Berkhamsted

Stop the War

CHAIN FOR PEACE : took place at 11am outside Berkhamsted Civic Centre on Saturday 8th March : see PHOTOS

WHEN WAR BROKE OUT : We gathered for a candlelight vigil outside Berkhamsted Civic centre.

WHY WE CANNOT SUPPORT THIS WAR : CLICK here

We mourn the thousands of Iraqi civilians - children, mothers, uncles, grandparents like yours - dead because of this unsanctioned war, and mourn too for the much smaller number of British and American soldiers who have died. These are mostly just young men, dying because of political quarrels of which they have no part.

We salute the extraordinary courage of the young soldiers of Umm Qasr, who were vastly outnumbered by the invading forces, and yet seemed ready to sacrifice their lives against almost impossible odds. We mourn the thousands of ordinary Iraqi soldiers who died, bombed to oblivion from far above their heads, unable to fight a fight of valour because their invading enemy did not meet them face to face. That was not honourable.

We deeply regret, and are ashamed of, the use of British invading troops against the will of the international community. We do not criticise the invading troops themselves - they are men and women under orders - who would envy them their jobs? We criticise Tony Blair and George Bush, who chose to defy the United Nations.

They went to war, they told us, because Saddam was hiding weapons of mass destruction and these supposed weapons were SO dangerous to us that we had to rush to war rather than give the inspectors and the international community time to try to avoid all this bloodshed. Britain and the US went to war because they said these weapons of mass destruction were an immediate threat. But... NO weapons of mass destruction have been found. Britain and the US ignored the international community, but their main reason for all these deaths turned out to be wrong.

Visit Iraq Body Count to see the scrupulous evidence collected, incident by incident, about the death of over 10000 Iraqi civilians. The occupying authorities in Iraq refuse to keep statistics on civilian casualties but Iraq Body Count is a group of respected British and U.S. academics that bases its figures on cross-referenced reports from journalists and human rights groups in the field. "If the war was fought on false pretences," John Sloboda of the Body Count says, "that means that every death caused by the war is a death on false pretences."

Our thoughts go out to the entire Iraqi people, and especially the young, and we will continue to say : "Stop the War" until the war is, indeed, stopped. Because, at this moment, Iraqi civilians continue to die. Iraq continues to be occupied.

This was a war that the British Public said (by repeated polls of 80% or above) that they did not want without the proper due processes of the UN and the support of the international community. The people of Britain were not listened to. Tony Blair took this country into war - with all the civilian deaths that followed - against the wishes of the people of Britain. His main reason to justify the war turned out to be a falsehood.

We in safe middle-class Berkhamsted protested at the time. We still mourn each soldier hurt or killed, each little child maimed or murdered. We believe this war was wrong and has increased the motives for terrorism.

Another Wedding Party bombed - over 40 dead, some of them children...

How do you "liberate" dead children?