Britain threatened by US over proposed Iraq pullout

In the US certain quarters are threatening cooling of relations of the relations and also trade problems should the UK government go ahead with it proposed pull out of troops from Iraq.

It would appear that the relationship that is supposed to be two-way between the US and the UK is still the same as ever, or maybe even worse. The US plays the bully boy who says “if you don't do as we say that will have consequences”. It is about time Britain showed the mettle it once had. Do we really need the USA? No more than we needs Europe. Let us look after ourselves first. Let's get our boys home and get out of that ill conceived conflict. The people of Iraq do not want either the USA not the UK troops in their country. Let them get on with it themselves. If it leads to a break-up of Iraq into three separate entities then so be it as well. But, oh no, the problem is the oi, despite what we are being told and led to believe and the control of the oil is currently in the hands of the coalition; or shall we put a name to it, in the hands of Haliburton and other US companies. There is not even the slightest control over how much oil is going through the pipeline shipping the oil out of the country. Apparently, so this writer has been told by some sources, the measuring gear has been disconnected. No one knows how much oil is being exported and it is more than likely that only a very small proportion of the money gets back to the Iraqis.

On the other hand, there is more and more private military in Iraq now that the British troops are hardly needed anyway. But, with the British pulling out the US no longer would have the chance to say that it is not a US led and organized war.

How dare the American government and especially the establishment threaten a sovereign nation, such as the United Kingdom in such a way; a country that has stood by its side in more than one of those conflicts conceived by the USA in order to secure oil supplies. It never had anything to do with freedom and democracy, like when a senator in the House asked during the first Gulf War when the then president of the USA, Bush Snr. stated that we were fighting for freedom and democracy since when Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were democracies and the next day or so was then told by the president that, in fact, it was about the oil.

It is obvious that it is all about oil and – maybe, just maybe – also about getting a base, yet again, not too far away from Russian territory. It can be seen well enough that oil is the factor here for why, otherwise, is nothing been done about human rights abuses in the former Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, with the so-called president of theirs, the title of dictator would be more appropriate, Mugabe, destroying the once richest country on the African continent, next to South Africa. Or why is nothing done in other regions of conflict and human rights abuses and wholesale murder and ethnic cleansing on the African continent. The truth is that none of those countries have any exploitable oil reserves. That is the very reason.

Let's get our boys home and stop following the lead of the USA into every idiotic conflict. The same is true for Afghanistan. The lessons from the past should have given some idea that Afghanistan cannot be won either. It did not work in the time of the British Raj, nor did Czarist Russia succeed at that time. No one has ever been able to conquer Afghanistan. What does make them think that they could do it now? Both of those conflicts are futile and will also do nothing to stop so-called Islamist terrorists and terrorism. The truth is that it will create more terrorists.

Is it not high time that the UK told the US where to get off; a running jump off Beachy Head would be a nice idea.

© M V Smith, August 2007