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SPAIN OUT! BRITAIN OUT!

by our Arab Affairs correspondent

TONY BLAIR looks increasingly isolated in Europe following the outcome of the Spanish general election that has cost him and George W Bush their only other firm ally in Western Europe. Spanish Socialist opposition leader Jose Zapatero, who will be sworn in as premier in April, has pledged to withdraw all his country’s troops from Iraq. He described the war as a “disaster” and accused Blair and Bush of going to war on the basis of lies.

Meanwhile Cuban President Fidel Castro has called on all the three Latin American countries with token forces supporting the Anglo-American occupation to follow Spain’s lead. One has already done so. And the Iraqi resistance has renewed its offensive against the occupation army and civilian collaborators on the anniversary of the imperialist invasion last year.

sweeping

The sweeping Socialist victory in Spain, in the wake of the Madrid railway bombings claimed by Al Qaeda, has shaken Blair’s clique and the Bush leadership who were banking on another Spanish conservative leadership victory and its continued support for the criminal occupation of Iraq.

Zapatero’s victory has been welcomed in Paris and Berlin, where they hope Spain will now align itself with Franco-Germany opposition to the occupation within the European Union. And Anglo-American imperialism fears the Spanish defection will trigger the desertion of the other countries they bullied and bribed to send troops to Iraq to provide an international fig-leaf to their neo-colonial occupation.

Welcoming the Spanish decision on Tuesday, Cuban leader Fidel Castro said “more than 1000 young men from small and impoverished Latin American countries were sent to Iraq as cannon-fodder under the command of the Spanish legion. The death of any of those youths is this the responsibility of the Spanish state. The Latin American people have the right to expect the immediate return of those young men”.

pull out

That same day Honduras declared that it will pull out its 370 troops when the Spanish leave in June. Dominica and El Salvador, who have contingents of similar strengths in Iraq, still under the American thumb, say they will maintain their commitment. The fourth member of the Spanish-led “Ultra Plus” brigade, Nicaragua, withdrew its 115 troops in February on the grounds of expense.

Inside Iraq the US-led occupation army is launching waves of raids to terrorise the people into submission. Over 10,000 Iraqi men and boys – the youngest is only 11 – are languishing in makeshift concentration camps accused of assisting the resistance. Some of their families say their relatives have been beaten and tortured. To reduce their own casualties the Americans have put their puppet police on the streets to do their dirty work in daylight while American patrols scour the night ransacking homes, seizing suspects and carrying out collective punishments like the demolition of homes in nationalist areas.

leads to more

But every oppressive step the Americans take leads to more resistance. And the resistance is maintaining the rolling offensive that began last November targeting American troops, the puppet police and all those who serve them.

This week Baghdad was hit by mortar fire and a hotel near the base of a puppet police intelligence centre was destroyed in a rocket attack.

Bush and Blair’s “war on terror” was always a lie – a smokescreen to justify an Anglo-American bid for world domination in the name of the “new world order” and “globalisation”. They dreamed of re-enslaving the Arabs and restoring direct control of the Arabs’ immense oil wealth to the big oil corporations. That dream is dying in the streets of Iraq today.

According to the Pentagon over 668 troops have been killed and over 3,250 wounded since the Iraq war began in March 2003. Resistance estimates are much higher.

deceived

Now the American public are discovering how they were deceived over the “weapons of mass destruction”. Like the British people, many have seen through the lies of Bush and Blair. The demonstrations are growing. The protests are getting louder.

Blair and his clique are leading the Labour Party and the country to disaster. They’ve got to go and all British troops must be withdrawn from Iraq immediately..

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Editorial

Aznár down! Blair next!

THE SPANISH people have spoken, sweeping out the reactionary Popular Party in a wave of anger against the Iraq war. Jose Maria Aznár, the outgoing premier, crawled to Anglo-American imperialism in the hope for some easy pickings after the conquest of Iraq. He sent Spanish troops to get killed and wounded in Iraq and made Spain the target of the wrath of Al Qaeda, whose terror attacks last week devastated Madrid. But the Spanish people saw through him and his worthless party.

While the whole of Spain mourned for the dead and wounded the Aznár government cynically tried to cover up evidence pointing to Al Qaeda to pin the blame on the underground Basque army Eta and gain some cheap political points in the run-up to the election. Fortunately anti-war elements in the Spanish intelligence service leaked the truth to the media and the Socialists in time.

Spain’s new premier, Socialist leader Jose Zapatero, has declared that all Spanish troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by June unless the country comes under United Nations mandate – the preferred option of France and Germany.
“The war in Iraq was a disaster,” Zapatero declared. “The occupation in Iraq is a disaster” adding that “wars such as those which have occurred in Iraq only allow hatred, violence and terror to proliferate”. It wasn’t just a disaster. It was a crime.

Throughout the world, millions are taking to the streets this weekend to demand an end to the war in Iraq. In Britain the demand for a British withdrawal must be linked for the defeat of the Blair leadership. Blair’s leadership of the Labour Party has also been a disaster and a crime. The sooner he goes the better.

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The real masters of terror

Blair and Bush are now in deep trouble. Spain’s withdrawal exposes the occupation of Iraq for what it is – a neo-colonial adventure aimed at seizing Iraq’s oil reserves for the benefit of the big Anglo-American oil corporations.

The apologists of imperialism, the American neo-conservatives and the media rabble around Blair justify their crimes in the name of the “war against terrorism”. They shed crocodile tears over 11 September and the carnage in Madrid and say nothing about the thousands of Iraqi civilians slaughtered by Anglo-American bombing during the war or the millions of Palestinian Arabs living under a brutal Zionist occupation or eking out a miserable existence in the refugee camps They never talk about what causes “global terrorism” . And with good reason, because they themselves are its cause.

Why is British and American imperialism hated throughout the Arab world? What drives some young Arabs to sacrifice themselves in human bomb attacks of the kind we have seen in the United States, Spain and occupied Palestine? It didn’t happen 40 years ago. Why is it happening now?

Imperialist gurus babble on about Islamic fundamentalism and the spirit of the “crusades” but the real reason is that these wild acts of terror are a response to American-led state terrorism directed against the entire Arab world.

While Blair and Bush’s tame journalists prattle on about “human rights”, millions of Palestinian Arabs rot in refugee camps denied the basic human right to return to their own homes.

While imperialist pundits drivel on about “democracy”, the Iraqi people are denied their basic democratic right to independence, the right to choose their own government or control their immense natural resources. Terror will only end when the root causes of terrorism – imperialist oppression – ends.

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