{"article":{"id":29476,"heading":"Staggering London Demo versus staggering hypocrisy","author":"M Lacey","created":"2003-02-17 15:00:07","modified":"2005-08-15 01:11:18","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 08:11:18","article":"<p>On getting back from the Demo i am told by Blair that i must feel guilt and shame for not helping them get rid of the Evil Tyrant that is torturing and murdering his people. <br>  <br> Mmmmmm i think i need to talk to Tony to ask him just when Saddam became this awful man (which he is) Here i will defer to the credible words of John Pilger- <br><br> \" When I was in Iraq in 1999, I met an assistant hotel <br>  <br> manager whose sardonic sense of western double <br>  <br> standards was a treat. <br><br> \"Ah, a journalist from Britain!\" he said. \"Would you <br>  <br> like to see where Mr Douglas Hurd stayed, and Mr David <br>  <br> Melon - (he meant Mellor) - and Mr Tony Newton, and <br>  <br> all the other members of Mrs Thatcher's government... <br>  <br> These gentleman were our friends, our benefactors.\" <br><br> This man has a collection of the Iraqi <br>  <br> English-language newspaper, the Baghdad Observer, from <br>  <br> the \"good old days\". Saddam Hussein is on the front <br>  <br> page, where he always is. The only change in each <br>  <br> photograph is that he is sitting on his white <br>  <br> presidential couch with a different British government <br>  <br> minister, who is smiling a smile uncannily similar to <br>  <br> that of his murderous host. <br><br> There, in yellowing print, is Douglas Hurd twice - on <br>  <br> the couch and on page two, bowing before the tyrant. <br>  <br> And there is the corpulent David Mellor, also a <br>  <br> Foreign Minister, on the same white couch in 1988. <br>  <br> While Mellor, or \"Mr Melon\" as the assistant manager <br>  <br> preferred, was being entertained by Saddam Hussein, <br>  <br> his host ordered the gassing of 5,000 Kurds in the <br>  <br> town of Halabja. News of this atrocity the Foreign <br>  <br> Office tried to suppress and the US State Department <br>  <br> tried to blame on Iran. \"Please give Mr Melon my <br>  <br> greetings,\" said the assistant manager. <br><br> The 1994 Scott Inquiry into Britain's illegal supply <br>  <br> of arms to Saddam Hussein found that deception was <br>  <br> widespread among senior British officials and <br>  <br> diplomats. One of those commended by Sir Richard Scott <br>  <br> for the honesty of his evidence was the former head of <br>  <br> the Iraq Desk in Whitehall, Mark Higson, who described <br>  <br> \"a culture of lying\" in the Foreign Office. <br><br> Nothing has changed under Tony Blair. The Foreign <br>  <br> Office has consistently lied about the inhuman effects <br>  <br> of the American-driven embargo on the Iraqi civilian <br>  <br> population. It has lied about the rise in the number <br>  <br> of cancers in southern Iraq, the \"Hiroshima effect\" of <br>  <br> depleted uranium, a weapon of mass destruction used by <br>  <br> British and American forces during the Gulf War. It <br>  <br> has lied about the vast amounts of humanitarian goods <br>  <br> denied to Iraq, even though the UN Security Council <br>  <br> has approved them. These include cancer assessment and <br>  <br> treatment, medical equipment, and equipment that would <br>  <br> allow Iraq to clean up its contaminated battlefields. <br><br> ON the issue of Iraq, the likeness between Thatcher's <br>  <br> Tories and Blair's New Labour is remarkable. In 2000, <br>  <br> Peter Hain, a Foreign Office minister and a zealous <br>  <br> supporter of the embargo on the civilian population, <br>  <br> blocked a parliamentary request to publish the full <br>  <br> list of the British companies that had helped to <br>  <br> sustain Saddam Hussein in power.\" <br><br> The only things i feel guilt and shame about are the facts that he and his other awful half WILL attack Iraq and cause immense death and suffering. The other is that we have an utter tosser for a President Oh sorry i mean Prime Minister. <br><br> For other paintings of a similar discourteous and truthful nature visit \"Paintings by Martyn Lacey\"<\/p>\n","contact":"bursthe.bubble@ntlworld.com","link":"http:\/\/members.lycos.co.uk\/Arrtus\/index.htm","address":"UK","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"image\/gif","summary":"Tonto Blairs expensive education may have taught him how to spell the words hypocrisy and Morality but he sure as hell does not what they mean.","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2003\/02\/regime2.gif","filesize":"62.4 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2003\/02\/29476.php","image":{"original":"\/uploads\/2003\/02\/regime2.gif"}},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}