[Changleen]

This is kind of about the denial by the UK and US governements in the last few days that Iraq had anything to do with the London bombings or the Islamic worlds ongoing hostility towards the west.

A selection of segments of various articles I've seen in the last couple of days:

Independant Online: Official report 'linked terror risk to Iraq'

A British intelligence document warned weeks before the 7 July bombings that events in Iraq were fuelling "terrorist related activity in the UK" , according to leaks published today.

The Joint Terrorist Analysis Centre paper added, however, that "at present there is not a group with both the current intent and the capability to attack the UK", according to sections of the dossier published in The New York Times.

The leaks will embarrass Prime Minister Tony Blair and other ministers who yesterday flatly rejected claims in a think tank report that the conflict in Iraq had increased the terror threat to the UK.

From the BBC:

The Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq 2003-2005 says 37% of all non-combatant deaths were caused by the US-led coalition. Insurgents are said to have caused 9% of the deaths, while post-invasion criminal violence was responsible for another 36%.

BBC again:

Moqtada Sadr, the radical Iraqi Shia cleric whose militia led uprisings against US troops in Najaf has told the BBC armed "resistance is legitimate".

"Resistance is legitimate at all levels be it religious, intellectual and so on," Mr Sadr said, in his first interview with Western media.

"The first person who would acknowledge this is the so-called American President Bush who said 'if my country is occupied, I will fight'."

Some Iraqi dude, adressing an American reporter:

"Your people have killed, they have tortured. They have invaded a country on false pretenses and created a terrorist haven when none existed before. That, I am sad to say, is more than Osama bin Laden could have done with 10,000 planes."

Guardian:

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - A statement in the name of a group that claimed responsibility for the London bombings threatened Tuesday to launch ``a bloody war'' on the capitals of European countries that do not remove their troops from Iraq within a month.

``This is the last message we send to the European countries. We are giving you one month for your soldiers to leave the Land of the Two Rivers. Then there will be no other messages, but actions, and the words will be engraved in the heart of Europe,'' Abu Hafs al Masri Brigades said in a statement.

The ``two rivers'' in the statement refer to Iraq's Euphrates and Tigris rivers.

The argument from Bush and Blair is these attacks would have happened anyway, due to the 'perverted ideology' of the bombers. Just quite what this ideology is in never explored. One suspects it may be that they 'hate freedom'. Or maybe, as they keep trying to tell us, it's that they don't like being invaded and bombed and repressed and kept in the dark ages by the policies and historic actions of the West. Maybe.