Thorny Issues

Let's get something straight at the start - I thought at the time and still do that David Davies was an egotistical prat. His puerile display of self gratification when he resigned his seat and forced a farcical re-election campaign was a mighty waste of time and money and an abuse of an arguably daft political system. The only decent outcome is that he remains in the political wilderness.

However, if anything, it detracted us all from the thing he was supposedly trying to highlight - the erosion of civil liberty by the extension of the detention period of an unaccused individual to 42 days. I believe strongly in civil liberty and habeas corpus but when it comes to Terrorism it becomes a massive grey area and the security of the public is paramount. If it stood as a general point then I would have supported him.

'Known Knowns and Known Unknowns'

Rumsfeld's famous phrase is worth repeating. We live in a world which has changed dramatically since the day the world stopped on 9/11. I vividly recall the events unfolding before me in sheer aghast horror and relived them in the excellent film Flight 93. I recall equally being on a train into London when 7/7 occurred and worrying how my wife was in her office in Spitalfields unobtainable - then seeing the carnage that had been wrought not by foreign terrorists but from citizens of our own. The world had changed beyond all recognition.

So when the US response came in Afghanistan, I had no quibble. But when we jointly invaded Iraq and John Charles De Menezes was gunned down in cold blood on a train in London, I believed we had changed the world for the worse, not the terrorists. Blair always said that it was the terrorists who did it, they started it, but I do not for one minute believe that terrorism was on George W Bush's mind when he ordered the invasion of Iraq and I don't think that terrorists train or compel police to be incompetent.

Since these events we have constantly been held in a state of low level terror, drip-fed information designed to keep us on our toes and to agree with policy. We have let Guatanamo go by as a necessary method to treat indeterminate people on non-sovereign territory while Abu Ghraib was put down to over zealous individuals rather than a Supreme Command that basically said do what you want to these people - they are worthless. A lack of understanding of a complex situation has caused terrible loss of life in Afghanistan and Iraq and it came from the dreadful lack of planning and knowledge displayed by leaders like Bush, Blair, Brown and Rumsfeld.

When interviewed about a year ago, a US Marine in Iraq was asked by a reporter, 'Why are you here?' He replied with total honesty, 'Because of 9/11.' Yet Iraq and Saddam Hussein by Bush's own words had nothing to do with 9/11.

This has been the problem with the escalation of world tension. Even our own incompetent Intelligence Agencies who fell to Alistair Campbell's leadership and produced the piece of shocking fairy tale that was the basis of our decision to invade Iraq, have said that by invading Iraq we would cause more terrorism - because we have now given anyone with a gripe against the West a focal point to do so, a raison d'etre and a good career.

Why Should We Think Again?

I bring this very tough subject up on two counts. Firstly, and most importantly, amid all the lambasting about Government incompetence over its handling of the Financial Fiasco, the 145th British Soldier died yesterday in Afghanistan since 2001. He was from the First Batallion of Rifles and he died in Helmand Province. He followed Marine Darren Smith who died of his wounds on Saturday while being transferred to Camp Bastion.

While I query why our soldiers are being used this way, I think they are the best and bravest people on this earth. They are dying on our behalf and there is no greater sacrifice. Remember that today for the sake of the families of those two men and the 143 others who have died in Afghanistan alone.

It will put the rest of our troubles into perspective.

The second reason I bring this subject up is that Dame Stella Rimington, former Head of MI5, has spoken out against the West's policies. "The US has gone too far with Guantanamo and the tortures. MI5 does not do that," she said. "Furthermore it has achieved the opposite effect - there are more and more suicide terrorists finding a greater justification."

She has previously been critical of the government's policies, including its attempts to extend pre-charge detention for terror suspects to 42 days and the controversial plan to introduce ID cards. "It would be better that the government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism - that we live in fear and under a police state," she said.

Her comments come ahead of the publication by the International Commission of Jurists which is chaired by Former Irish President Mary Robinson who said, "Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and to repeal abusive laws and policies enacted in recent years. Human rights and international humanitarian law provide a strong and flexible framework to address terrorist threats."

The report contends that the US and UK undermine the framework of International Law. Personally I think they repeatedly break International Law in the name of Freedom and Democracy - the two virtues we wish to bring to the worlds they invade. Our example of what Freedom and Democracy is about is pretty questionable.