British military forces suffered their 100th death yesterday in Iraq, once again igniting angry calls for Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to review the countries position in the conflict and disclose his timetable for a British military withdrawal.

The embattled Prime Minister finds himself in the most unenviable of political positions, the worst of all catch 22’s. The vast majority of country are set against the continuing war in Iraq but a simple withdrawal cannot be considered at this time because it would surely leave Iraq open to similar atrocities to those committed after the hasty withdrawal of allied troops at the end of the first Gulf war.

Indeed use of the term ‘war’ is carefully avoided by all government offices. The military operations in Iraq are officially classified, on both sides of the Atlantic, as a ‘conflict.’ War was never declared on Iraq or the countries now removed dictator, Saddam Hussein. Nonetheless, back in May 2003, in-front of a huge “mission accomplished” banner aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, President Bush proudly announced victory in the ‘conflict’.

“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” Said the President to a rousing applause from the gathered troops who must have thought that this meant they would soon be on their way home. Yet since their Commander-in-Chief declared the victory a further 2105 of their fellow soldiers have died in Iraq.

Soon after the speech the President’s spokesman, Ari Fleischer, warned that despite the declaration of victory this would not mark the end of hostilities “from a legal point of view”. Under the Geneva Convention, to which America is party to, the legal implications of declaring a war officially over is that the victorious army must release prisoners-of-war and halt operations targeting specific leaders.

But of course if the war never was a ‘war’, then declaring a victory in that war doesn’t legally matter anyway, so any prisoners-of-war being held without charge or a release date, don’t have to be released because they’re not prisoners-of-war, they’re ‘prisoners-of-conflict.’

Also in his speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, the President explained that the reasons for going to ‘conflict’ with Iraq would soon be vindicated. “We’ve begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated.” He said, though sadly for the soldiers who died, their families, and of course the innocent Iraqi’s who have also suffered and died since then, no such chemical or biological weaponry were ever found.

More than two and a half years after his victory speech the President was forced to make an uncomfortable admission. “It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong” He said. “My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a threat and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power,” announced the President to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

It seems strange that the President would have put so much faith in the so called ‘faulty intelligence’ given that in his Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, had already gone on record stating any such intelligence would be questionable.

As far back as January 1998, Rumsfeld, along with fellow members of a conservative think tank based in Washington called ‘The Project for a New American Century,’ wrote an open letter to President Clinton stating “even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production.”

“The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.”

Of course the body count in Iraq will continue to rise. President Bush, along with Prime Minister Blair, have little choice but to continue justifying it at whatever cost. But as we face the reality that the ‘conflict’ in Iraq is now most certainly the front line in this ‘war on terror,’ we must also remember that the two were never before connected. Saddam Hussain was never an ally of al-qaeda yet the former dictators country would seem to be at the peril of foreign ‘insurgent’ terrorist groups fighting foreign occupation soldiers in a war that seems to have lost its way entirely.

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UK forces suffer 100th Iraq death
Bush declares victory in Iraq
President Bush’s victory in Iraq speech [full text]
President declares victory in Iraq in 2003 [Video]
Mission accomplished
Bush: we went to war on faulty intelligence
Bush acknowledges faulty Iraq intelligence
The Project for the New American Century
PNAC Open letter to President Clinton (1998)
The evolution of the Bush Doctrine
Top UK General says Impeach Blair
Iraq body count