Veterans for Common Sense

Downing Street [the residence of the Prime Minister] is at panic stations as the full implications of Hans Blix’s inspections report sink in.

The two main US-British arguments in favour of launching a war on Iraq next month – that Saddam currently possesses deployable weapons of mass destruction and poses an immediate or near-term threat to the region and to us – already had few takers before Friday’s UN meeting.

In his peculiarly dispassionate, persuasive way, Blix further undermined and, for many, destroyed the credibility of the Anglo-American case for an early, pre-emptive attack.

A third core argument, favoured by George Bush and blithely reiterated by him in Florida last week – that Saddam is in cahoots with al-Qaida and is somehow linked or even to blame for 9/11 – is not seen as convincing even by those who have espoused it. Downing Street now knows this argument, too, is a definitive non-runner.

Assailed on all sides by unprecedented popular protest, at odds with Europe, outnumbered in the security council, with the Pentagon’s clock inexorably ticking, and rightly worried that an impatient Bush may reject the “UN route”, dish his British ally and press on regardless, Tony Blair has now reached his bottom line: morality.

With his back against the wall, belatedly aware of the depth of his difficulty, and surrounded by the empty shell casings of a defeated polemic, Blair played his last card in Glasgow at the weekend.

Action was a moral imperative, he declared. If Saddam remains in power, he warned emotively, there will be “consequences paid in blood”. The moral case for intervention was overwhelming. Those who opposed it, he implied, were themselves acting immorally.

In many respects, this is an outrageous statement. It reeks of condescension.

In his wisdom, it seems, the prime minister is suggesting that millions of weekend marchers and all those in the European, Arab and Muslim spheres who disagree have failed to think through the ethical ramifications of their stand.

But since Blair can be sure to repeat his moral message in the two or three weeks that remain before Bush is expected to press the button, it must be answered.

How moral is it, to take one aspect, to wreck an inspections process unanimously agreed by the UN?

Blair and Jack Straw endlessly stress the exact terms of resolution 1441. But this document sets no time limit on inspections. It makes no mention of the regime change that Blair now advocates. Nor does 1441’s text authorise the conquest, indefinite occupation and forcible remaking of Iraq under US military auspices.

Exactly how moral is it, as is now the US-British plan in the next fortnight, to gerrymander UN backing for war by buying votes with US financial largesse?

Blair’s new concept of the “unreasonable veto” and the quaint idea of claiming a “moral mandate” from a simple majority UN vote has no base in international law. Nor, for that matter, does the concept of an offensive war, as opposed to collective, defensive action. The US and Britain have no moral right to try to reinterpret and thus subvert the UN charter in this way.

The onus is surely on Blair, not his opponents, to explain the morality of rejecting Blix’s provisional conclusion that his inspections are beginning to work.

It is not “moral” to turn to the “last resort” of violence when Iraq has conceded many of the UN’s demands and when South Africa, for example, is offering its good offices and experience in assuring nuclear disarmament.

The onus is surely also on Blair to show the Vatican and, say, Britain’s Anglican and Muslim leaders, why and on what grounds his moral authority exceeds theirs.

Having made his bid for the high ground, the prime minister has many other dilemmas to clarify. The Iraq crisis has entrenched the Israel-Palestine stalemate.

War will bring further delays to the peace process. But Palestinian children are suffering malnutrition right now. For many, international intervention to secure the occupied territories is a more pressing priority.

Or consider the Kurds. In the event of war, their hard-won autonomy will be under direct threat from a US-sanctioned, Turkish military incursion. Kurds were among the biggest victims of (deeply immoral) US-British military assistance to Saddam in the 1980s.

They were victims again in 1991, with hundreds of thousands displaced. Now it seems they must suffer once more – but this time, for a Blair-defined moral good.

Such questions must all be weighed in the overall balance of good and bad. Likewise, too, the central prop of the Blair case: that intervention is morally justified on humanitarian grounds. There is no doubt, after all, of Saddam’s tyranny, no argument that the Iraqi people are oppressed. It is pointless to dispute the sincerity of Iraqi exiles who insist his overthrow is more important than anything else.

The moral dimension of the Iraq crisis is plain to all. Unfortunately, for a man now mawkishly keen to demonstrate poll-defying “conviction” leadership, there are no absolutely right answers.

Against those who have suffered under Saddam in the past must be set the humanitarian catastrophe that the UN says may leave up to 10 million hungry. The World Health Organisation estimates that 100,000 Iraqis could be casualties and another 400,000 affected by disease and displacement.

Expert Non-Government Organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty utter similar warnings – concerns candidly shared by Clare Short. From within Iraq itself, meanwhile, come first-hand accounts of the terror and anger that the prospect of attack elicits.

Yet from the US, at least, comes little but vague promises of minimised civilian casualties and “post-liberation” nation-building. To gauge the value of such pledges, one need only look at Afghanistan

Again, if humanitarian con cern is now the prime motivating factor in international intervention, there are many more urgent candidates, such as Congo, or North Korea, or southern Africa where millions are starving (and misgoverned) right now. On the other hand, it is clear that Iraq is not a Kosovo, where ethnic cleansing was an immediate, urgent horror or a fledgling East Timor, crying out for external assistance.

In truth, perhaps the principal measure of Iraq’s jeopardy is not to be found in present-day humanitarian abuses, but in the depth of Bush’s personal enmity towards Saddam. A prime Blair interest, meanwhile, is maintaining the transatlantic alliance. That is strategically important. But it is hardly a moral necessity.

With so many possible or likely negative consequences, and with US motives and follow-through in doubt, it cannot be reasonably or objectively concluded that war against Iraq is morally preferable to the alternatives.

Nobody advocates doing “nothing” about Iraq, as No 10’s panic-station chief, John Reid, fatuously suggested yesterday. An intensified, permanent UN-led disarmament process, containment and sustained diplomatic pressure to remove Saddam is hardly nothing.

Rather, it is the consensual, common sense and proper way forward. For sure, Bush may scorn such arguments. But others have a moral duty not to aid and abet his irresponsibility.

Like his other arguments, Blair’s “moral” case for war does not convince. It is but another excuse for the inexcusable.

s.tisdall@guardian.co.uk

New York – On streets of beauty, the warm people inched along or stood and chanted and laughed against a war and for peace and their warmth made the winter temperature irrelevant.

They were summer people in winter clothes.

They were the largest and happiest crowd seen in this city maybe ever, outside of a war’s end in 1945.

There were fathers with children on their shoulders. There were mothers holding their young. There were kids walking alongside their parents. There were religious people everywhere.

And so many were young. Young students, young married, young in a city that belonged to the dreams and love and laughter of youth.

Do you want a life with thrills, years of exhilaration? Come to New York.

Where yesterday they said they did not want war.

They said it with their presence and with the most signs of my time in my city. The signs were against war, and against George W. Bush, who, for the first time, was being heralded as a man who lost the popular vote in this country by 500,000.

Looking down Third Avenue and Second Avenue, as the crowds came up to try to get to the rear of the great crowd on First Avenue, and then peering as far down First Avenue as you could see, the size of throngs caused you to tell yourself, “maybe a million.” Whatever it was, out on the street it felt like a million, and it was glorious.

A news photographer I know came along. “I’ve been everyplace. I have to say a million.” Because of the Police Department’s reprehensible pens, the crowd was separated so that there was not one clear picture of an enormous group that would cause politicians here to faint.

The crowd so frightening was made of people who mostly never had protested before, who were too young for the Vietnam protests and who cannot be classified under any of the old words, “demonstrators” or “anti-war,” because they are new and they are real.

War may be a great favorite with a Texas Theocracy, with a president who speaks in the first person more than anybody we have had in decades – “I’m sick and tired of waiting” – and who calls on God to bless the country as if no other people made in the image and likeness of God are alive on earth.

Only the sour people could permit innocent people to be scared as close to death as you could do it. “Get duct tape!” her government told Kristin, a friend of mine who lives in Washington. So she went out and got duct tape, which usually is mentioned in stories about bank robbers using it to bound and gag clerks.

Kristin taped the windows and door of her children’s room. She then said she was ready for a gas attack. She failed to realize that the attack would leave her kids as orphans.

The crowd yesterday was herded into a mile of pens, like the Omaha stockyards. This was for security. The reason for security was security.

On our streets of beauty yesterday, gladness was in the place of arrogance and meanness. The sole conflict I found, when I arrived at 66th Street and First Avenue, the closest I could get to the stage at 51th Street, a young woman named Leslie Meenan was holding the hand of a girl who said her name was, as I spelled it, Camilla. She was 8.

“You’re spelling it wrong,” she said. “Only one ‘l.'”

“You don’t know how to spell your own name,” I said.

“Yes, I do. You don’t.”

“She’s right,” a woman said. Her name was Cara McCarthy and she was from Bushwick, in Brooklyn. She teaches at PS 145.

Just ahead was Bob Stratton, who held his daughter, Fia, age 3. He said he was from Park Slope and he was in computer development.

And now as you walked along the edge of one of these pens, here was a line of Catholic protests and then a group of schoolteachers and then everything seemed to be Jane Burcaw, in a good, warm and fashionable hat holding a sign that said, “No War.”

“I made it last night,” she said.

“Where do you live?”

“Bethlehem. I work at the Moravian Theological Seminary. I got here at 10:30. I would’ve been much earlier if I had to.”

The number of police and vehicles was unconscionable in this area, blocks away from the stage. The people were beautiful and the overload of police was irritating and deprived people of their rights.

Somewhere far downtown from where I was standing, they had police horses on Second Avenue and people there to protest were behind the endless metal pens and somewhere the cattle turned human and people were arrested.

The mayor of this city and the police commissioner had been spreading fear in this city for many days. Their claims were infuriating. “We know there is something coming but we can’t tell you.” If they knew it was coming and the people who were doing it knew it was coming, then what are you keeping a secret for?

Bet me that they had the same kind of rumor that Colin Powell tried to sell at the UN, and on Friday he got carried out on a shutter.

But this was only passing. What went on yesterday was an enormous crowd that turned cold sidewalks into beautiful gardens.

They were the nicest people I’ve ever been with.

‘Are there any more coming, then?’

There have been dafter questions, but not many. At 1.10 yesterday afternoon, Mike Wiseman from Newcastle upon Tyne placed his accordion carefully on the ground below Hyde Park’s gates and rubbed cold hands together.

Two elderly women, hand in hand in furs, passed through, still humming the dying notes from his ‘Give Peace A Chance’. They were, had he known it, early, part of a tiny crowd straggling into Hyde Park before the march proper.

Half a mile away, round the corner in Piccadilly, the ground shook. An ocean, a perfect storm of people. Banners, a bobbing cherry-blossom of banners, covered every inch back to the Circus – and for miles beyond, south to the river, north to Euston.

Ahead of the marchers lay one remaining silent half-mile. The unprecedented turnout had shocked the organisers, shocked the marchers. And there at the end before them, high on top of the Wellington Arch, the four obsidian stallions and their vicious conquering chariot, the very Spirit of War, were stilled, rearing back – caught, and held, in the bare branches and bright chill of Piccadilly, London, on Saturday 15 February 2003.

Are there any more coming? Yes, Mike. Yes, I think there are some more coming.

It was the biggest public demonstration ever held in Britain, surpassing every one of the organisers’ wildest expectations and Tony Blair’s worst fears, and it will be remembered for the bleak bitterness of the day and the colourful warmth of feeling in the extraordinary crowds. Organisers claimed that more than 1.5 million had turned out; even the police agreed to 750,000 and rising.

By three o’clock in the afternoon they were still streaming out of Tube stations to join the end of the two routes, from Gower Street in the north and Embankment by the river. ‘Must be another march,’ grumbled the taxi driver, then, trying in vain to negotiate Tottenham Court Road. No, I said; it’s the same one, still going, and he turned his head in shock.

‘Bloody Jesus! Well, good luck to them I say.’ There were, of course, the usual suspects – CND, Socialist Workers’ Party, the anarchists. But even they looked shocked at the number of their fellow marchers: it is safe to say they had never experienced such a mass of humanity.

There were nuns. Toddlers. Women barristers. The Eton George Orwell Society. Archaeologists Against War. Walthamstow Catholic Church, the Swaffham Women’s Choir and Notts County Supporters Say Make Love Not War (And a Home Win against Bristol would be Nice). They won 2-0, by the way. One group of SWP stalwarts were joined, for the first march in any of their histories, by their mothers. There were country folk and lecturers, dentists and poulterers, a hairdresser from Cardiff and a poet from Cheltenham.

I called a friend at two o’clock, who was still making her ponderous way along the Embankment – ‘It’s not a march yet, more of record shuffle’ – and she expressed delight at her first protest. ‘You wouldn’t believe it; there are girls here with good nails and really nice bags .’

Cheer upon cheer went up. There were cheers as marchers were given updates about turnout elsewhere in the world – 90,000 in Glasgow, two million on the streets of Rome. There was a glorious cheer, at Piccadilly Circus, when the twin ribbons met, just before one o’clock.

The mood was astonishingly friendly. ‘Would you like a placard, sir?’ Sir? The police laughed. One, stopping a marcher from going through a barricade in Trafalgar Square, told him it was a sterile area, only to be met with a hearty backslap. ‘Sterile area? Where did that one come from.’ ‘I know,’ shrugged the bobby. ‘Bollocks language, isn’t it?’ And the talk was of politics, yes, but not just politics. There were not the detailed arguments we had had, even during the last peace march in November, over UN resolutions and future codicils. This march was not really about politics; it was about humanitarianism.

‘I’m not political, not at all. I don’t even watch the news,’ said Alvina Desir, queuing on the Embankment for the start of the march at noon. ‘I’ve never been on a march in my life and never had any intention. But something’s happened recently, to me and so many friends – we just know there’s something going wrong in this country. No one’s being consulted, and it’s starting to feel worrying – more worrying than the scaremongering we’ve been getting about the terrorist threat. I simply don’t see how war can be the answer and I don’t know anyone who does. And, apart from anything else, as a black woman in London, it feels dangerous to spread racial tension after all that’s been done.’

A Cheshire fireman nearby said: ‘They will take notice of a protest like this. Our MPs, and Blair himself , were voted in by ordinary people like those here today. Blair is clever enough not to ignore this.’

Linda Homan, sitting on bench at 9.30 in the morning, watching a bright and dancing Thames, had come down early from Cambridge and was wondering at that stage whether many would turn up. Palettes of placards lay strewn along the Embankment, waiting. A trolley was pushed past filled with flags and whistles; there were more police – then, way back then – than marchers. ‘I’ve never felt strongly enough about anything before. But this is so different; I would have let myself down by not coming and I think this will be something to remember.’

For Linda, like so many along these streets, it was her first march. Twelve-year-old Charlotte Wright, who came up by train from Guildford, Surrey, on her own. ‘My parents aren’t very happy about this but I think it’s important. Bombing people isn’t the right way to sort a problem out.’ Jenny Mould, 36, a teacher from Devon. ‘I drove up last night. It took seven hours but it was definitely worth it; the Government should, it must, listen to the people, otherwise what’s the point in democracy?’

Retired solicitor Thomas Elliot from Basildon, Essex, a virgin marcher at 73, said: ‘I remember the war and the effect the bombing had on London. War should only be used when absolutely necessary.’ Andrew Miller, 33, from New Zealand, whose feeling, echoed by all around, was that ‘all the different groups that are marching today show the world that the West is not the enemy, that British people do not hate Islam and Arabs and the coming together of people is the greatest way forward.’ Lesley Taylor, a constitutional law lecturer who’s lived across here for 29 years, holding a forlorn placard reading ‘American against the war.’ Why only one? ‘I don’t know any other Americans here. In the Eighties here I saw a lot of anti-American resentment, and now it’s back. I accept that the perception of George W. Bush has something to do with this, but still… these are the same people the thinking middle-classes, who were so shocked and honestly sympathetic after September 11: how can they turn so nasty so quickly?

‘Because America is making your Prime Minister go against the huge majority of the British people. And that won’t be forgiven. Look about you. That’s what this is about; not fierce party politics but a simple feeling that democracy, British democracy, has been forgotten.’

Chris Wall, a Nottingham mother who had brought down eight children with her: ‘They talk about it at school and that’s a good thing. Children need to be aware of what’s happening in the world. And this is, of course, a peaceful protest.’ It remained so all day, despite the numbers; by five o’clock police were reporting only three arrests.

In Hyde Park itself, a long line of purple silk lay on the grass, facing Mecca, and Muslims took off their shoes to pray. Beside it, artist Nicola Green had set up her Laughing Booth, and was encouraging people in to, obviously, start laughing, on their own, and be recorded; it was, she says, the most disarming of all weapons. The sky above the nearby stage grew dark, and the park grew even more astonishingly full.

Charles Kennedy won loud applause for stating that ‘The report from Hans Blix gives no moral case for war on Iraq’; George Galloway won both applause and laughter for suggesting a new slogan: ‘Don’t attack Chirac’. Mo Mowlam warned: ‘We will lose this war. It will be the best recruiting campaign for terrorists that there could be. They will hate us even more.’

Will yesterday, astonishing yesterday, change anything? The facts are undeniable. Perception is all.

If you look more carefully, in fact, at the warlike Wellington statue, a new tale emerges. The driver of the chariot is a boy. The reins are slack. The horses are not rearing with anger, but pulling up in mid-charge. Behind, the fierce, all-powerful figure is not the Spirit of War but the angel of peace, carrying an olive branch.

On February 25, 1991 the war correspondent Leon Daniel arrived at a battlefield at the tip of the neutral zone between Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Daniel was one of a pool of journalists who had been held back from witnessing action the previous day, when Desert Storm’s ground war had been launched.

There, right where he was standing, 8,400 soldiers of the US First Infantry Division – known as the Big Red One – had attacked an estimated 8,000 Iraqis with 3,000 Abrams main battle tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, Humvees and armoured personnel carriers.

Daniel had seen the aftermath of modest firefights in Vietnam. “The bodies would be stacked up like cordwood,” he recalled. Yet this ferocious attack had not produced a single visible body.

It was a battlefield without the stench of urine, faeces, blood and bits of flesh. Daniel wondered what happened to the estimated 6,000 Iraqi defenders who had vanished. “Where are the bodies?” he finally asked the First Division’s public affairs officer, an army major.

“What bodies?” the major replied.

Months later, Daniel and the world would learn why the dead had eluded eyewitnesses, cameras and video footage. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers, some of them firing their weapons from first world war-style trenches, had been buried by ploughs mounted on Abrams tanks.

The tanks had flanked the lines so that tons of sand from the plough spoil had funnelled into the trenches. Just behind the tanks, straddling the trench line, came Bradleys pumping machine-gun bullets into Iraqi troops.

“I came through right after the lead company,” said Colonel Anthony Moreno. “What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with people’s arms and legs sticking out of them. For all I know, we could have killed thousands.”

Two other brigades used the same tank-mounted ploughs and Bradleys to obliterate an estimated 70 miles of defensive trenches. They moved swiftly. The operation had been rehearsed repeatedly, weeks before, on a mile-long trench line built according to satellite photographs.

The finishing touches were made by armoured combat earth-movers (ACEs). These massive bulldozers, with armoured cockpits impervious to small-arms fire, smoothed away any hint of the carnage. “A lot of guys were scared, but I enjoyed it,” said PFC Joe Queen, an ACE driver awarded a Bronze Star for his performance in the battle.

What happened in the neutral zone that day is a metaphor for the art of war in an era when domestic politics is often more important than the predictable outcome on the field of battle. In 1991 American voters rallied behind President George Bush Sr for the seemingly bloodless confrontation with Saddam Hussein.

Neatly hidden from a small army of journalists was the reality of war – a reality that can make these very same voters recoil in disapproval.

His son is likely to use the same sort of tactics to blind one of the world’s freest and most influential media establishments. Running the show for President George Bush is the man who manipulated global perceptions of the first Gulf war for Bush Sr: Dick Cheney. Then defence secretary and now vice-president, Cheney is likely to buffalo the New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN and others ready to bend to US government censorship.

According to White House officials, no final decisions have been made by Bush, Cheney and current defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “We’re still negotiating with the media,” said one administration official. But Bush has already implemented ground rules that require journalists to give up their mobile and satellite phones to military commanders who would control the movements of these so-called pool reporters during Desert Storm II.

If the final rules, organised by the Pentagon, are anything like the pool system designed by Bush Sr and Cheney in 1991, the world will be given a cloudy mixture of video footage and misinformation that will fog the reality of war.

Daniel, the wire service veteran, was part of the 1991 pool system. About 150 American journalists, photographers and film crews were scattered among attacking units. Their reports were supposed to be fed to a rear headquarters and then shared by hundreds of journalists from around the world.

“They wouldn’t let us see anything,” said Daniel, who has seen just about everything there is to see in war. Not a single eyewitness account, photograph or strip of video of combat between 400,000 soldiers in the desert was produced by this battalion of professional observers.

Most of the grisly photos from Desert Storm seen today were the work of independent journalists who raced to the “Highway of Death” north of Kuwait, where war planes had destroyed thousands of vehicles in which Iraqi soldiers had fled after the start of the ground war.

The area was free of the military handlers who routinely interrupted interviews to chastise soldiers into changing their statements while reporters stood back, or forcibly removed film from cameras that captured images deemed offensive by an Army public affairs officer.

Cheney, brimming with contempt and hostility for the press, saw journalists as critics of the military who must be contained. “Frankly, I looked on it as a problem to be managed,” he said after the war. “The information function was extraordinarily important. I did not have a lot of confidence that I could leave that to the press.”

Since being brought into government as an intern by Donald Rumsfeld, then a congressman, Cheney has spent most of his adult life fencing with the media and learning its strengths and weaknesses. A stunning victory in 1991 was the media’s agreement to permit the Pentagon to censor journalists’ reports before they were printed or broadcast.

In the past the Pentagon had left censorship up to individual reporters. During 10 years of war in Vietnam, not one journalist violated self-imposed rules against reporting, for example, specific locations of attacks.

As a result, the conventional wisdom was that the government was not violating the First Amendment to the Constitution: that Congress “will make no law to abridge [. . .] freedom of the press”. Only a handful of journalists went to federal court to challenge the government censorship imposed by Bush, Cheney and Colin Powell, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. The court ruled the suit moot – the war was over – but invited the press to try again so that the issue might be settled. It never was.

The media was more duped than cowed. Cheney won over some people with the promise that places in the pool would give them an advantage over competitors. For instance, a Washington Post pool reporter kept to himself all details of a US Marine operation for exclusive use by the Post and, later, a book.

For independent journalists, life was much more difficult. More than 70 operating outside the pool system were arrested, detained, threatened at gunpoint or chased from the front line. Army public affairs officers made nightly visits to hotels and restaurants in Hafir al Batin, a Saudi town on the Iraqi border. Reporters and photographers would bolt from the table. The slower ones were arrested.

But when the ground war started, the mighty were hamstrung along with the mediocre. The Associated Press, which benefited most from a system that turned all journalists into wire service reporters, sent photographer Scott Applewhite to cover victims of a Scud missile attack near Dahran.

The warhead had hit an American tent, killing 25 army reservists and wounding 70. It was the single biggest loss to Saddam Hussein during Desert Storm. Applewhite, an accredited pool member, was stopped by US Army military police. When he objected, they punched and handcuffed him while ripping the film from his cameras.

Cheney made sure it was just as bad for the rest of the pool. When the ground war started, the defence secretary declared a “media blackout”, blocking all reports. After the war, General Norman Schwarzkopf and his aides revealed that the blackout was ordered because of fears that Saddam would use chemical weapons on allied forces.

Potential news reports of soldiers writhing in agony from a cloud of sarin nerve gas had spooked the president and his commanders. “No pictures of that,” said General Richard Neal, who directed ground operations during the war.

As a result, reports and film were delayed or “lost” by military commanders so that most of it arrived too late for most deadlines. Neal and Schwarzkopf provided the bulk of briefings and videos in Saudi Arabia, and these were the first reports to filter through; many became the basis of the most lasting perceptions of Desert Storm.

Gun camera footage always showed empty bridges or aircraft hangars being destroyed by “smart bombs” – laser-guided munitions that never struck a single human. But only 6{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of the munitions used against Iraq could be guided to a target. Over 94{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} were far less surgical during the 30-day air war, which often saw 400 sorties a day. Those bombs depended on gravity and variable winds, and were capable of causing “collateral damage” to nearby unarmed civilians.

The global television audience was awed by Tomahawk cruise missiles roaring from the decks of US Navy warships at sea. But less than 10{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} hit their targets.

The missile’s accuracy depends on landmarks that can be spotted by an on-board camera that can shift the weapon’s direction. But the featureless desert led many Tomahawks to wander away like so many lost patrols, according to Pentagon studies.

Schwarzkopf conducted televised briefings about the allied counterattack on Saddam’s Scud missiles that had terrorised Saudi Arabia as well as Israel. Yet an air force study after the war showed that Iraq had ended up with as many Scud launchers as it had possessed before the war started. A murky Schwarzkopf video showed the destruction of what seemed to be a Scud launcher, but later turned out to be a bombed oil truck.

Controlling the briefings, the videos and the press during Desert Storm was an extension of US policy started by President Ronald Reagan and his defence chief, Caspar Weinberger. It was Weinberger, an anglophile, who admired Margaret Thatcher’s manipulation of the media during the Falklands war, which led directly to her political revival in 1982. A year later, Weinberger took control of the US media when Reagan found himself in a deepening hole in Lebanon.

On October 23 1983, 241 US Marines died after a truck laden with explosives destroyed a makeshift barracks at Beirut airport. The massacre suddenly focused attention on the ageing actor’s foreign policy decisions as the reports and pictures showed the removal of American bodies. Within 48 hours of the bombing, the president dispatched the first wave of 5,000 American troops to Grenada in the Caribbean.

But the invasion angered Thatcher. Grenada was linked to the UK as a member of the Commonwealth. Only the previous week, Washington had informed London that there was no need for outside intervention, as local political turmoil was likely to play itself out without further bloodshed. Geoffrey Howe, Britain’s foreign minister, was explicit.

