Unbelievable - but true. Today sees the first FULL debate on the Iraq invasion. There was a "controlled" debate in July 2004 (when the government only allowed certain aspects to be debated). Prior to that the situation was last discussed in March 2004 - when Bliar delivered the infamous "45 minutes from attack" claim to swing support behind this oil-rush.

Will they at last represent their constituents?

Will they heed the warnings coming from the USA that the Republicans are about to be humiliated in next week's elections over their blind support?

A humiliating defeat could signal an immediate end to Bliar's reign. Then the troops could come home and Iraq could start to re-build itself (with its OWN oil rereserves).

All they managed to do in displacing Saddam was to destabilise the whole damned area...

Problem with the arses we elect ,on both sides of the Atlantic, is that they have no concept of learning the lessons of history.

Al-Qaida has it's roots, not in Islam, but in the fall of the Ottoman Empire, which was engineered by the British, the US under Teddy Roosevelt and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the foreign policy of the Carter Administration, that then had continuity under Reagan and Bush I (based loosely on the way the French Resistance was created and supported during WW2)

Basically, they can't pull out without everything becoming a worse unholy mess than it is.

There again, large corporates are the same. I heavily suggested that, since the Chinese have memories that got back 1000 years, handing one's economic testicles to them only ~120 years after the Opium Wars is a very bad move...