PROTEST AGAINST GEORGE BUSH’S VISIT TO LONDON

When journalist George Monbiot was asked last week why he had tried to exercise a citizen’s arrest on neocon John Bolton - one of the prime instigators of the Iraq war - he replied, "We must ensure that people do not forget. This is not an ordinary political mistake which was committed in Iraq. This was the supreme international crime, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Those people
were not killed in the ordinary sense; they were murdered.

And they were murdered by the authors of that war, who are the greatest mass murderers of the twenty-first century so far."

On Sunday 15 June, the mass murderer-in-chief George Bush will be visiting Britain to meet with Gordon Brown, who continues to collude obediently with Bush’s war crimes. Stop the War, in conjunction with CND, has called a demonstration on that day, which will assemble in Parliament Square at 1pm.

Our message will be, war criminals are not welcome here. We
have not forgotten the monumental crimes against Iraq and
its people, which — as Independent journalist Patrick
Cockburn has revealed — Bush is planning to extend into
perpetuity, by getting the puppet Iraqi government to rush
through a law making the US occupation permanent. Under this
law, US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct
military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity for
any crimes they commit.

Leading political, legal and cultural figures are joining
the campaign to say that George Bush is not welcome here and
that he should be conducted to a war crimes tribunal that
holds him to account for prosecuting an illegal war. They
include playwright and Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter,
human rights lawyer Louise Christian, former Guantanamo
detainee, Moazzam Begg, novelist Iain Banks and actor Roger
Lloyd Pack. Excerpts from some of the statements, are given
below.

George Bush should be left in no doubt that the majority of
people in this country have always opposed his war policies
and want the withdrawal of all British troops from Iraq now.
We are calling on Gordon Brown to end the British
government’s servile collusion with the "war on terror",
which is in reality a war of terror waged across the world
by American foreign policy.

Please publicise the 15 June demonstration as widely as
possible. Leaflets and posters are available from the Stop
the War office (tel 020 7278 6694). Some cities and towns
outside London have already booked coaches and we expect the
number to grow significantly over the next week.

GEORGE BUSH NOT WELCOME HERE
DEMONSTRATE SUNDAY 15 JUNE, 1.00PM
PARLIAMENT SQUARE, LONDON
Called by Stop the War Coalition and the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament