Bombs In Basra

‘IF Tony Blair’s plan to hold a referendum on Britain’s acceptance of the EU constitution was intended to distract the electorate from trouble in Iraq, it failed horribly.

‘How about an oil-for-razors programme?’

Two days on from Tony’s U-turn and the Guardian leads with the grim news of the deaths of at least 68 Iraqis, including 17 children, at the hands of suicide bombers.

Worse for Tony is that the bombs were detonated in the British-controlled sector, shattering what passed for peace in the city of Basra in a series of car bombs.

Of course, Tony cannot be held responsible for such indiscriminate killing by those hell-bent on causing death and mayhem.

And he’s right in saying that the terrorists are “prepared to attack the most defenceless people they can”, that being their modus operandi.

What he needs is a way of reminding the British people why the country went to war in the first place – or to find a new reason. And he gets a helping hand from the Telegraph.

Yesterday, Claude Hankes-Drielsma, who is leading the Iraqi Governing Council’s investigation into what happened to the £60bn United Nations’ oil-for-food programme, said the aid never reached its intended targets.

Rather than going to the sick and destitute in pre-war Iraq, the food and water was in large part siphoned off by Saddam Hussein and redistributed among his supporters.

Yes, Hussein was a bad man. He had to go.

And the Russians, who allegedly provided out-of-date and unfit goods to Iraq, and so created an excess that could be skimmed off by the Iraqi officials, and the UN and French officials alleged to have connived in the scam, were no better.

“The very fact that Saddam Hussein, the UN and certain members of the Security Council could conceal such a scam from the world should send shivers down the spine of everyone in this room,” Hankes-Drielsma told a meeting of US politicians.

And that’s to say nothing of those infamous, and apparently well-concealed, weapons of mass destruction…’

Posted: 22nd, April 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink