I don't know about the Ides of March, but if you're a country that doesn't kow-tow sufficiently to the demands of Uncle Sam and global capital, you've certainly got to beware being bombed back to the Stone Age in the month of March. In March 1999 it was Yugoslavia which got the B52 treatment, exactly four years later it was Iraq.

Both wars were illegal, both were fought on a fraudulent prospectus. And that's why those who engineered and propagandised for them repeatedly call for us to 'move on'. But 'move on' is what we must never do, certainly not until those responsible for those conflicts are held accountable for their actions in a court of law.

To mark both the 10th anniversary of the aggression against Yugoslavia and the 6th anniversary of the aggression against Iraq, I thought it would be appropriate to remind us of the things that the great and the good said about Yugoslavia and Iraq in the lead up to those conflicts.

To start, here's the letter which eight European leaders penned to several newspapers, stressing their support for the US stance on Iraq.

It's a classic propaganda piece which Dr Goebbels would have been proud of.

Here are some extracts:

"The transatlantic relationship must not become a casualty of the current Iraqi regimes's persistent attempts to threaten world security"

"The Iraqi regime and its weapons of mass destruction represent a clear threat to world security".

"We Europeans have reiterated our backing for Resolution 1441...In doing so, we sent a clear, firm and unequivocal message that we would rid the world of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction".

"Our goal is to safeguard world peaceby ensuring that this regime gives up its weapons of mass destruction".

It would be funny wouldn't it, if the results of this propaganda (up to 1m dead), were not so tragic.

And what happened, I hear you ask, to the writers of this letter?

Well, Tony Blair is now Middle East envoy, receiving $1m prizes for his "exceptional leadership and steadfast determination in helping to engineer agreements and forge lasting solutions to areas in conflict".

Jose Barroso became EU President. While Vaclav Havel, the neocons favourite playwright, is still feted as a man of great 'wisdom'.

By rights none of the men who penned this letter should play any further part in public life. Either they genuinely believed that sanctions-devastated Iraq posed a 'clear threat to world security'(in which case they are too stupid to hold public office), or, they knew that the Iraqi 'threat' was bogus. In which case they are too dishonest to hold public office.

Which is it, chaps?

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