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July 07, 2005

Helena Cobban's 'Thoughts Of London'

Helena Cobban at the always-interesting Just World News has "thoughts of London." About today's attacks, she wrote:

This seems like a ghastly, Qaeda-orchestrated replay of the March 2004 Madrid bombings. I imagine that all of London is as hurt and shattered as the Madrilenos were at that time. I just spoke with my sister Diana, who lives in far-west London. She and her family are ok, but she sounded very, very sobered by what was unfolding.

I have numerous other friends and family in London to worry about, too. My niece Rachel is an emergency-room doc at the Royal London Hospital near Liverpool St. Station, which has been taking in many of the casualties. All power to her life-saving elbow in these hours.

So Qaeda (or whichever other actually terrorist group) has been busy organizing all this-- not entirely unpredictable by the British authorities, on the day the G-8 summit opens in the UK?-- while the British and US governments have been expending truly massive amounts of blood, treasure, and national-level attention on pursuing their wholly unjustified war in Iraq?

Talk about a wholly unnecessary and diversionary expenditure of national energies. Ms. Cobban said, "If they had not launched the war against Iraq, but had instead invested one-fourth as much time and finances in a smart policy aimed at (1) doing the solid police work of tracking down and incapacitating the Qaeda leadership, and (2) denying that leadership an operating base by engaging politically with the legitimate demands of potential Qaeda condoners... If the Bush and Blair administrations had done that, Qaeda could have been wiped off the map as an operating force, quite possibly as long ago as late 2002, or 2003."

Posted by Munir Umrani at July 7, 2005 04:48 PM

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