That is a happy New Year to all Iranians. I myself am British but I lived in Iran in the 1970's. I display two pictures. One is a pastry shop which will have been much visited over this festive period and the other is of goldfish-left!- which are essential to the layout of the ceremonial items for this day, the first of spring which Iranians and Afghanis celebrate.
The earth breathes again, life begins its cycle here.
However, my mind is on sadder things and that is Iraq. I have here an excerpt from John Simpson's article about intelligence (read STUPIDITY) gathered in Iraq before the invasion.
Remember 1,000,000 people have now lost their lives there.
This blog should link directly to the full article. Or just click> HERE
Here is the excerpt:
Saddam's secret
I've gathered from government sources over a period of time that British intelligence had two or three agents on the fringes of Saddam Hussein's inner circle here.
They would have sent their reports to London by radio, and must have been remarkably brave men.
But they weren't close enough to Saddam to know the best-kept secret of his rule: that at some stage in the 1990s, he got rid of most of his weapons of mass destruction.
But why should he want to keep that a secret? British officials believe it's because he was afraid his neighbour, Iran, would take advantage of his weakness, and invade.
It has emerged that MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, was up-front about its lack of first-class intelligence about Iraq.
It told Tony Blair it hadn't known much about Iraq's work on chemical and biological weapons since 1988.
But that wasn't the impression Mr Blair gave to Parliament. As we've seen, he called the intelligence "extensive, detailed and authoritative".
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