Terry Kelly, Iran, Iraq, and Labour's American Allies

I've sent this to Terry today, don't hold your breath to see it on his blog.

Funny thing about Labour. Everyone with any sense accepts that they are now a party of the right (don’t listen to the rubbish they talk, look at what they do), But Terry, you still believe that there is a right wing conspiracy in the press against them. It only goes to show that they are as useless at rewarding their support as a right wing party as they were when they were part of the Left. Too busy rewarding themselves, so nothing new there then.

The hypocrisy of believing the polls when they favour you and denying them when they are against you is not new, but you and I were both at McDonnell’s ?? visit to Paisley High Street and we both know that he was roundly abused from one end of the street to the other, not by activists but by shoppers.

As for the problems of the captives in Iran, any decent leader would not have been negotiating their release because he wouldn’t have sent our forces to an illegal war in the first place. If you want to deal with it by black humour then why not consider that we have invaded a sovereign nation, occupied it by thousands of troops, and patrol their waters so that other countries do not meddle in their affairs….now that is funny in a black sort of way.

The treatment of our forces who were the victims of ‘extraordinary rendition’ (which we support in principle as being legal) from Iraq to Iran is that our respected allies would have put them in orange boiler suits and tortured them before making them strip and parade in dog leads before publishing their naked pictures in the press and on the internet. Then they would have taken them to place where international law cannot reach them and local law is denied them, and imprisoned them with no prospect of either trial or release. That is not speculation, that is what they admit to, so how bad is it really?

So you can complain about the captive marines being taken illegally and put on television. You can laugh at them being given clothes and cigarettes, and being well fed and clothed, and it might not make you a bad person, but it must come close when you can make it a cause for your triumphalism. I don’t think the captives in Guantanamo would see the joke. It’s a good job that the marines were not captured by your friend Bush’s forces, or even more dangerous, supported by their air power.

I don’t suppose I will see this comment on your site. You seem happy to publish other anonymous correspondents so I will pay myself the compliment that you find me a bit harder to deal with than them. Only local knowledge can expose your claims as false so I must be a danger.