When the  Republican Party was subjected to a display of "shock and awe" by voters in the Mid Term Elections in the United States as a result of the Bush regime’s catastrophic invasion and occupation of Iraq, you might have thought that the Irish government would conduct an immediate review of whether it should continue to facilitate the occupation as it has been doing, particularly though allowing the US Military the use of Shannon Airport.

However, when I put precisely this question in the Dáil after the voting trends had become clear, the Minister for Finance Brian Cowen, standing in for Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, was virtually struck dumb.  Not a word about the disaster unfolding in Iraq, about the criminal responsibility of Bush and Blair for the slaughter that was unleashed.  And of course not a word about the cowardice of the Irish government which gave credence all along to the lies of Bush and Blair about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq as an excuse for going to war.

When I pressed the Minister again, he threw in the usual red herring to divert attention from the Irish government’s approach to American foreign policy.  "I have no respect for the Deputy’s Anti-Americanism".  The implication here is that it is anti-American to oppose Bush’s policy on Iraq.  It seems to have escaped the Minister that a big majority of the American people now agree that this policy is an unmitigated disaster so if we were, for a moment, to accept the meaningless term "anti-Americanism", it is Bush and the Irish government who would qualify by pressing on with policies that a majority of Americans have come to oppose.  Of course it is always important to point out that tens of millions of American workers and youth opposed Bush from the beginning.

Following on my Dáil intervention, there was an extraordinary attack in the editorial of the Irish Examiner newspaper the next day - "There is an old saying that paper never refused ink, and politicians never refuse publicity. Joe Higgins was just looking for publicity in the Dáil yesterday when he suggested that the American election results were not only a repudiation of President Bush’s policy on Iraq but also a justification for the withdrawal of landing privileges for American troops passing through Shannon. It is absurd to suggest that our policy should be in any way determined by the views of the American electorate."  This is amazing considering that opinion polls in this State have shown that a large majority of the Irish people opposed both the carnage in Iraq and the granting of facilities at Shannon Airport to the United States Military.

I also referred, albeit briefly because of time, to the murderous attacks by the Israeli Defence Force on the Palestinian people in Gaza, often forgotten now by the world media and western governments, where there is an almost daily slaughter of innocent people. Clearly this is another disastrous result of imperialist intervention in the Middle East.

I thought it extraordinary that none of the main opposition parties demanded any explanation from the government about where the results of the US Election left the Irish government’s policy in relation to the American and British occupation of Iraq, much less demand an immediate end to the use of Shannon.  Perhaps Labour and Fine Gael are thinking of next June when they hope to replace the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat government and do not want to tie themselves into a situation where they would be under pressure to change government policy on this issue and kick the US Military out of Shannon.