cob
David Hembrow
Very early in the morning of Wednesday 19th March 2003 I caught a coach from from the bus station in the centre of Cambridge to Gatwick airport to take a flight to Poland for a business trip. It's just as well that I had a ticket booked in advance as that meant I could skip past an impressively long queue of American students who also wanted to get on the coach, some of them crying and trying to force their way on because they thought they'd be dead in 45 minutes if they couldn't get a flight back to the USA.
Gatwick was full, largely of Americans who wanted to flee to "safety". The El-Al checkin was also a bit bonkers, with many security people with machine guns drawn. Overall this was not a pleasant place to be.
My flight to Poland was on a full aeroplane.
I did a day's work in Poland and woke up to CNN reporting that the US had started the much anticipated war, having invaded Iraq, with "weapons of mass destruction" being the tenuous reason. Everyone who was paying attention knew that was a lie. The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, went full in with G W Bush.
Listen also to weapons inspector Hans Blix's presentation about the absence of WMDs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb_YmBdxxCs
#wmds #war #iran #iraq #year2003
