Apathy Rules OK?

This is a little odd.

Anti-war US websites and media outlets frequently indicate that the Brits are ahead of the USA when it comes to investigating the legality of the Iraq War. They cite the publication of the Downing Street Memo in the UK's Sunday Times as evidence that the debate is alive and well in Old Blighty.

But now this Guardian article claims just the opposite:

In Britain [the memos] have scarcely made a dent, but in America they have developed an unexpected momentum...

Iraq continues to have a salience in the US that it lacks here...

The assumption is that Britons delivered their verdict on Iraq by cutting Labour's majority and therefore the reckoning has, at least partially, happened. That is certainly how the government likes to play it: privately, ministers will hint that the whole Iraq business was a bit of a nightmare but it's behind us now and we can all move on.

The trouble is, it is not behind us. The occupation continues and people are still dying, daily, in substantial numbers. In the US the realisation seems to be dawning that this episode represents, at the very least, a case of maladministration, of desperately poor governance...

I personally assumed that publication of the memos in the UK would trigger an un-stoppable wave of public resentment against Blair and his cronies, and I have been puzzled by the lack of such stories in the UK press. Now it seems there are none.

Here in Australia, of course, there is no debate whatsoever, despite the fact that media outlets like the Sydney Morning Herald, ABC Online and SBS TV news regularly report on the memos and other salient facts. What does it take to get this thing kicking?

There were millions or protesters in the streets before the Iraq War started, yet it went ahead anyway. Bush , Blair and Howard have all won re-election, despite polls showing massive resentment of their policies on Iraq. The lies that took us to war have now been exposed, while the reality on the ground in Iraq today is itself a massive indictment of all the deceptive rationales used to argue for the invasion. Still there is no accountability.

What can we do now except keep hammering and hammering and hammering the theme?