1,000,000 people ... demonstrate on the streets of London

I had many reasons for joining the protestors in Hyde Park.

1. To protest the fact that Blair is completely ignoring popular opinion (as Peter says, a complete change from the Mr Focus Group who got elected), and flouting the democratic process of this country. Not only is he ignoring popular opinion, but he's ignoring his own party, and parliament as a whole.

At the time of the march, MPs were calling for parliament to be reconvened (it was in recess at the time) so that they could question/ Blair about his reasons for going to war. He refused to recall parliament. I wanted (and still want) Blair to fully explain in parliament his reasons. Ignoring this call to reconvene smacks to me of a complete lack of respect for the democratic process -- we elected these MPs to represent us in parliament, and Blair was preventing them from representing us in this matter.

Admittedly, Blair's grasp of "the democratic process" has been shaky at best, ever since the landslide that elected his party, and the last election that still guarantees him an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons.

2. The lack of compelling evidence for a war against Iraq.

I don't think that anybody would disagree that Saddam Hussein is an evil, manipulative man. This, in itself, is not sufficient reason to invade. There have been (and still are) plenty of other leaders with less than exemplary records on Human Rights. We didn't invade Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge were killing millions of people. Why is Iraq different?

There is no compelling evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. For a start, Bin Laden, a radical islamic, hates Hussein, a secular leader of a secular ruling party. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. We're not invading them, though. If there is compelling evidence of this link, why can we, the public, not be trusted with it?

There is no compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps the reason that the UN inspectors have so far found almost nothing is because there's nothing there. Admittedly, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but still.

If the CIA, as they claim, has evidence of WMD in Iraq, why don't they just give this information to the UN inspectors? Again, why can the public not be trusted with more compelling evidence than the vague handwaving we've seen so far?

Or is the evidence that unconvincing and flaky that it has to be carefully massaged through the press and even augmented with plagiarised graduate papers and faked paperwork?

Hell, given the softly-softly approach being taken with North Korea and Iran at the moment (both of whom have pretty advanced nuclear programs), if I was Saddam, I'd get some nukes a.s.a.p. just to stop myself from being invaded.

3. I don't believe that invading Iraq will do anything to stabilise the Middle East, and it's pretty [censored] up right now. At best, we'll be replacing the Iraqi regime with a puppet government that'll collapse after we lose interest, and we'll end up with another theocracy, like Iran. At worst, we'll kill a bunch of innocent civilians, their relatives will vow revenge, and we'll have hundreds of ready recruits for the suicide bomb squads for the next decade or so.

Few people in the Middle East like America, mainly because of their support for Israel. I believe that the best way to guarantee peace in the Middle East would be to occupy Israel with UN peace-keeping troops and knock the Israeli and Palestinian heads together until they both get some sense knocked into them. At the very least, Israel needs to be told to knock that [censored] off. You don't counter suicide bombing by driving [censored] tanks into someone's village and shooting a bunch of people. All that does is antagonise them. Just arrest their asses. Hey, maybe if you stopped treating them like [censored] and stopped stealing their land, they'd chill out and stop climbing onto buses with Semtex strapped to them. When you leave people with only one option, that's generally the option that they take.

4. The current US administration's continual habit of sticking two fingers up at the rest of the world. The ABM treaty. The Kyoto treaty. The current threat to ignore the UN if they don't get their own way. Need I go on?

5. The current US administration's resemblence to a box of weasels. Those people couldn't even pretend to be sincere and trustworthy. These days, they don't even try. They bought the election, appointed a bunch of cronies from big business and are now currently running the country on behalf of the corporations with the deepest pockets.