“The invasion of Grenada was clearly designed to divert attention,” Howe said in an interview. “You had disaster in Beirut; now triumph in Grenada. ‘Don’t look there,’ ” he said, gesturing with his forefinger, ” ‘look over here.’ ”

Reporters were banned from Grenada. Those who tried to land on the island, such as Morris Thompson of Newsday, were arrested and imprisoned on US ships offshore. All details and videos were supplied by military reporters and photographers at Pentagon briefings.

The media barons howled, but little changed. When Bush Sr invaded Panama in 1989, journalists were once again banned. Democratic congressman Charles Rangle of New York still insists that as many as 5,000 civilians in Panama City were killed by US invaders. But there are no pictures, no eyewitness accounts.

The invasion of Panama and the arrest of Manuel Noriega were, like Desert Storm later, something of a political triumph for Bush. But the reality of that particular war asserted itself during a televised briefing by the president. It was just at the end of the session, when Bush was wisecracking with reporters, that most networks split their screens to show the arrival of dead US soldiers from Panama.

Bush was caught bantering as flag-draped coffins arrived at an air force base in Dover, Delaware – a military mortuary. Later that week, Bush ordered the press banned from covering the arrival ceremonies for the fallen. President Clinton continued the ban.

And his successor, President George Bush, also wants to keep the dead out of the national limelight.

London, United Kingdom – Millions of protesters — many of them marching in the capitals of America’s traditional allies — demonstrated Saturday against possible U.S. plans to attack Iraq.

In a global outpouring of anti-war sentiment, Rome claimed the biggest turnout — 1 million according to police, while organizers claimed three times that figure.

In London, at least 750,000 people demonstrated in what police called the city’s largest demonstration ever. In Spain, several million people turned out at anti-war rallies in about 55 cities and towns across the country, with more than 500,000 each attending rallies in Madrid and Barcelona.

Spanish police gauged the Madrid turnout at 660,000. Organizers claimed nearly 2 million people gathered across the nation in one of the biggest demonstrations since the 1975 death of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco.

More than 70,000 people marched in Amsterdam in the largest Netherlands demonstration since anti-nuclear rallies of the 1980s.

Berlin had up to half-a-million people on the streets, and Paris was estimated to have had about 100,000.

In New York, rally organizers estimated the crowd at up to 500,000 people. City police provided no estimate of the crowd, which stretched 20 blocks deep and two blocks wide.

“Peace! Peace! Peace!” Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said while leading an ecumenical service near U.N. headquarters. “Let America listen to the rest of the world — and the rest of the world is saying, ‘Give the inspectors time.'”

London’s marchers hoped — in the words of keynote speaker the Rev. Jesse Jackson — to “turn up the heat” on Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush’s staunchest European ally for his tough Iraq policy.

Rome protesters showed their disagreement with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s support for Bush, while demonstrators in Paris and Berlin backed the skeptical stances of their governments.

“What I would say to Mr. Blair is stop toadying up to the Americans and listen to your own people, us, for once,” said Elsie Hinks, 77, who marched in London with her husband, Sidney, a retired Church of England priest.

Tommaso Palladini, 56, who traveled from Milan to Rome, said, “You don’t fight terrorism with a preventive war. You fight terrorism by creating more justice in the world.”

Several dozen marchers from Genoa held up pictures of Iraqi artists.

“We’re carrying these photos to show the other face of the Iraqi people that the TV doesn’t show,” said Giovanna Marenzana, 38.

Some leaders in German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s government participated in the Berlin protest, which turned the tree-lined boulevard between the Brandenburg Gate and the 19th-century Victory Column into a sea of banners, balloons emblazoned with “No war in Iraq” and demonstrators swaying to live music. Police estimated the crowd at between 300,000 and 500,000.

“We Germans in particular have a duty to do everything to ensure that war — above all a war of aggression — never again becomes a legitimate means of policy,” shouted Friedrich Schorlemmer, a Lutheran pastor and former East German pro-democracy activist.

In the Paris crowd at the Place Denfert-Rochereau, a large American flag bore the black inscription, “Leave us alone.”

Gerald Lenoir, 41, of Berkeley, Calif., came to Paris to support demonstrators.

“I am here to protest my government’s aggression against Iraq,” he said. “Iraq does not pose a security threat to the United States and there are no links with al-Qaida.”

In southern France, about 10,000 people demonstrated in Toulouse against the United States, chanting: “They bomb, they exploit, they pollute, enough of this barbarity.”

Police estimated:

60,000 turned out in Oslo, Norway.

50,000 in bitter cold in Brussels, Belgium.

35,000 in frigid Stockholm, Sweden.

80,000 marched in Dublin, Ireland.

60,000 in Seville, Spain.

40,000 in Bern, Switzerland.

30,000 in Glasgow, Scotland.

25,000 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

15,000 in Vienna, Austria.

20,000 in Montreal, Canada.

15,000 in Toronto, Canada.

5,000 in Cape Town, South Africa.

4,000 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

5,000 in Tokyo, Japan.

2,000 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

“War is not a solution, war is a problem,” Czech philosopher Erazim Kohak told about 500 people in Prague, the Czech Republic.

In Mexico City, as many as 10,000 people — including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu — snarled traffic for blocks before rallying near the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy. Demonstrators beat drums, clutched white balloons and waved handmade signs saying, “War No, Peace Yes.”

In Baghdad, tens of thousands of Iraqis, many carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles, demonstrated to support leader Saddam Hussein and denounce the United States.

“Our swords are out of their sheaths, ready for battle,” read one of hundreds of banners carried by marchers along Palestine Street, a broad Baghdad avenue.

In Damascus, the capital of neighboring Syria, an estimated 200,000 protesters chanted anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli slogans while marching to the People’s Assembly.

Najjah Attar, a former Syrian cabinet minister, accused Washington of attempting to change the region’s map.

“The U.S. wants to encroach upon our own norms, concepts and principles,” she said in Damascus. “They are reminding us of the Nazi and fascist times.”

An estimated 2,000 Israelis and Palestinians marched together against war in Tel Aviv on Saturday night.

In Ukraine, some 2,000 people rallied in snowy Kiev’s central square. Anti-globalists led a peaceful “Rock Against War” protest joined by communists, socialists, Kurds and pacifists.

“We want to say that war is evil and that we who survived one know that better than anyone,” said Majda Hadzic, 54.

In divided Cyprus, about 500 Greeks and Turks braved heavy rain to briefly block a British air base runway.

Several thousand protesters in Athens, Greece, unfurled a giant banner across the wall of the Acropolis — “NATO, U.S. and EU equals War” — before heading toward the U.S. Embassy.

U.S. Ambassador Thomas Miller said the Greek protesters’ indignation was misplaced.

