without laughing out loud.

Jon Gaunt the presenter, then responded by echoing the government line: 9/11 happened before the attack on Iraq. He didn't read out my reply: >Jon,

you replied to me on-air, please read my reply - because you've been conned again.

You've been conned by the line (repeated by Jack Straw last night) that 9/11 happened before the invasion of Iraq. Yes, but Bin Laden made it clear that it was because of US forces in the Middle East after the Gulf War, in Saudi Arabia, etc. So it clearly makes no sense and invites further attacks, like the one on London, if you then attack Iraq and have even more US and now British forces in another Islamic country.

Cf. Robert Fisk in today's Independent:

"If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, "we will bomb yours." There you go, as they say. It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush's "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned. The G8 summit was obviously chosen, well in advance, as Attack Day.

And it's no use Mr Blair telling us yesterday that "they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear". "They" are not trying to destroy "what we hold dear". They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, from his alliance with the United States, and from his adherence to Bush's policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush - and Spain's subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives - while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali.

It is easy for Tony Blair to call yesterdays bombings "barbaric" - of course they were - but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the countless innocent Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints? When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric terrorism".

If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us believe insurgency won't come to us? One thing is certain: if Tony Blair really believes that by "fighting terrorism" in Iraq we could more efficiently protect Britain - fight them there rather than let them come here, as Bush constantly says - this argument is no longer valid.

http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/251509.html

Don't believe all this stuff about the calm, heroic Londoners - there are criminals and idiots here like anywhere. Already mainstream, peaceful Muslim organizations here have received thousands of hate emails and there have been some attacks, including a petrol bomb.

Ted Welch