Have the bombs scared the government? Andrew Gilligan says that some Whitehall officials fear that sending more troops to Afghanistan might be an unnecessary provocation.

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 23-JUL-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

Watching the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw this week, as he denied any link whatever between the London bombings and the war in Iraq, I must confess that I felt the tiniest prickle of sympathy. How undignified it must be, endlessly having to pretend that black is white, the sun sets in the east and the Pope's religion is really not quite as simple an issue as some irresponsible commentators make out.

It is of course true, as Mr Straw says, that al-Qa'eda wanted to attack us long before the Iraq war, and did attack several of our allies. But London was something quite new: the first al-Qa'eda attack against a Western country carried out by its own citizens. As the intelligence services predicted before the war, and as the government's own research reported after it, Iraq has radicalised a significant cadre of British Muslims, a few of whom are prepared to become foot soldiers of terror. The war may not have increased al-Qa'eda's desire to harm us; but it probably did increase its capacity to harm us. And although Mr Straw is officially permitted to blame the attacks on...

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