Y'know.. you suffer a bit of mechanical trouble.. and consiquently are out of touch for a few days.. and man when you come back it's amazing how little has changed..
The war presses on..
Public opinion appears to be wafting towards resigned support..
And the media's having more fun with this than anyone else it seems..
It's always been accepted that during times of war here.. to some extent.. truth will become 'economical'.. what the media is told and then passes along to us will, while not being innaccurate, might not be all of it.. It's a need to know situation..
One might say that 'the whole truth' is one of the first casualties of war.. what we have to wonder now is, is free expression another..
We mentioned George Galloway in an earlier posting.. a Labour MP from Glasgow who's always been outspokenly pro-Baath and anti-western in his leanings..
This same MP has been branded a traitor by the Sun.. which might indeed considering his consituency, guarantee his re-election, but which however casts a pall on the man's overall character and thus on those who support him..
"For treachery like that, Nazi mouthpiece Lord Haw Haw tasted the hangman's rope in 1946. Sadly, we've gone soft these days," ran the inside editorial...
Lovely.
However, it's not only on the front page of Britains most 'kill-a-gook-for-God-and-Country' tabloid that critics of the war have come a cropper..
Robin Cook was forced to 'clarify' his weekend remarks, to the effect that British troops should be brought home immediately... Cook later conceeded that perhaps it wouldn't be wise to 'let Saddam off the hook' by abandonning the fight just yet..
And in the States.. a man who's won the Pulitzer prize for his reporting efforts.. Peter Arnett.. was given the sack when he told Iraqi television the coalitions initial war plan had failed..
One American Congresswoman called his remarks 'Kafkaesque', and shook her head sadly..
So do we..
These millions who four weeks ago paraded about this earth in a vain attempt to stop the action, however misguided and apparently naive.. are an esential part of the fabric of our society here in the west.. they're part of the system of checks and ballances which must never be squashed..
Ignored.. perhaps.. reviled.. maybe..
But stigmatized.. named as traitors.. that's what would be called WOTT here..
Well Over The Top..