The UK Today

Obviously the only thing green about the UK Armed Forces is some of the camouflage, especially if their objection to wind farms is anything to go by. Apparently any wind farm within 45 miles of a radar station interferes with signals, but only in the UK. In Germany it is only a problem if the wind farm is within 5 miles, and elsewhere it just isn't a problem. I can only assume that the MoD is still using WW2 vintage radar in an effort to make savings, as it is hard to believe that a modern radar system can distinguish between aircraft and missiles and ranges of 100s of miles, but gets confused by a windmill half a county away.

The legacy of the war in Iraq will probably haunt Tony Blair to his dying day. Every day something else seems to emerge from the shadows. Now we have a deputy legal advisor from the Foreign Office who quit her job because she did not believe the use of force was legal. Does anyone apart from Tony Blair really believe in the legality of the actions taken by the UK and US in Iraq? I for one would love to know what exactly was the Attorney General's advice to Tony Blair on the legalities of the war.

Is there no end for Bliar's misery over intelligence and Iraq? Hopefully and in a word, no. Had he been open and honest about the reasons for war right from the beginning, then more people would have been prepared to believe him now. As it is, there is an air of shabby dishonesty surrounding all his pronouncements on these matters. At lot of debate has gone on regarding whether or not Claire was right to speak out, and most of the papers seem to think that she should have kept quiet. Certainly as a member of the government, she had a duty as part of collective responsibility to say nothing. And at this point it should be noted that as a minister she actually voted for the war. However, on the other side of the coin, she was - like Katharine Gun - a public servant aware of a potentially illegal act, and therefore almost obliged to speak out. So damned if she did and damned if she didn't. And today it comes out that Hans Blix had his mobile phone tapped whenever he was in Iraq. And Richard Butler's phone was tapped as well. So not only did the US and UK undermine the authority of the UN by riding roughshod over resolutions and ignoring diplomatic efforts, but now they appear to have gone further by bugging the UN. If diplomats can't hold discussions in confidence within the portals of the UN, then what hope is there for international trust and cooperation in future. Whether he likes it or not, Tony Blair must accept more responsibility for this state of affairs than George Bush. After all, it was Blair who repeatedly tried to justify the war in terms acceptable to the Labour Party. Had he not raised the profile of intelligence information (and its misuse) then it may very well be that these issues would not have been thrust into the spotlight. The only way forward now is to be open and honest. This should fall under the remit of the Butler Inquiry, but somehow I doubt that it will be anything more than another sanitised whitewashing exercise.

So the decision not to prosecute Katharine Gun was not political. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't believe it. If she'd broken the OSA then that would have been grounds for prosecution, and after all she wasn't denying leaking the email. Now I'm no lawyer, but given that the legality of the war in Iraq remains ambiguous, then surely a defence of acting to prevent an unlawful war is no real defence at all. Whereas leaking an email in breach of the OSA was a criminal act. So the reasons for not prosecuting must surely be political. Now the actual political reason is open to question. One option is that Blair wanted to draw a line under Iraq and British Intelligence, and a trial would just have kept a running sore in the public eye. Or perhaps a trial would have forced discussion of the legality of the war and revelation of any incriminating documents. But either way, to deny a political motivation is disingeneous at best. Or maybe, just maybe, the government was concerned that any random selection of 12 good persons of the jury would be almost guaranteed to be anti-war and thus rule for the defence. If that is the case, then it either shows how little respect the government has for the public to believe that a jury could not be impartial on such a matter; or shows just how comprehensively Tony Blair has lost the battle for hearts and minds over war in Iraq. And Blair's discomfort has been further increased by Clare Short's bugging claims made earlier today. She is often referred to as the "conscience" of the Labour Party, and perhaps now and again it would do Blair good to listen to his conscience. He will undoubtedly get revenge via the Labour Party disciplinary processes, although only a fool would be too bloody minded. Just as Margaret Thatcher was condemned to spend her remaining days in power tarred with the brush of the Poll Tax fiasco, so Tony Blair should resign himself to the fact that he will be perceived by many to be a war monger who acts on weak and twisted intelligence information. So much for the legacy of Things can only get better.

Nope, I'm not questioning Tone's mental faculties (tempting though it would be), but just pointing out that this government could do with getting a bit more "with the program" in Intelligence matters. Skipping over the almighty s***w up that underpinned Iraq's alleged WMD and the reasons for war, first questions are now being asked as to why Katharine Gun was even charged under the Official Secrets Act. All she did was leak an email which contained nothing more secret than that intense focus was to be placed on the monitoring of UN communications. And now good old Clare Short comes forward to announce that the UK intelligence community was involved in bugging the office of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the run up to the war in Iraq. Now was the case dropped because of lack of evidence as was claimed yesterday? Or was it to prevent the potential release of more embarrassing information? On past performance I know where my suspicions lie.

