Nick Cohen

British journalist.

Critic of the Bush administration

In 2002, Cohen was a sharp critic of US foreign policy:

the deployment of 'anti-Americanism' as an insult which brands anyone who opposes Bush and his British sidekick as racist doesn't work. The same logic which Defense Planning Guidance uses to imagine a world where America can be the only grown-up also allows double standards which have destroyed the moral authority America held after 11 September. How can America (and Britain) declare war against Iraq for possessing weapons of mass destruction when the US won't accept any controls on its nuclear, chemical or biological weapons? How can the US call Saddam Hussein a war criminal, when it won't accept the jurisdiction of an international criminal court?

Support the Iraqi National Congress

Cohen expressed support for Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress in April 2002, after visiting it's London offices and interviewing Latif Rashid.

In Washington, the State Department, which has stopped funding the INC after disputed accusations of fraud, and the CIA take no notice of the threat and support the 'nicer Sunni tyrant' option. Paradoxically, the greatest supporters of the civilian movement are the military in the Pentagon.

The struggle between the departments is underway, but the balance of forces is against the INC. A democratic Iraq would give the subject peoples of the Gulf monarchies ideas above their station.

Affiliations

• Euston Manifesto - signatory
• Catalyst - National Council member
• The Observer - columnist
• New Statesman - columnist
• Democratiya - advisory board member
• Unite Against Terror - signatory

Website

Nick Cohen

Books

• Cruel Britannia, Verso, 1999.
• Pretty Straight Guys, Faber, 2003.
• What’s Left?, 4th Estate, 2007.

With a friend like this..., by Nick Cohen, The Observer, 7 April 2002.

Our enemy's enemies, by Nick Cohen, The Observer, 14 April 2002.