Comments on: Iraq

By: Gregory Lightyear

Gregory Lightyear — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 00:10:32 +0000

Well, that’s his loss, then. I guess I won’t be terribly shocked if it turns out that reading this site is eminently more enjoyable than actually having to go to the press conferences twice a day.

Congrats to the team, great work.

By: Chris Lightfoot

Chris Lightfoot — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 11:12:38 +0000

I understand that Tony is a bit of an IT-phobe. And the fact that he has a staff of people to read and summarise the newspapers for him suggests that he doesn’t have that much free time on his hands for other reading….

By: Geoff

Geoff — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 10:57:35 +0000

I wonder if any of the Iraqi bloggers are reading it? It certainly is very interesting to get stories first hand before the newspapers have mangled the stories.
I wonder if Tony uses Bloglines or other RSS feed personally?

By: Roger Huffadine

Roger Huffadine — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 09:57:32 +0000

When do we get comment on the TB to be tried by War Crimes Tribunal?

I’m just off to follow the link to the translation of the Iraq draft constitution.

This BLOG is great its now on my toolbar

By: Ralph Williams

Ralph Williams — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 09:20:30 +0000

This government (read Tony) may say that history will
prove them right - ie that the ends justified the means,
but the evidence to date even on this point is not good.
Only this morning the largest Shiite religious festival of
the year has been marked by bombs killing dozens, the
British army is being sued for beating Iraqi prisoners to
death, and a report says that infant mortality has increased
beyond even the apallingly high levels it was at under
10 years of UN (read US) sanctions. At what point do
we say that conditions have actually got worse than they
were immediately before we joined this illegal war?

By: firefly

firefly — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 09:16:01 +0000

this is a good idea. I’m an brit currently living in Japan. England isn’t the only country with a corrupt government.

I think some of these posts could be a bit more tongue in cheek.

By: Chris Lightfoot

Chris Lightfoot — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 00:28:00 +0000

Not sure how relevant this is to this story, but
http://www.geocities.com/nathanbrown1/interimiraqiconstitution.html
is a translation of the Debruary 1 draft Constitution for Iraq, with commentary — quite enlightening.

By: Goo Ree

Goo Ree — Mon, 01 Mar 2004 23:06:02 +0000

And about time too!

Would this form the basis for an Iraqi democratic constitution ?

By: Simon

Simon — Mon, 01 Mar 2004 21:30:31 +0000

I think the BBC News article on the downingstreetsays website should boost the comments a tad…

By: Gregory Lightyear

Gregory Lightyear — Mon, 01 Mar 2004 20:41:27 +0000

There is indeed capability to insert anti-spamming and spam-blocking into the site, should they so enable it, and those filters can indeed be trained to block out abusive content.

However, that’s different than outright "PMOS is full of it" messages (which, actually, on this note, I tend to agree with), which, however uncharitably worded, aren’t really stating anything other than the obvious response.

There is no mention, of course, on human rights, and that’s what many of us are watching for. Britain’s success, or failure, in its ability to turn the tide of human rights abuses in the Middle East, under a broad variety of garb (including political exclusion, women’s rights, and voter’s rights), will be seen in that agreement.

After all, freedom of expression means you’re free to say anything you like - but that expression does not entitle you to a say in how government behaves unless it, too, is in law. Freedom of an independent judiciary won’t help you when there’s no constitution of note, and no political system for the individual to use to shape government.

And freedom of religion? I’d like to see someone try and take it with them. Or, rather, wouldn’t, as we’ve seen enough bloodshed to date, but it remains a near-impossibility in today’s sociopolitical climate in the region.

In other words, this says absolutely nothing, and more importantly, it says nothing about how successful Britain and the U.S. have been in trying to convince the various factions of the region to actually cooperate and put an end to some age-old human rights abuses along the way.