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Glenda hits out at Blair for ‘undiluted failure’over Iraq
‘British troops being used as human shields’ says Hampstead and Highgate MP
HAMPSTEAD and Highgate MP Glenda Jackson has accused the government of using British troops as “human shields” to deflect criticism of unpopular foreign policy.
In a stirring speech in the House of Commons last Wednesday she also repeated her claims that intervention in Iraq is immoral and suggested a “federal state” government could provide a solution.
Ms Jackson said: “The basic flaw with our foreign policy is that it does not exist. It does not exist because the Prime Minister (Tony Blair) is obsessed with the belief that there should not be a space between our foreign policy and that of President Bush and the neocons in Washington into which it would be possible to slip a cigarette paper.”
Ms Jackson (pictured) described the government’s foreign policy as “an undiluted failure”.
She said: “It is certainly no criticism of our troops, who are highly-disciplined and highly-trained and probably the most effective fighting force in the world. It causes me no small anger when my government, in trying to deflect criticism from their failed foreign policy, attempt to use those troops as a kind of human shield by arguing that those who criticise quite deliberately undermine our troops’ morale. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Ms Jackson said that she did not think anything would change in Iraq until the United States made a move. She said that this could depend on whether the issue became an election loser for George Bush’s Republican Party in America.
She said: “I do not call for the immediate withdrawal of our troops. I do not call for the immediate withdrawal of American troops but I know as everyone else in the House and in the country knows, that when it becomes an overriding importance for the Republican Party to withdraw troops – and not doing so would put the Republicans in serious danger of losing the next presidential election – those troops will be withdrawn and, as night follows day, so will ours.”
Mr Jackson has been a regular critic of the government’s intervention in Iraq; in her speech she called it a “sorry episode, it is too terrible to call it an adventure”.
Her stance has been generally welcomed in her constituency where she was re-elected last year – despite a sea-change in Camden politics that has seen the Lib Dems and Conservatives take over the Town Hall.
Ms Jackson said that the way forward in Iraq could be a “federal state”.
Taking no prisoners, she told the House: “Iraq was never a united country. It became united only as a result of a series of brutal dictatorships. That has now gone. Why can we not begin to consider the possibility that our government’s desire, when they embarked on the war in Iraq – I know they will not admit it because admitting it would be tantamount to admitting illegality – was regime change? There is no way that they can avoid the fact that it was immoral and remains immoral.”
Ms Jackson added: “Saddam Hussein has gone. Regime change has occurred. We are told there is a democratic government in Iraq and I pay tribute to the millions of Iraqis who went out for the first time and engaged in an election. But it is fantasy to think that Iraqi government have any power or any control in their own country.” |
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