Response to Guardian Diary

The Guardians lead diary story below is based on a false premise which an
easy check would have found: the meeting organised by Progress does not just consist of the three people mentioned but also includes Sadiq Khan, the newly elected Labour MP for Tooting and an opponent of the war.

The panel had included John Denham MP who had resigned as a Home Office minister because of his opposition to the war.

Progress selects its invited speakers. I just see it as a useful opportunity to persuade people – whatever their position on the invasion – of the need to increase solidarity with Iraqi democrats and the new labour movement.

Having attended a commemoration of the 18th anniversary of the Halbja attack - part of Saddam’s genocidal Anfal campaign which claimed nearly 200,000 lives - I don't retract my pre-war belief, shared by many others, that
Saddam had WMD. He certainly had had WMD as we know Halabja and Anfal and the war with Iran.

Anyway, they spelt the name correctly.

Gary Kent
Director LFIQ

Jon Henley
Tuesday March 14, 2006

Heartening to see that even the freethinkers at Progress (aim: to promote "open debate and discussion of progressive ideas and policies" in the Labour party) are still so solidly behind our leader's Great Iraqi Adventure. For a moment there, the group's March 21 talk – Three Years On: the Lessons for Labour from Iraq - looked like it might actually yield a spot of dangerously off-message debate. Thankfully, however, we see the three panelists are: a) pro-war MP Gisela Stuart, who backed Bush because Kerry would only encourage the suicide bombers; b) Oliver Kamm, banker and part-time Times columnist, who recently told Hove residents to vote Tory because their Labour candidate opposed the war; and c) Gary Kent, director of Labour Friends of Iraq, who once thought it was "a fair assumption" Saddam had WMD, and still thinks Blair "could be right" about the war. Lots of progressive ideas there, then.

Corrections and clarifications

Wednesday March 15, 2006
The Guardian

In the lead item in our Diary, page 29, yesterday, we seemed to be suggesting that all the speakers scheduled to talk at an Iraq event organised by Progress were supporters of the war in Iraq. We overlooked the name of the anti-war MP Sadiq Khan in the panel of speakers. Another anti-war MP, John Denham, had also agreed to speak but has since withdrawn due to other commitments. See www.progressives.org.uk.