The UK Today would like to congratulate Katharine Gun, a GCHQ translator sacked for revealing the content of a secret email. She has today been cleared of breaking the Official Secrets Act. And her motivation for realeasing the email? She argued that she was acting to prevent the illegal war in Iraq. Good on her.

So you can't sell an armoured car to Zimbabwe, but you could sell the engine, transmission, body and armament as separate items. Well, that's all right then isn't it? After all as long as it is only weapons components you're exporting then you're not breaching the U.K.'s ethical trade policies. While I wouldn't go as far as to ban the sale of nuts and bolts, if you're going to restrict arms sales to unstable countries, then it must be all arms sales, regardless of whether they are components or completed weapons. Anything else is a double standard.

UK asylum applicants fell by 41% last year, which would seem like good news for the Home Secretary. And an increase of 23% in the numbers of failed asylum seekers being removed shouldn't be ignored. Not to mention the fact that the asylum and immigration budget is up to £2 billion.

But when viewed from the pespective of the failings of previous years and policies, I would reserve judgement on the overall success until we have at least 2 or 3 years of figures on which to get a truer picture. And at the same time, the UK will be the first country to begin enforced repatriation of failed Iraqi asylum seekers. Which, given the current state of Iraq, strikes me as an exceedingly bad idea, and the UNHCR isn't too happy about it either.

So 5 of the British residents of Camp Delta are to be freed from Guantanamo Bay. In spite of the fact that British anti-terrorist officers have only just begun investigations into the 5, David Blunkett - obviously in posession of some prescient ability - has already said that they pose no threat to UK security. Meanwhile Jack Straw said that they could face charges in the UK courts under anti-terrorism laws. And then the Tories weigh in with suggestions that they could potentially be charged with treason.

All a bit of a mess, not to mention a no-win situation for the government.

They could arrest and question the five, then set them free, thus making the US look like a bunch of incompetents for holding them without trial for more than two years. Or they could decide to send them for trial, this time making the US look like a bunch of pricks for denying the rights of the remaining inmates of Camp Delta. Either way it isn't going to do much for the special relationship. But the alternatives are to lock 'em up and throw away the key or - and this is possibly worse still - follow Ancram's suggestion to charge them with treason. Either way it makes HMG look just as bad as the US, and does nothing for Tone's street cred.

And just why the heck do the Conservatives think they might face treason charges? Simply because they took up arms in Afghanistan and thus may have taken pot-shots at the British forces deployed over there. Hmmm. Don't recall any active members of the various terrorist groups in Ulster ever being charged with treason, and they were not only taking pot shots at British soldiers, but doing it on British territory. So British citizens shooting British soldiers in Britain is not as heinous as the same happening overseas...

And as ever, the Murdoch tabloid rag goes for trial by brainless Sun reader, whereas the Mail takes an more balanced approach for a change. Meanwhile Murdoch's broadsheet toilet paper decides to place its olfactory apparatus up Tone's anus and give him the credit. The Guardian and Independant are probably closer to the mark on this one.

The detention without trial at Guantanamo has been a complete mess from day one, and will remain so until the US gets its act together and restores some semblance of rights to the inmates. That the British government has got itself entangled in the morass is an inevitable consequence of playing fast and loose with international law.

... now we have a War on Poverty. A good sentiment with regard to addressing Third World Poverty, but will we really see the level of commitment required, complete with coherent policies?

(For the ironically challenged, this is a post critiquing sound-bite approaches to important issues, rather than condoning the war on terror. Something you'd think could be grasped from the link to www.iraqbodycount.org. However, let it never be said that I can't be helpful. This post now reworded for easier comprehension, and for those with an irony bypass.)

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is one of the truly great spiritual and moral thinkers of our time. He currently occupies the position of Professor of Post-Conflict Studies at King's College, London, a role that he fills almost to perfection. Today he will deliver the Longford Lecture, and through it challenge both Tony Blair and George W. Bush to apologise for an "immoral" war.

Early Day Motion 300 asks the Government to complain to the UNSC about the sale of biological agents by the USA to the Iraqi Government. This event gets close to the heart of the hypocrisy of the US in the scandal of its dealings with Iraq. The text of the motion can be found here.

To get your MP to sign up, please us the "Fax your MP" link in the sidebar.

So now Jack Straw joins Tony Blair in the blissful state of ignorance regarding the distinction between battlefield and strategic WMDs.

Can't these people be bothered to read the documents placed in front of them? So while the Defence Secretary, the Chairman of the JIC and the former Foriegn Secretary knew that the claim refered only to battlefield weapons, the Prime Minister and the Foriegn Secretary didn't.

Meanwhile Donald Rumsfeld doesn't remember and isn't bothered. At least that's a marginally more honest position I guess.

Now this is frightening. And so damned plausible.