“They should be demonstrating outside the Iraqi embassy,” he said before the march.

About 900 Puerto Ricans chanted anti-war slogans against the possible invasion of Iraq. One man waved a U.S. flag on which the stars were replaced with skulls.

In Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva began efforts to unite South American nations against a possible U.S.-led attack on Iraq. Police estimated 1,500 marchers.

Dublin, Ireland – Well over 100,000 people attended anti-war demonstrations in Dublin and Belfast yesterday adding their voice to the millions around the world expressing opposition to the expected US-led war in Iraq. Singers, political figures and clergymen joined demonstrators on the streets of the capital before gathering to hear speeches near the Central Bank.

Hours before the top U.N. arms inspectors give a report to the U.N. Security Council that could influence the chance or timing of any war, Saddam also reiterated that Iraq was free of any such weapons, a claim the United States rejects.

The decree is an at least symbolic gesture by the Iraqi president to meet one of the demands that chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei made when they visited Baghdad in mid-January.

“Individuals and companies in private and mixed sectors are banned from importing and producing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons,” the presidential decree read.

Saddam ordered his ministers to take all necessary measures to implement the decree and the Iraqi parliament was scheduled to meet shortly to approve the legislation.

The Iraqi News Agency (INA) earlier said Saddam had chaired a meeting of top officials to say the country had no biological, chemical or nuclear arms — but would fight anyone who attacked.

“Those meeting…wanted to assure those whom it may concern in our great people, nation and humanity that Iraq is free of the so-called weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical and biological,” INA said.

“They are totally confident that this cover (banned weapons) is over and the aggressors can’t use it as a pretext or an excuse in front of the Security Council to make it a cover for aggression,” INA said.

“If the aggressors attack after this…the Iraqi people and armed forces will fight them in a spirit of holy struggle that would please friends and infuriates the enemy.”

A week later, 100,000 turned out in San Francisco and nearly as many in Washington, D.C., to protest the war. A neoconservative smear campaign was launched that tried to label the protestors radical leftists, but these were not just the usual suspects. The throngs who waved handmade signs and marched through the streets of cities all across America were mostly made up of ordinary, middle-class Americans who oppose taking this giant step on the road to empire. I was proud to march in San Francisco alongside Veterans for Peace, who stood out even in a crowd of 100,000-plus, their banner emblazoned with this trenchant slogan: “Preemptive War is Un-American.”

Participants for the most part rejected the printed placards handed out by “International ANSWER” (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), the official sponsor of the Washington and San Francisco events and handcrafted their own. The most popular slogan, based on my observations at the Bay Area event, was “Peace is patriotic.” Michelle Goldberg, writing in Salon.com, noted American flags in abundance and saw the same gentrification process well underway: “The broad-based antiwar movement many have awaited is here.”

Just how broad remains to be seen. Medea Benjamin, one of the movement’s honchos, denied to Pat Buchanan on MSNBC’s “Buchanan and Press” that antiwar groups are dominated by extreme leftists. Reminding him that “We’ve got you with us on this one,” she offered to accompany him personally to the next big rally, slated for Feb. 15. While I doubt that this means Pat—or anyone with views approximating his—will have a place on the speakers’ platform—such a welcome development is no longer unthinkable.

The antiwar movement has gotten bad press in the past because it has indeed been organizationally dominated by outright Communists. The ANSWER group has had to answer charges that it is basically a front for an obscure Marxist sect with the improbable name of Workers World Party. Our war birds have gleefully jumped on this affiliation, happy to divert attention away from the looming conflict by making the antiwar movement the issue. Now a new group, United for Peace, has stepped forward, merging the anti-globalization Left with the moderate peace groups such as Peace Action and the faith-based opposition centered around the National Council of Churches and Catholic groups such as Pax Christi.

The transformation of the American antiwar movement from the exclusive preserve of leftists to the domain of soccer moms and Republican businessmen, while far from complete, is well underway. But this metamorphosis needs to go much further, and happen much more quickly, if the movement is to make a breakthrough. Opposition to war in Iraq is so much broader than the narrow spectrum between the “green” Hollywood Left and the reds of the Far Left. Today, the movement still barely has room for Ed Hamm, yet the guy pulled $170,000 out of his pocket and used it to make one of the most radical condemnations of the drive to war to be heard anywhere, if by “radical” we mean fundamental and not merely frenzied.

“How many young American lives will be lost in this dubious war?” Hamm and his co-signatories asked in their open letter to the president. “How many more innocent Iraqis will be killed and maimed and made homeless? Haven’t they suffered enough, after two decades of terrible wars and sanctions? Among the one billion Muslims in the world there is now a steady trickle of recruits going to Al Qaeda. You will turn the trickle into a torrent. A billion bitter enemies will rise out of this war.”

How many Ed Hamms out there are asking the same questions? To reach them, the antiwar movement has got to ditch its ideological baggage, epitomized by Mumia Abu Jamal, the convicted cop-killer whose cause never goes unmentioned at an antiwar event, including the recent rallies. On “Buchanan & Press,” Ms. Benjamin confidently assured her somewhat skeptical host that “we’re going to stop this war before it starts.” If that seemed impossible only a few weeks ago, it now appears only highly unlikely. Antiwar sentiment is surging, but the president may launch an attack before the movement gains critical mass. If he does not, it will not be because of the organized antiwar effort but due to the efforts of Colin Powell and the self-imposed constraints of the UN inspections process. This is the one opening that could fuel the antiwar movement and give it the broad character it needs to spike the neoconservative project of an all-out global war against the Muslim world.

Norman Podhoretz calls it World War IV—the Cold War being the third—and this horrifying prospect the neocons openly celebrate. The task of the Bush administration, declared Podhoretz in Commentary magazine, is “to fight World War IV—the war against militant Islam.” This means targeting not only the “axis of evil,” but also Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority.

The conservative columnist Paul Craig Roberts wrote a scathing indictment of Podhoretz’s war cry: “Americans are indebted to Podhoretz for making it clear that a U.S. invasion of Iraq is the beginning of World War IV. President Bush and his strategic thinkers should ponder this carefully and be upfront with the American people,” he wrote, and his piece asked many of the same questions raised by Hamm’s ad, but instead addressed their broader implications. “How many sons, husbands, fathers, brothers, grandsons, uncles, cousins and friends are Americans willing to give to a war, the object of which is the social and political reconstruction of the Middle East?”

