Peace Group despairs at Brown’s betrayal on troop reductions

Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group has expressed despair at the news that the government has "betrayed" its commitment to reduce British troop numbers in Iraq from 4,100 to 2,500 by May 2008.

Philip Gilligan said: “I despair at the government’s warmongering and I despair at its seemingly endless lies about Iraq. In October 2007, Gordon Brown tried to create the impression that his government would be pursuing different policies to those that he supported under Tony Blair. However, it is now clear that this was nothing more than a cynical smokescreen designed to mislead voters in the run-up to a possible general election in November.

"Simon Danczuk, the Labour parliamentary candidate for Rochdale claims that he can “sense a different mood in the party under Gordon Brown.” However, we all know that ‘actions speak louder than words’ and, to date, Brown’s actions on Iraq have been no different to Blair’s. At the same time, Labour’s parliamentary candidate tells us that he does not think it “sensible” to debate whether British troops should be in Iraq and that now is not “the right time” for an inquiry into the government’s disastrous actions and policies there.

"In fact, we hardly need an inquiry to establish the pertinent facts of the situation. We, already, know that we were lied to about weapons of mass destruction in 2003. We, now, know that we were lied to about troop reductions in 2007. We know that tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died violent deaths as the result of the illegal invasion. We know that a total of 923 civilians died violently in Iraq in the 31 days of March 2008, alone. We know that 4,012 US troops, 176 British troops and an undisclosed number of so-called ‘security contractors’ have been killed during the past 5 years. We know that there are still over 4,000 British troops in Iraq. We know that Gordon Brown and David Milliband, like Tony Blair and Jack Straw before them, will do whatever the White House and the Pentagon tell them to do.

"We, also, know that the best way to ‘support our troops’ is, in fact, to bring them home, immediately.”