Killing With Impunity: "It is simply deemed 'beyond the pale' to suggest that British servicemen are risking their lives, and indeed dying, so that small groups of powerful people can make money out of Iraqi oil, out of arms budgets bloated on hyped threats, and as a result of business backhanders from grateful American elites... The truth of the suggestion is irrelevant; what matters is that it contravenes the first rule of 'patriotism': If our troops are fighting and dying, then we must 'support' them in what must be declared 'a noble cause', no matter how cynical or vicious the actual cause - even if 'supporting' them in fact betrays them and allows them to continue being killed for no good reason... One result of this 'patriotic' support is that we have to convince ourselves that the US has increased spending by $87 billion in order to "bring peace and security" to Iraq in an unprecedented act of generosity by a notoriously cynical, far-right US administration packed with fossil fuel fundamentalists willing to sacrifice the very habitability of the planet to short-term profit."

Killing With Impunity: "It is simply deemed 'beyond the pale' to suggest that British servicemen are risking their lives, and indeed dying, so that small groups of powerful people can make money out of Iraqi oil, out of arms budgets bloated on hyped threats, and as a result of business backhanders from grateful American elites... The truth of the suggestion is irrelevant; what matters is that it contravenes the first rule of 'patriotism': If our troops are fighting and dying, then we must 'support' them in what must be declared 'a noble cause', no matter how cynical or vicious the actual cause - even if 'supporting' them in fact betrays them and allows them to continue being killed for no good reason... One result of this 'patriotic' support is that we have to convince ourselves that the US has increased spending by $87 billion in order to "bring peace and security" to Iraq in an unprecedented act of generosity by a notoriously cynical, far-right US administration packed with fossil fuel fundamentalists willing to sacrifice the very habitability of the planet to short-term profit."