With George Bush due shortly in London, the Guardian’s David Aaronovitch has a few words for the inevitable protestors:
“The double standards here are obvious but worth a reminder. During the week anti-Bush protesters will, we’re told, be splashing red paint to symbolise the spilled blood of the people of Iraq. No such red paint was splashed around London after Halabja, after the 1991 Shia and Kurdish uprisings or during the Iran-Iraq war, almost as if that were not real Iraqi blood. Blood, after all, is only blood if Americans spill it.
“No crimson splotches were created during the state visit of Romanian tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu in 1978, a visit which – because of Romania’s semi-dissident position in the Soviet bloc – suited both cold warriors and sections of the Left. Earlier this year the Chechnya-enmired President Putin escaped almost any kind of demonstration.”
Hypocrites.