Responding to comments on the euston manifesto, ifor has said that "it is difficult ..no impossible... to make common cause with those who supported the sending of cruise missiles, the use of tens of thousands of depleted uranium artillery shells and the dropping of high explosives on residential areas."

the Euston site comments that yes, some convenors of the Euston Manifesto supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq - but it also comments that a number of the original signatories opposed that war.

My position was that I opposed the war, and marched against it, with over a million people in Sydney (my friend stopped counting out over 1,100, 000 people), and yes, it was represented as under half that in the press. I was against the war even tho, as someone who had worked with Iraqi asylum seekers, I was very aware that the Baathist regime was insanely brutal and repressive. It was clear to me that the regime of Saddam Hussein was propped up by the US govt, and that the new leader would be no different from Hussein.

I have previously put links on mudcat to information that Saddam's replacement was also a butcher: New Iraqi Head of Govt Murders Prisoners and to the US government's assistance to Saddam's regime with the purchase of chemical weapons. US passing to the Iraqi government blueprints for their first chemical weapon

In the BBC article I linked to, Norman Geras (writer of the manifesto) "This is not an endorsement of New Labour or the third way."

I agree with Guardian columnist Martin Kettle who said regarding the manifesto: "America is not the problem; on that the manifesto is right. But the Bush administration unquestionably is. .The pro-war school, both among the authors and in the British government, never properly acknowledges the historic rupture represented by Bush. But it would not have been like this if Al Gore had won in 2000."

I don't accept that they are "a bunch of former leftists pro war apologists" - though I accept that some of them are. Ifor by making generalisations about the supporters of the mainfesto, you are effectively saying that no part of it has any value.

It is clear that the supporters of the manifesto come from left and right. Norman Geras' said that he has tried to write a document outside the definistions of left and right. And this is something worth doing - each major party in the US, the UK and Australia has people across the spectrum of belief. By trying to define people back into boxes and entrenched positions of ideological opposition, the left stays divided and out of government.

The people who write these manifestos and come up with many socially constructive policies are often never in government. It is often others working within more pragmatic environments who can use ideas and achieve results with them.

freda