severe Brit losses in Iraq

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Further to last night's post the BBC Radio 4 programme this morning had a
representative of the INC arguing that their contacts suggest that this was
a one off in a village that had had a weapons inspection search by the
British 2 days before in a Shiite region generally sympathetic to the
allies (so the INC says!) but where there is smuggling across the border
with Iran. They also had a retired general who presumably keeps his
contacts up, Cordingly, cautioning against great emphasis on any change in
tactics. He suggested commanders are likely to try to calm the anger in the
troops and guard against anything like revenge. The INC representative
essentially argued that this attack in southern Iraq was not linked to the
spate of attacks against the US forces in the Sunni areas.

Dan Plesch was quoted on BBC1 as saying that in the last few days attacks
on the US forces have averaged one an hour.

The INC wanted to emphasise the importance of a "political" solution, no
doubt with them in control on behalf on the hegemonic allies, and
international finance capital.

Meanwhile Alastair Campbell's appearance before the Foreign Affairs Select
Committee today looks like a major event which will test even his powers of
spinning. Some of the speculation is that relations between him and Tony
Blair are at breaking point. My guess is that there will be a show of
candour and humility. There will be an admission of error, in return for
trying to spin a wider context. He may try to put distance between himself
and Tony Blair, but he has no other protector in the government so it is
unlikely he will knife the PM. I am sure there will be some subtle spinning
against the unilateralist hawks in the Bush administration of the sort that
I have already illustrated on this list on two or three occasions. However
he has to be very careful not to say anything that would get the
intelligence services on either side of the Atlantic defensively rushing to
leak further details of their side of the story. He will do nothing to
jeopardise the Atlantic alliance which is a geopolitical essential for
minor imperialist Britain, but I predict spin about how the unilateralists
messed up Blair's deal with Bush last summer - that Blair would support an
invasion in the spring of 2003 providing Bush took the argument throught
the UN. The trouble was about the differing burdens of proof in a Security
Council that is not exactly an impartial and professional judicial body
free from imperialist and capitalist prejudices itself. Will he explictly
invoke realpolitik?

On events like this today, turns the question of whether the unilateral
hegemonists in the Bush administration can expect any future military
adventure to be supported by any poodle or would be bull-dog in the world,
without a much higher level of international agreement. It is a problem
about how to exercise hegemony.

Chris Burford
London