It seems to me that the Americans particularly are creating a worsening situation for themselves by not adapting to what is happening around them in Iraq. It is clear that the terrorist groups operating in Iraq have a good network established, albeit a small minority of people, but nonetheless it is proving effective. The acknowledgement by Tony Blair that the war in Iraq has entered a new phase effectively signalled that at last somebody has realised that it is a guerrila war situation out there. The Americans are still fighting in Iraq on far more conventional terms, and their apparent inability to change tack and adopt a far more subtle and adaptive approach is backfiring on their efforts to secure the mission goal of freedom and democracy for Iraqis. Unless they start doing so, and soon this will undo the mission in time and greatly hinder our chances of achieving our goals. I still believe we will win through but I am concerned that the commanders seem to be out of touch with what is needed now.

Though I hate polls, it was interesting to see that there was one today that said 60% of Iraqis supported the Allawi regime. Should that be the case, and I have to say I do take polls with a rather large vat of salt, it is good news. But even if those statistics represent the truth that still leaves a substantial minority that are either ambivolent or actively hostile. This is what the US and UK forces should be working on - to persuade the ambivolent we want to include them in the shaping of the country and to find out the reasons for the hostiles' position. Then depending on that information we either try to prove to the less radical that we want to help them help themselves, and then marginalise or discredit the hostiles that simply want to cause as much harm to people as feasibly possible. Of course this could well be happening as I type - but I see precious little evidence of it and that concerns me.

The wider issue of terrorism was also debated, and as a precursor to this Mikhail Gorbachev was interviewed. What is clearer to me now than ever after listening to this is something that I have argued about many times before - that our continuing exploitation of the poorest people and natural resources is creating more resentment amongst those who have less than a dollar a day to live on. Our unsustainable lifestyle is having an effect, not only on our environment, but also on the people who are used to manufacture and extract the materials that continue to make us richer almost entirely at their expense. How can it be that over half the world's population is forced to survive on or below one dollar a day? It is a breeding ground for fundamentalists like al-Zarqawi to recruit his next suicide bombers from! This exploitation has to stop, or in future I fear we will see a groundswell of new recruits to terrorist networks and more deadly terrorist acts against us.

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quote:

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LONDON (Reuters) - Britain plans to spend an extra 100 million pounds a year on debt relief for some of the world's poorest countries, the Guardian has reported.

The government says the money will go to more than 30 countries to help them repay debts to the World Bank and African Development Bank.

"We intend to lead by example," Chancellor Gordon Brown will say in a speech on Sunday, the Guardian has reported.

Brown will call on the world's biggest donors to do the same when he attends the annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) next month.

Brown, who chairs the IMF's top policy-setting group, will repeat his longstanding call for IMF gold reserves to be revalued to release cash for debt relief.

Under a 1971 agreement, most IMF gold is valued at just $40 an ounce, or one-tenth of current market prices.

The IMF holds 103.4 million ounces of gold, one of the biggest gold stocks in the world, which is valued on its balance sheet at $8.5 billion (4.7 billion pounds).

"We cannot bury the hopes of half of humanity in the lifeless vaults of gold," Brown will say ahead of the Labour Party's annual conference, which opens on Sunday.

World Bank President James Wolfensohn said on Friday the U.S. government had discussed with him a plan to cancel poor countries' debt to global institutions.

According to one estimate by the Jubilee Debt Campaign, a London-based pressure group, poor countries around the world owe more than $200 billion.

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Great Britain alone has already wiped the debts of 15 countries clean, after the turn of the millennium.

This is a step in the right direction. Abject poverty enforced by US multinationals and institutions suhc as the IMF and World Bank is one of the leading causes of terrorist sympathy - so don't bomb brown people, help them! Improve their lives without using guns and missiles, show them that the west is capable of great good, without blowing up their husbands and sons.

I can't see the US following suit, the large multinationals that have both the Democrats and Republican politicians in their pockets have plenty of exploiting to do out there yet.

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As for "brown people", it's not derogatory, any more than I'm "white" and my friend Richard is "black". It's better than the "sand-nigger" jibe I hear from certain sources in your country. Words only become derogatory when you ascribe negative connotations to them.

The UK takes presidency of the G8 next year, let's hope it pushes debt relief for Africa to the top of the agenda.

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