Britain's Imperial indignation

[Richard Haut]

Americans may be slightly baffled about what is happening between Britain and Iran.

Simple enough - British sailors in the still-disputed Shatt-al-Arab waterway were arrested peacefully by the Iranians, accused of being in Iranian territorial waters. The British say that they were not. The Iranians say that they were. The British sailors appear to be being well treated.

Britain is working itself up into a lather of Imperial indignation.

What is not being said is that the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein had a treaty dividing the waterway down the middle - apparently, since the Western backed Iraqi attack on Iran which caused millions of deaths in the Iran - Iraq war, no new treaty was signed. The waterway remains disputed territory.

The most intriguing aspect of this is that the one female member of the British crew captured just happened to be interviewed by the BBC, and to have give what the paper describes as an exclusive interview to the British newspaper the Independent just hours before being captured.

As with the BBC's filmed announcement that WTC7 had completely collapsed nearly half an hour before it did collapse, it would appear that the British media once again has second sight - they really should learn to announce news after it has happened, not before. We are not meant to know that they are working hand-in-hand with Blair's Government to sucker their nation into more conflict.

And America ? White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said. "The President fully backs Tony Blair and our allies in Britain." That is the Diplomatic equivalent of a yawn.

[Ed Ziomek]

Rich...Madeline Albright had an amazing quote which I heard on the news, and I am trying to track down...

Something to the effect that "America should pay attention to this detention event over the British sailors, that with 2 Carrier Attack Groups in such a small space as the Gulf will increase the chances of accidents happening."

I stand up and cheer her words, but as all of us have mentioned so many times before, maybe the whole strategy is "having the accident" by intention! Would any of us be surprised?

I fall back to the January 2001 news of the Chinese aircraft hit by the American Navy P3 aircraft, killing the Chinese pilot. The Chinese pilot had been known as somewhat a reckless flier, often passing close enough to the American planes to hold up his email address in his cockpit. And on one of those passes, he was clipped by the American plane, and he was killed.

I always wondered, even at that earlier time, America and China did the staggering total of 60 billion in trade, every year. Now the number is over a trillion per year, maybe two trillion. But I still ask myself, with just 60 billion in trade, we were running surveillance against this massively beneficial trading partner! Why?

And of course, many times since then, China has acted as liaison with North Korea for diplomatic issues beneficial to the United States.

So back to the Gulf and Iran, with all this military hardware and aircraft and missles, the chance for accidents, and ships drifting across lines, and aircraft overflying contested borders, accidents and intrusions and even provocations are bound to happen.

And how can America, or Britain, or Iraq, or Iran, or Israel, or Saudi Arabia, gain from all of this chaos? We all lose.