The historian Arthur Herman has published an acclaimed revisionist biography which

The historian Arthur Herman has published an acclaimed revisionist biography which says McCarthy’s fears “weren’t paranoid delusions. They were true.” Campaigning group Accuracy in Academia recently staged a conference entitled “Rethinking McCarthy”. The two other soldiers were wounded.Another American soldier from the 1st Infantry Division was shot dead on Wednesday
More from Robert Fisk. The grave of Senator Joe McCarthy has been pillaged. In the think tanks of the Republican right, in the broadcasts of Fox News, and in the pages of some of the most popular books in America, he lives again.

From the mid-1950s until 2001, there was a consensus in America that McCarthyism was a brief period of political psychosis. They killed at least nine of them, a massacre which was typically unreported on the US-funded radio station in Iraq but which sent an immediate message to the Iraqi security forces.On the same day, the police chief in Babel province was shot and killed. Just over a month ago, armed insurgents attacked on the main police station in Fallujah, occupying the building and killing all the police officers they could find.Many attacks on police now go unreported – like many attacks on occupation troops – and Mr Bremer’s publicity men still hope that by failing to mention these assaults, Iraqis can be gulled into believing that their future is secure, that violence is decreasing, that 30 June will mark a smooth hand-over of power.The US death toll mounted when a soldier was killed north of Baghdad yesterday after he and two colleagues went to investigate a home-made bomb reported by local Iraqi policemen in Baqouba. At least 120,000 US troops will remain in this “sovereign” territory, at the request of the American-chosen government, and if the insurgents now struggling against the Western forces here can continue to strike at Iraq’s new security forces, the American military will not be able to retreat to the desert camps and barracks assigned to them.Indeed, many Iraqi policemen fear there will be a determined attempt to take over their stations on or after 30 June, along with attacks on the poorly trained and weak Iraqi army.Just two days ago, we had a disturbing taste of what might happen when gunmen ambushed a minibus containing police recruits near Hillah, south of Baghdad. “Death to collaborators”, is now spray-painted on the walls of Baghdad.

Another chilling graffito says “One God, One Country, One Saddam” – an Iraqi variation, perhaps, of Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein F?r – and all Iraqis know that 30 June is the date to which all such warnings are directed.America, according to the US proconsul, Paul Bremer, will then hand “sovereignty” back to the Iraqi people – or at least to the American-appointed government which will rule until “democratic” elections are held. What will happen on 30 June? Every day now, the gunmen attack the Iraqis who work for Westerners, for the occupation powers, for the reconstruction companies, for journalists.
Just two weeks after they murdered a translator for an American newspaper chain, they came for the translator of Time magazine, driving a red station wagon up to his vehicle near the magazine’s Baghdad headquarters on Wednesday and firing at least four bullets into him. If the attack is of such a nature that we don’t, then no glass screen is going to help us one way or the other.Gwyneth Dunwoody wanted a parliamentary vote on the screen, saying that Parliament was a reflection of the country (a statement we can only hope isn’t true).”Any permanent change will be subject to a decision,” Peter Hain said. In six months, insurgents have killed more than 600 Iraqi policemen wearing the new pale blue uniforms of the American-paid force. He implied it would be the decision of the House of Commons, but it could mean anything.Simoncarr75 hotmail
More from Simon Carr. It’s hard to feel contempt for our leaders, but this decision has come from, in Tony Wright’s phrase, the cesspool of political life.What happened to British sangfroid? If anyone manages to explode something in the Palace of Westminster we all have an extremely good chance of surviving.

The fact that the decision was announced after he was heckled half a dozen times by protesters from Oxford (Go Oxford!) suggests an even less creditable explanation.If, as the Government tells us, we are all in “mortal danger” from terrorism then their special arrangements erect a further barrier between them and us, one that is not merely physical. She spent most of question time denouncing subsidies before her junior minister boasted of the “incentivisation” of the oil exploration industry. I incentivise, you subsidise, they pour taxpayers’ money into a black pit.Anne McIntosh said British wind farms were going to cost £2bn to build. On these figures, they’d be a pretty good example of government commerce – they consume more energy than they produce.And Brian Wilson informed the House with a straight face that British collieries were the most efficient in the world. Yes, but it’s Mrs Thatcher we have to thank for that.In a mixture of vanity, vainglory and sheer, shrinking gutlessness, they’ve decided to put a glass screen up between the public gallery and the debating chamber. The official line is that it’s to protect the Prime Minister from assassination.