UK no better than US

[Protagonist]

LONDON (Reuters) - Nearly half of Britons now oppose war with Iraq, according to a new poll published just hours after the government announced it was sending one quarter of its standing army to the Gulf to join U.S. forces there.

An ICM opinion poll in Tuesday's Guardian newspaper showed that opposition to military action against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had now reached 47 percent, up from 37 percent just three months ago.

The telephone poll of 1,002 adults also showed that support for an invasion had dropped during the same period to just 30 percent from 42 percent.

Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insist there is no need for a new United Nations resolution before launching an attack on Baghdad.

But the poll showed that 81 percent of Britons disagreed.

It will be unwelcome news for Blair, U.S. President George W. Bush's firmest ally in the war on terror declared after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, who is also facing revolt from within his own Labour Party.

Blair, with a naval task force already on its way to the Gulf, is due to meet Bush at Camp David later this month for what many believe is a final council of war.

The announcement on Monday that Britain was sending an extra 26,000 troops to the Gulf to join the 4,000 already under way far exceeded expectations and compared with the 43,000 mobilised for the 1991 war that ousted Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

Straw told BBC television on Monday war was not inevitable, and no decision on military action had been taken.

But he stressed Iraq's options were shrinking, with U.N. weapons inspectors due to give the Security Council a report on January 27 on Iraqi compliance with U.N. demands that it abandon suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes.

"It is typical of this tyrant who runs Iraq that he doesn't know when to stop pushing his luck. He has got to stop seeking to trade, seeking to play hide-and-seek with the international community," Straw said from New York.

"Time is running out, and although different members of the Security Council may have different time phases in their heads, none of them really doubt that there has to be a limit on this kind of behaviour by Saddam Hussein."

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Given the amount of US bashing on this board by expat brits (myself included), how did we manage to end up with muppets like Blair, Straw et al running the UK on the coattails of GWB???

The next thing you know, Blair will be announcing that he has won a general election avan though he got less votes than the Tories!!

What is to be done??

[musp]

The whole idea of letting the inspectors in has backfired for the Bush Blair gang.

All the while they must have thought that Saddam will never co-operate and would not let the inspectors into his palaces etc, triggering a breach of the UN resolution. But so far the Iraqis have been co-operating and time is running out. The war has to be completed before the onset of summer.

So there you have it!

[Joseph27]

Shows you things are bad when Suddam Hussein is complying and making the US/UK look like the aggressors

[Burbage]

Oh come on. Surely you have Saddam figured out by now? His strategy is simply to stand up and defy the UN, the US and the UK (three Us now there's a thing) up until the point where they spend millions getting an army together, or landing a few extra bombs, then he goes all co-operative. He's been doing it, successfully, ever since he came into power.

He's probably quite a bit smarter than either Bush or Blair. Remember that it takes a certain amount of brains (never mind ruthlessness) to remain a dictator as long as he has. All Blair and Bush have had to do was win a popularity contest.

So what we have now is that Saddam continues to make Bush and Blair look like idiots. "Yeah sure, the inspectors can go wherever they want!" Bush and Blair are now fed up with looking like idiots. THerefore this war is almost inevitable.

That of course does not mean that it's not justified. I have no desire to see nuclear weapons in the hands of Saddam Hussein, they're scary enough in the hands of GWB. The only thing that really bugs me is that for most of the population Saddam's Iraq is probably freer than any other country in the Arab world. Being non-secular women enjoy the most tolerant regime in the area, there's little application of Shariah law, etc etc. This of course doesn't count his oppressed minorities, who have enjoyed some, and only some, respite due to being within the no fly zones for the past ten years.

So, how is this regime going to be replaced? Is the US UK pact going to leave another situation where a new Taliban can come into power, as the US did with Afganistan in the eighties? Are they going to allow one of their "friends" like Saudi or Kuwait to take it over. No matter what the outcome, things look pretty bad for the Iraqi women.

The fact of the matter is, however, that the Gulf War which started in 1991 has not ended. This is not a new war, it's a continuation of an old one.