Britain's anti-terrorism campaign exposes the British government's cynicism and hypocrisy, writes Gavin Bowd The august medieval town of St Andrews could be seen as aloof from the tawdry politicking of current times. Its last taste of geopolitics was five years ago when the Commonwealth summit "retreated" to its manicured domain. Nelson Mandela had walked the cobbled streets with Tony Blair. The president of Ghana had shot a disastrous round at the Old Course, in front of a sparse crowd of seagulls and security guards. And that was that. However, St Andrews is not divorced from the war against terror. Its streets are currently patrolled by Special Branch policemen far more intimidating than Fife constables attuned to the carousing and vomitting of students at "The Times University of the Year". According to sources in the university administration, Prince William, probably the last king to ever grace the British throne, has shot up the charts of terrorist targets. He risks losing more than his younger brother, Harry, whose body hair is currently sought for deeply compromising DNA tests. The story does not end with Prince William, whose choice of a degree in geography, rather than art history, no doubt chastens the Foreign Office. St Andrews is making a mint from the academic terror industry. Professor Paul Wilkinson, from his cliff-top mansion, holds forth on the "terrorist threat". In the 1980s, he spent his previous "scholarly" life warning us of the massive Communist threat in the UK (which, unfortunately, never came to fruition). Now, this hireling of the military-industrial complex colonises the airwaves to regurgitate information likely to justify war against the "Axis of Evil" and its benighted inhabitants. In the crowded, cut-throat graduate market, the University of St Andrews, thanks to 9/11, is on to a winner. The proliferation of perilous discourse does not end there, sadly. The last weeks have seen no end to "revelations" about the terror threat. At Westminster, a committee of MPs expressed alarm at news that more than 12 years ago, before the Gulf War, an Iraqi chemist was studying biological warfare at a British university laboratory. This was accompanied by the jaw-dropping news that the Iraqi regime had used torture against people on its territory. Such outstanding triumphs for the truth were as relevant as last Yuletide's saga of a "Terror Ship" bearing down on Tilbury Docks with its killer cargo of demerara sugar. Of course, Iraq used chemical weapons against the Kurds but at the time such news did not bring condemnation of an ally in the fight against the mullahs, or Muslim religious clerics. Indeed, the New York Times has recently indicated that the US encouraged Saddam to use this crushing force. The alleged illegal research took place in British university laboratories only a few years after the US had poisoned South-East Asia for decades to come. And these "unsuspecting" Faculties of Sciences had shown great alacrity in conferring honorary degrees on "world- renowned biochemist" Elena Ceausescu, spouse of the "Danube of the Mind", himself decorated by Queen Elizabeth II. And as Syria's president visits London this week, there will be little talk of torture over the amuse-gueules. A festival of hypocrisy is approaching, and it seems that a lot of people want to get their shopping done. The British government is flagrantly playing with the truth in an attempt to keep to its imagined high ground and follow the Washington Administration. It protests about the treatment of Britain's First Lady, Cherie Blair, and her once alleged, now proven, involvement with a chancer from the Antipodes. She weeps on live television about the terrible suffering inflicted on her son in his first year at an Oxbridge dustbin, Bristol University, while apparently oblivious to that of watching wives of those destined to fight against "terror" in the dunes of Mesopotamia and the back streets of Baghdad. It is said that due to the collapse of a sewer (a frequent Baghdad phenomenon post- sanctions), there is literally a great stink in Downing Street, under No 12, new residence of "spin doctor" Alistair Campbell, who has mismanaged spectacularly the fiasco of Cheriegate. Such spokesmen complain that the "real issues" have been lost in the "tittle-tattle" about a prime minister's wife, topless models and shifty, lager- swilling Aussies. They both protest too much. For the tawdry and mediocre lifestyle now displayed to the public -- which makes the last Tsarina look as sophisticated as Catherine de Medicis -- chimes with ideology and a vanity- driven agenda. Saddam Hussein is not occupying another country. Even his perversely voluminous submission to the UN inspectors does not risk being in clear breach of UN resolutions. But for the US and its faithful ally, war is inevitable, come what the truth. According to sources, only days after Christmas, Tony Blair will send a tank division to the Gulf. It is hoped that, in February, they will take just days to crash into "liberated" Baghdad. Blair makes much of his Crusader faith. During the festive season, he will speak about how a Father sent a Son to bear the sufferings of the world. In this, like many other things, he will be economical with the truth.