By explicitly raising the imagery of a new world war in a series of television ads, modeled on Lyndon Baines Johnson’s infamous “Daisy” ads, a grassroots antiwar group has at least addressed this question, but in terms that are far from encouraging. The original 1964 version showed a 6-year-old sprite with the face of an angel pulling the petals off a daisy, while the soundtrack blared the countdown. At the final count the screen was filled with the image of a mushroom cloud. The 2003 re-run follows the same storyline, albeit with a different backdrop: a similarly angelic girl child stands enraptured by the daisy game, as oil wells burn, belligerent crowds swell the streets of foreign cities, and an ambulance speeds to an emergency somewhere in America. The screen goes black, and a mushroom crowd blossoms out of its depths.

Voiceover: “War with Iraq. Maybe it will end quickly. Maybe not. Maybe it will spread. Maybe extremists will take over countries with nuclear weapons. Maybe the unthinkable.” The countdown commences, but only gets to eight before the voice breaks in:

“Maybe that’s why the overwhelming majority of Americans say to President Bush: let the inspections work.”

Among the antiwar left-liberals, the UN has the status of a sacred totem: it is the deus ex machina of their little morality play, always an unconvincing plot device that may necessitate a surprise ending. The inspections procedure itself could become a flashpoint for war: a Gulf of Tonkin-like incident would be easy enough to engineer under the present circumstances.

The liberal multilateralism that energizes the “give inspections a chance” crowd is just as aggressive—and potentially dangerous—as the unilateralists. The perspective of the newest antiwar coalition, “Win Without War,” is that Hans Blix has every right to go traipsing through Iraq as if he owned the place. Backed by Hollywood money, WWW is not opposed to military intervention in principle. “There might be circumstances where some of our groups would support [military action against Iraq],” says David Cortright, formerly the executive director of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and a key leader of the new group, “such as if there were explicit authorization from the UN Security Council.” Producer/ director Robert Greenwald notes that the group’s initial statement “leaves open the possibility of a multilateral attack. We felt it was premature to get into that.”

As the inspectors feel the heat from Washington, and the inspections process grows ever more intrusive, it may be too late to “get into that” before long. At best, the multilateralists can only delay the war by a few months. But in the end their own rhetoric will return to haunt them. The irony of the “daisy” ads in 1964 was that Johnson, not Goldwater, wound up leading us into war, with help from antiwar liberals. It will no doubt give the Marxists of ANSWER cold comfort to realize that history is indeed repeating itself, as Marx predicted: the first time as tragedy, the second as tragedy compounded by an unmistakable element of farce.

Polls indicate that support for the president’s war policy is slipping. According to the Pew Research Center for the People, 76 percent will support a war against Iraq if the “smoking gun” is ever found. While the Bushies insist it is up to the Iraqis to prove they do not have weapons of mass destruction, only 26 percent fail to perceive the logical impossibility of proving a negative. The Pew poll also reveals that 53 percent believe the president has yet to make a credible case for war, while 42 percent say he has. This reverses the Bushian advantage of September, when 52 percent were convinced by the president’s arguments and only 37 percent were avowed skeptics. If a delay is the best proponents of peace can hope for, then they had better pray it is enough time to build momentum—and come up with some better arguments.

The idea that the antiwar movement needs to be “mainstreamed” out of having any principled message will be its undoing. A regional conflagration will be no less disastrous if delayed. Having got rid of the Workers World Party, the movement will merely have exchanged one problem for another, far more insurmountable one: how to avoid canceling itself out.

The idea that the “soft” Wilsonians, with their cult of the UN and their devotion to “humanitarian” wars of “liberation,” as in Kosovo, can lead an effective opposition to the neocons’ war drive is wishful thinking, at best. At worst, the very same people who are now saying “give peace a chance” could turn on a dime and declare: “Well, we gave peace a chance, and it didn’t work.” Then they will turn the job over to the self-described “hard” Wilsonians, such as Wall Street Journal editorial writer Max Boot, and both wings of the War Party will unite in a common cause.

In order to convince Americans that a war of conquest in Iraq is an uncommonly bad idea, the Left need not remove its backbone. It only needs to remove its ideological blinders long enough to see that building a mass movement against the war is not like building a political party. A multi-issue platform can only limit the movement’s mass potential and prevent it from focusing on the overriding issue of war and peace.

Among the complaints of the so-called moderates is that the Left insists on “bashing” Israel. As Dana Hull writes in the Knight-Ridder newspapers, “One of the biggest divides is the Israel-Palestinian conflict. While more moderate anti-war groups like the ‘Win Without War’ coalition have pointedly skirted the contentious issue so as not to alienate smainstream Americans,” the ANSWER coalition has embraced the Palestinians. But there can be no discussion of the war, and its causes, without a frank discussion of Israel’s key role as fomenter. This is a matter of simple geography and Saddam’s military limitations. Iraqi Scuds will not reach Peoria, but Tel Aviv may take a few hits before it’s over. Iraq’s central position as Israel’s major enemy in the region, and the larger vision of World War IV, point to the undeniable reality of the coming war: in effect the war will be fought by the U.S. on behalf of Israel. Is this a goal that the “mainstream” is likely to embrace?

Another point of tension in the movement is the question of sanctions. Todd Gitlin, writing in Mother Jones magazine, bemoaned the antiwar coalition’s hostility to sanctions, which have killed many thousands over the years and stunted an entire generation of Iraqis. But this is a fundamental moral point that cannot be compromised by any antiwar movement worthy of the name: if an anti-sanctions stance banishes opponents of U.S. policy to the fringe, then they are in good company with the Pope and the National Council of Catholic Bishops.

Taking these positions contributes to the single-issue clarity in the antiwar movement because these are part of the great question now being debated: what kind of foreign policy is proper for a free and prosperous America? Is it one driven by an unrestrained messianism, the worship of global “democracy,” the imposition of Western values at gunpoint throughout the world? Or is it based on the traditional wisdom of the Founding Fathers, who counseled us against “entangling alliances” and warned that hubris, and the quest for empire, would be the downfall of our old republic?

As now constituted, the antiwar movement is not prepared to win this debate. The only component that can deal with the question of imperialism is hopelessly saddled with all sorts of rather unattractive baggage, and is so self-infatuated that it can barely look further right than the Rev. Al Sharpton.

A few principled leftists realize that they need to broaden the appeal of the movement to oppose the war and that the only reliable allies they can hope for come from the anti-interventionist Right: “If the left can ever reach out to this [populist, antiwar] right,” writes Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn, “which it’s almost constitutionally incapable of doing, we’ll have something.” The lessening of ANSWER’s influence, however, will not necessarily lead to this kind of glasnost. An alliance of Pat Buchanan with the Hollywood Left seems even more improbable.

Yet a Left-Right alliance of viscerally antiwar liberals and nationalist “America First” conservatives will naturally evolve over time as the horrible consequences of this war come home to roost: they will find themselves moving ineluctably toward one another, in program if not in spirit. The only problem is that, by that time, it will be too late.

