Posted 3:06 PM by Paul
The Man from U.N.C.L.E Says No Way Dude


It's telling that I am not that surpised that the UK Government was bugging the offices of Kofi Annan and non-permanent members of the Security Council in the months before the Iraq war.

British politics is starting to resemble an episode from the 60s cult classic TV show The Man from U.N.C.L.E. It is all so unreal. Try pretending that it is the night before Labour's Landlside victory in May 1997. A stranger in a dark cloak approaches you at the bar.

" I have seen the future" he intones over a pint. "Don't vote for Blair. Or in six years he will have formed an alliance with an ultra right wing evangelical Christian US President, will have bugged the UN and joined in a war in the Middle East without any UN authority."

You would have called the police or had him committed to a lunatic asylum.

No one could have predicted the way that the Iraq War would develop. Now every person brought up in front of the courts for trying to vandalise a harrier jump jet will claim that they were doing so to prevent an illegal action. The defence council for 14 protesters charged with such an offence have made it clear that they are going to demand to see the Attorney General's advice to the Government when he came to the novel conclusion that the Iraq War was legal without a second UN Resolution. This was based on a creative reading of a resultion passed 14 years ago.

The response from the PM to this request ot see the inner workings of Government is NO WAY DUDE. This is understandable as the only people who seem to think that the war was legal are Blair's close personal friends and his family. Buhs has not sunch constraints. He made it clear that he could invade on the basis of his constitutional duty ot defend the US against potentail agressors. the whole Weapons of Mass Destruction issue was siply the icing on the cake. he was not signed up to the War Crimes convention. Balir has. This puts our armed forces in a very tricky situation. If I were a senior RAF officer I would avoid foreign holidays in places where they might arrest me for waging an illegal war. This might sound alarmist but I am sure that legal experts in France and other places are planning such tactics right now. So that's Disneyland Paris out for a start. Maybe one of our generals will get arrested in Chile.

The Government are in a pickle but I still don't think any of this would be an issue if the we weren't stuck in Iraq like a dinosaur in a tar pit. Blair and Bush were a little over optimistic thinking it would all be alright on the night. They crossed their fingers and jumped. Perhaps Kofu Annan discovered his phone was being bugged and slipped LSD into their coffee as a prank.

So Tony looked at George and said

" Hey man we can igore the last thousand years of Arab-Western Relations. Lets invade in March. Oh yeh and I can fly and play guitar better than Hendrix."