Brit Debunks War on Terror

'There is no war on terror'

Sir Ken McDonald, Britain's director of public prosecutions, warned of the pernicious risk that a "fear-driven and inappropriate" response to the threat could lead Britain to abandon respect for fair trials and the due process of law.

He said: "London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 [the subway bombing that claimed 52 lives] were not victims of war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, 'soldiers'. They were deluded, narcissistic inadequates. They were criminals. They were fantasists. We need to be very clear about this. On the streets of London, there is no such thing as a 'war on terror', just as there can be no such thing as a 'war on drugs'.

"The fight against terrorism on the streets of Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of crime, the enforcement of our laws and the winning of justice for those damaged by their infringement."

Sir Ken, head of the Crown Prosecution Service, told members of the Criminal Bar Association it should be an article of faith that crimes of terrorism are dealt with by criminal justice and that a "culture of legislative restraint in the area of terrorist crime is central to the existence of an efficient and human rights compatible process".

He said: "We wouldn't get far in promoting a civilising culture of respect for rights amongst and between citizens if we set about undermining fair trials in the simple pursuit of greater numbers of inevitably less safe convictions."

Dangerously Irresponsible

Those are the words a leading Republican senator used to describe Junior's latest plan for continued failure in Iraq.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A second Republican signed onto a Senate resolution on Wednesday opposing President Bush's 21,500-troop buildup in Iraq, setting a marker for a major clash between the White House and Congress over the unpopular war.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, a moderate from Maine, said she would support a nonbinding resolution that would put the Senate on record as saying the U.S. commitment in Iraq can be sustained only with support from the American public and Congress.

Snowe's decision to join the effort came as the White House and GOP leaders struggled to keep Republicans from endorsing the resolution, and raised questions about how many more defections there might be.

''Now is time for the Congress to make its voice heard on a policy that has such significant implications for the nation, the Middle East and the world,'' Snowe said in a written statement.

Earlier, Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican and potential 2008 presidential candidate, joined Democrats at a news conference announcing the resolution.

''I will do everything I can to stop the president's policy as he outlined it Wednesday night,'' Hagel said. ''I think it is dangerously irresponsible.''

3,075 U.S. dead and counting
$400 billion squandered

Real Reason for Iraq War: It's the Oil, Stupid

A report in the British newspaper the Independent may answer the question that's been nagging the American conscience now for three years: If there are no WMDs in Iraq -- and the country never was a threat to the United States -- why was Bush Junior so intent on invading and occupying the country?

It's the oil, stupid.

Future of Iraq: The spoils of war

How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches

By Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb, the Independent

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise. But it will operate through "production-sharing agreements" (or PSAs) which are highly unusual in the Middle East, where the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's two largest producers, is state controlled.