____________________________________

Justin Raimondo is editorial director of Antiwar.com and author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard.

I was then 20-year-old, naive, uneducated, with zero knowledge of politics. Arriving in Korea we hiked up steep mountains as replacements. Departing soldiers made puns while we remained silent not knowing what lay ahead—it was nighttime. At daybreak, a devastated landscape blown to shred by tons of shells and bombs welcomed us. We saw pale, dead soldiers in no-mans land, with crows feeding from their eye sockets. Next to my trench, a leg from a half buried Chinese soldier stuck out of the ground like a wounded flag.

My job was that of an infantry first scout. My weapon was the M1 rifle, made famous by Bill Mauldin in his drawings of World War II GIs. For a half year I lived in barren trenches. All front line positions were manned by low-ranking soldiers. With a buddy, we would alternate two-hour night shifts.

The Department of Defense reports that worldwide, 54,246 Americans service men and women lost their lives during the Korean War. My infantry regiment suffered 1607 casualties. Most of the young men that I fought with and knew in my platoon were killed. I now protest wars in their names, because they can’t.

Having survived war, I educated myself to find out why anyone would want to wage war. I found a very simple answer. When politicians say “Nobody wants war.” it’s such a big lie, we don’t question it. Yet, even a child understands, that if no one really wants a toy, no game is played with that toy. All wars are promoted and orchestrated by war-profiteers. Wars are their deadly toys and truth is their first casualty.

Today, warmongers have no problem with a U.N. estimate that a new, racist and bigoted war against Iraq, a country with oil, will cause 500,000 deaths. Some say that President Bush is now using a powerful propaganda apparatus and a compliant mainstream media to trick us into war, as his father did 11 years ago. Let’s look at the evidence for such a serious charge.

Just prior to Desert Storm, Kuwait funded a massive American pro-war campaign. A NYC public relations agency, coached witnesses, pro-war politicians and the media were all used to launch false, demonizing stories about the killing of 312 incubator babies by Saddam in Kuwait. The pro-war crowd embraced the lies and gave them extensive media coverage. Amnesty International (who had been fooled) produced an 84-page report damning Saddam, and these lies were then distributed to all college campuses by daddy Bush.

Every day we get new unverified, pro-war rumors from the White House that are happily propagated by a media that mimics news presentation in totalitarian countries. When Bush says that finding nothing in Iraq is proof that Saddam has tons of WMDs, no newsperson dares to questions that infantile absurdity.

A recurrent lie from war advocates, is that war in Iraq is to free oppressed people and to give them democracy. Let’s be honest. For many years, through various administrations the U.S. government has supported many dictatorships and repressive governments, including Iraq. Freedom and democracy are bogus reasons.

America spends over 40{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of the world’s total military budget, while being the cheapest (per capita) of all industrial countries with humanitarian aid. That‘s one ugly picture. Please say no to war.

More than 2000 Scots soldiers are awaiting official notification to leave their base near Bergen, Germany, for the Gulf.

Yesterday, the last Challenger II tanks of the 7th Armoured Brigade were delivered to the ferry port of Emden.

There they will be painted in desert camouflage before roll on-roll off ferries take them on the final leg of their journey.

The brigade – known as the Desert Rats – includes the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards and the 1st Battalion The Black Watch.

In total, the brigade will comprise more than 120 tanks when it reassembles in Kuwait, which squaddies believe could in as little as three weeks. Speaking yesterday at the Fallingbostel base, Major Charlie Lambert, second-in-command of the RSDG, said spirits are high among the troops – and they know what is expected of them.

He said: “Saddam Hussein is in breach of more than 10 UN resolutions so far. The question we would ask as soldiers is at what stage does someone say, `Enough is enough.’

“We are the ultimate deterrent and are prepared to do our job if called upon.”

Major Lambert believes there is little point in asking if Britain should be so supportive of America.

He said: “If you accept that we have a world that has a United Nations, which in turn has a security council which makes resolutions and those resolutions are continually broken then, at some stage, somebody has to enforce the implementation of those resolutions.

“And that’s our business.”

The RSDG and Black Watch battlegroups are both 1000 strong. Each will go into theatre with around 30 tanks and 32 armoured fighting vehicles.

No official orders to move have been received but Major Lambert says much will depend on the time it takes the vehicles to reach Kuwait.

He said: “We’re looking at a couple of weeks to get the equipment out there. Some people have started arriving already but it’s difficult to put an exact timeline on when the tail- end of the brigade will be there.

“I’m led to believe the weather in the Gulf is warming and the longer we can have in theatre to acclimatise the better.” For some of the younger soldiers it will be the first time they have experienced a battlefield.

But Major Lambert believes more experienced troops will be able to pass on the benefit of their knowledge.

He explained: “We have a strong regimental family spirit. There is enough experience as you go through the rank structure among those who have been in this situation before to keep the younger ones on the straight and narrow.”

The troops have also been made fully aware of the part the Desert Rats played in north Africa during World War II.

Major Lambert said: “It’s interesting to read that the trials and tribulations they went through were the same as the ones we are going through now.

“We have a tradition to uphold and a reputation to maintain, which we will do.” Much of the work to “desertise” the vehicles for the extreme conditions has already been done and senior officers are confident they won’t encounter the same problems which hampered a military exercise in Oman last year.

The major added: “I’m confident we won’t have the same problems with the tanks as we had in the desert exercises last year, for two reasons.

“The desert in Kuwait and Iraq is different from that in Oman and secondly, the lessons have been learned and there is a programme in place that will solve those problems and let us to do our job properly.

“We are the ultimate deterrent and must prepare as such.

“When people are asked to train for this they are very happy, because this is what they join the Army for.” But while the troops are optimistic about what is ahead, the people of Fallingbostel – population 6000 – will be left to count the cost of so many soldiers leaving at the same time.

In normal circumstances, every second person in the bars, restaurants and shops speaks with a British accent.

In the past, they have had to deal with individual regiments disappearing on exercises, but rarely do they say goodbye to virtually the entire British presence.

Major Lambert said: “It would be naive to suggest this won’t have an affect on this town but, at times like this, quite often family members from the UK will come out to be with the families here so that will bring addition people.

“When we come home, there will be another flood of people coming out to spend money. The locals are entirely supportive, they are very pro- military in this part of Germany.

“There is a readiness state which we have to meet.

“But that is based on when the vehicles leave on the ships, how long the ships take and our ability to then move in time to meet those ships on arrival.”

Known as Scotland’s cavalry, the vast majority of the RSDG are Scottish, with Glasgow traditionally a strong recruiting area.

Between them, the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards and the Black Watch will provide around 2000 troops of the 26,000 troops deployed in the region in the next few weeks.

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