Reid: Reality is an Illusion

I'm still not feeling too great. I spent the afternoon on the sofa drinking hot lemon and watching BBC Parliament. I haven't been reading many blogs in the last two or three days due to a runny nose, a fuzzy head, and an even shorter attention span than is normally the case. I had no intention of switching the computer on again today until I had the unfortunate displeasure of watching John Reid making his statement on Iraq.

They say you shouldn't blog angry. Well, what do they know anyway? Grr. Reid appears to have some difficulty in grasping the fundamental nature of reality. Historically, such an attribute would have been considered something of a hindrance to the conduct of good governence. In the murky world of Neo-Labour though, such behaviour is a veritable boon.

Reid set out four conditions which would have to be met in order to begin to draw down UK troop presence in Iraq. My question: is it getting better or is it getting worse?

The conditions were:

1) The level of insurgent activity.
I say worse. I can't see many people disagreeing.

2) The capacity of Iraqi security forces.
The capacity of the Iraqi security forces to operate independently has fallen considerably in recent months according to the US military. Reid avoided answering a question put to him on these figures. He obviously prefers not to talk about it. I say worse and so does the US military (when the truth accidentally slips out anyway).

3) The capacity of provincial bodies to take on security work.
The authorities in Basra are still refusing to cooperate with UK troops. By any measure that must a very serious barrier to making progress on this condition. Worse.

4) The level of support needed from coalition forces.
Well, on this I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say it's not getting worse. There might be a case to be made it's certainly more contentious than the other three.

So, on three of the four conditions there is currently no progress. In fact, these conditions are looking less achievable now than they were six months ago. This is not good news. This is very bad news. Reid can warble on all he wants about historic achievements and all the rest of it but it's all based on a pipe dream. The reality is that Iraq is slowly descending into chaos and that the current strategy is failing. Just like alchoholism, there is no way for the government to deal with this problem unless they are first prepared to admit that it exists. This would, of course, be politically unacceptable to the Neo-Labour lackeys who slavishly follow teh Blair.

In the meantime, people continue to die in Iraq in large numbers. Reid thinks that the press should spend more time reporting the good news and less reporting the bad. Well, that would surely be easier if Iraq was not one of the most dangerous places in the world. I suspect this tends to restrict the media's ability to report what is happening in Iraq, good or bad. As I understand it, the situation is not hugely conducive to the filming of uplifting human interest stories. Reid appears to disagree.

Well, I've an idea. Let's get Mr Reid, along with a handful of those Neo-Labour cheermonkeys who ask those pitifully sycophantic questions in the Commons, and send them to Iraq for a month so that they can record all the good news they can find. It might be an idea to send some professional war supporting journalists to help them in their quest. David Aaronovitch would seem a decent candidate. Maybe some war bloggers too? Of course, they'll probably all be killed but with any luck they'll be able to record a reasonable amount of good news footage before that happens. And as long as the footage survives it will surely have been a worthwhile endeavor. Right?