Don't let our lads die for American oil

BRITISH TROOPS WILL soon be dying in fighting America's war against Iraq.

That is becoming ever clearer as preparations grow in Washington for an all out war and invasion, aimed at conquering Baghdad and toppling the Iraqi Government.

In any such war it is clear Tony Blair will send British troops to their deaths at the behest of President Bush.

British troops dying in faraway deserts might be a sad necessity if they were doing so in a fight to save European civilisation from the very real global menace of militant Islam. But that¹s not what they¹ll be doing. In being sent to overthrow Saddam Hussein, our troops will be fighting the least Islamic fundamentalist Government in the whole Middle East (except for Israel!).

Saddam¹s Ba¹ath (Renaissance) Party is a secular nationalist movement founded by a Lebanese Christian and enjoying the support of Iraq's ancient Chaldean Christian community. The Baghdad Government has long opposed the rule of the mullahs.

Iraq never had anything to do with Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda, and any terrorists it may have trained in recent years have been a reaction to the brutal sanctions imposed on the country by America, which have caused a massive increase in Iraqi infant mortality. If someone is killing your children, you may not be too particular as to who you help hit back at them.

In contrast America turns a blind eye to the West's real enemy in the area, Saudi Arabia.

It is Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan and still less Iraq, which is the heart and wellspring of the Islamic war on the West. Saudis, not Iraqis, set up Al Qaeda, with Saudi Government money. Most key al-Qaeda leaders, from bin Laden downward, are Saudis, including most of the 9/11 terrorists who attacked New York and Washington.

The Saudi sheikhs' regime is at this very moment bankrolling fundamentalist anti-Western Islamic terrorists around the world. In fact, everything America accuses Iraq of doing wrong, Saudi Arabia is doing worse!

Except for one thing. The Saudi regime provides the oil on which the US has stupidly become dependent. When he moved into Kuwait, for centuries part of Iraq anyway, and toppled its corrupt al-Sabah sheikhs, Saddam Hussein threatened that US oil supply.

That is his real crime in the eyes of the White House. That is what British soldiers will be dying in the desert for ­ American oil, not Western freedom.

American oil, that is America¹s problem, not ours, and not worth a drop of British blood. If America wants to fight a real war against the Islamic menace, they should march on Riyadh, not Baghdad, and topple the sheikhs, not Saddam.

If Tony Blair wants to fight Islamic terrorism, he can do it nearer home still. Not by sending our soldiers to die in deserts thousands of miles away. But by sending our policemen to mosques in London, and Birmingham, and Bradford, and Burnley, where Britain-hating mullahs recruit terrorists to fight for Islam against our country, our freedom and our way of life.