spinbadz own

The British forces were operating as part of a multinational force under an explicit UN mandate, to protect oil installations and prevent the smuggling of guns into Iraq - guns with which more Iraqis would otherwise be killed.

According to the sophisticated GPS instruments which the British service personnel had with them, they were more than three kilometres inside Iraqi territorial waters when they went to search a suspect vessel. Reflecting the confusion inside the Iranian state, the first coordinates for the allegedly transgressing British boats given to the British by the Iranian government turned out to be within Iraqi territorial waters too (!)

Not until three days later did the Iranians come up with a second "corrected" set of coordinates which conveniently put the British forces on the wrong side of the line.

Those who follow ... (the hostage-taking) ... closely may wonder if the Revolutionary Guards were not making an indirect tit-for-tat response to American seizures of Iranians in Iraq, perhaps even hoping for a hostage swap.

Or perhaps just an angry reaction to the latest UN security council resolution about Iran's nuclear programme - which was actually passed a day after the kidnapping, but its contents were well-known beforehand. That resolution extends targeted sanctions to companies controlled by the Revolutionary Guards and to individuals including the commander of the Revolutionary Guards navy. But I would bet my bottom euro that no ... continental Europeans' synapses will have fired spontaneously with this thought: "Our fellow-Europeans have been kidnapped, so what can we, as Europe, do in response?"

(T)here is something Europe should do: flex its economic muscles.

The EU is by far Iran's biggest trading partner. ... Remarkably, this trade has grown strongly in the last years of looming crisis. Much of it is underpinned by export credit guarantees given by European governments, notably those of Germany, France and Italy. ... Iran comes second to none in terms of the proportion of German exports - in recent years up to 65% - underwritten by the German government.

The total government underwriting commitment in 2005 was €5.8bn (£3.9bn), ... As the squeeze grows on Iran from UN sanctions and their knock-on effects, and as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fails to deliver on his populist economic promises, this European trade becomes ever more vital ...

The following report would defy belief, were we not inured to the cowardly violence perpetrated by terrorists every day in Iraq:

79-year-old Margaret Naoum and 85-year-old Fawzeiyah Naoum, 85 (both nuns) — were killed in their home near the Cathedral of the Virgin (in Kirkuk). They lived alone and there was no sign of a robbery ...

Naoum was stabbed seven times as she stood in the garden just outside the house, while Naoum was stabbed three times while lying on the sofa inside as she was recovering from eye surgery last week.

On Saturday, a man wearing an explosives belt blew himself up outside a pastry shop in Tal Afar's central market area, killing at least 10 people and wounding three.

(A)dults in a vehicle with two children in the backseat ... parked next to a market in the Adamiya area of Baghdad, abandoned the vehicle and detonated it with the children still inside.

"Children in the back seat, lower suspicion, we let it move through," said Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations in the Joint Staff at the Pentagon.

Probably the most uplifting news report I have read in 4 years of the Iraq conflict is this one detailing recent comments of General David Petraeus, the commander of the "surge" troops in Iraq

That is, in Nut-Speak: all the 'horrible aims of that evil Bush and his imperialist US' finally seem to have a chance of succeeding.

Including the burning desire of the 'imperialists' to get out of Iraq as soon as decently possible.

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