Bush puts Blair on the spot

US requests help from British troops

The British Defence Secretary has confirmed that London is going to consider Washington's cry for help in Iraq, after a request was made to provide assistance to the beleaguered armed forces of George Bush more and more bogged down in the quagmire of their own making in Iraq, where they have lost several cities to the Iraqi Resistance.

Geoffrey Hoon, the British Defence Secretary, confirmed today in Parliament that the British Army will send a reconnaissance team to make a recommendation as to whether British troops should comply to the request to send 650 soldiers from Basra to Baghdad.

The US made the request purportedly to free their troops for combat operations elsewhere, in areas where control has fallen to the local population, which Washington continues to label as "terrorists". More and more frequently, TV stations outside the USA show pictures of mutilated bodies of babies and children which have been targeted as "insurgents".

There will be considerable pressure on Geoffrey Hoon to put the decision to deploy troops in Baghdad to Parliament, since there is considerable concern that if any British troops are to perform active combat operations with the US Armed Forces, under British law, the sort of action that the Americans are performing would be liable for trial as war crimes.

The American way of fighting, claim experts, puts the emphasis on zero risk, which means that destroying the entire area around a target, even if this includes a kindergarten, a school, a hospital, a private residence, a room full of young mothers and their children, is OK if it means US troops will not run any risks.

They call it "collateral damage". The rest of the world calls it terrorism.