500

Did I hear right on the BBC News earlier that 500 people a day are dying in Iraq? George Bush, of course, doesn't believe the statistics. Nobody should, really. 500 people per day is a ludicrous number. It is a fantastic number (in the sense of something plucked from the more lunatic borders of the imagination). But it's very likely still true.

We have gone into a country held together by fear and liberated it to be ripped apart by murder. What a sterling job the forces of democracy are doing in the world. We've now f*cked it up so comprehensively in Iraq, ironically, that we may have to stay there to prevent a disaster from becoming a catastrophe.

It's terrifying, given what Bush and Blair have done in Iraq, that Bush at least is now rattling his cutlass in the direction of North Korea, as well as the bullish Iran. And his rhetoric, at least, is becoming downright thuggish as he addresses the issue of North Korea's nuclear testing, where prior to the Iraq invasion he only displayed slightly psychotic religious zeal. Before he's finished he will have pushed us all towards Armaggedon (is that how it's spelled, George?)

How, you might wonder, can the most unpopular American president (in his own country) since Nixon get away with it? How did Tony Blair mount and maintain an invasion of a sovereign power when the vast majority of the British population didn't support it? Representative democracy, my friends. There might be an M.P. who speaks for Wellingborough in the House of Commons, but he certainly doesn't speak for me.

Does your Congressman or Senator speak for you? Does that Republican speak for as many people, in his state, as the Democrat in the next state along speaks for his?