A Straw Man

Following on from yesterday's piece about what Jack Straw actually said at the Labour Party Conference...Robert Fisk is giving the keynote lecture at the Document 3 Film Festival (21st – 24th October) in Glasgow on Oct 15th.
The Independent recently offered an extract from his new book “How the World was Duped: the Race to Invade Iraq” where he writes a beautiful vignette on that wee toady lickspittle Straw at the UN. Here he recounts the marvellous moment where Jack meets US “Dove” (sic) Colin Powell:

"There was a wonderful moment when the little British home secretary Jack Straw entered the chamber through the far right-hand door in a massive power suit, his double-breasted jacket apparently wrapping itself twice around Britain's most famous ex-Trot. He stood for a moment with a kind of semi-benign smile on his uplifted face, his nose in the air as if sniffing for power. Then he saw Powell and his smile opened like an umbrella as his small feet, scuttling beneath him, propelled him across the stage and into the arms of Powell for his big American hug.

You might have thought that the whole chamber, with its toothy smiles and constant handshakes, contained a room full of men celebrating peace rather than war. Alas, not so. These elegantly dressed statesmen were constructing the framework that would allow them to kill quite a lot of people - some of them Saddam's little monsters no doubt, but most of them innocent. When Powell rose to give his terror-talk, he did so with a slow athleticism, the world-weary warrior whose patience had at last reached its end.”

Full article here.

Ther's some great pictures of Straw on tour here, courtesy of Indymedia Manchester and Limmy has a good question for him here.