They tried to lie us into war (again)

Brilliant anti-war blogger The Exile writes:

Do you remember the British sailors who were taken prisoner by Iran in march of last year? They were well treated and released soon after. The pro-war blogs (well, he didn't write pro-war blogs, but I'm changing the word he did use as this is a no-swearing site...) had a field day as they screamed about aggression and the like. Some tried to do sarcasm, but it is impossible to pull that off when you are as much of a mong as this tosspot. Anyway, you get the basic idea: they xxxked furiously in the hope that war would come as well as them.

It has now emerged that the British sailors were not in Iraqi waters as Parliament and the British people were told, but in waters that are disputed between Iraq and Iran. So the Iranians were telling the truth and the British weren't. The government lied in other words.

Will heads roll? Probably not because we are so used to the lies that this government tells on an almost daily basis that one more added to the collection doesn't seem all that important".

The Times informs us how 'The Britons were seized because the US-led coalition designated a sea boundary for Iran’s territorial waters without telling the Iranians where it was, internal Ministry of Defence briefing papers reveal.'


I'm not going to put links to the articles in question (as a principle I don't link to warmongering fascists), but several neocon writers did use last year's incident as an opportunity to shriek for 'tougher action' against Iran. And we all know what that means. Had these truly evil people (and the word 'evil' is entirely appropriate for those, who, from the safety of warm, comfortable offices propagandise for wars of aggression which will kill thousands), got their way last spring (as they did in Iraq), hundreds of thousands of people, now living, would be dead.

As I've said before on numerous occasions, it really is very simple to know when a neocon is lying. He/She opens his mouth, or puts pen to paper, or starts typing on a keyboard. That might sound like a glib assessment, but nothing that has happened over the past ten years or so disproves the thesis. Next time you read a neocon telling us that we need to take 'tough' action against Tehran, Moscow, Beijing, or anywhere else for that matter, remember two things. First, that the grounds for taking such action are guaranteed to be fraudulent. And secondly, that it's others who will do the dying.