A Raoyal Airforce physician has been jailed by courtmartial for his refusal to return to Iraq. Everyone who is against this entire Iraq disaster should wholeheartedly support the courageous stand of Flt Lt Dr Kendal-Smith, who has been sent to jail for refusing to return to Iraq, as well as that of the other US and UK service personnel, some of whom are also serving jail terms for refusing to collude in an illegal war of aggression mounted on a pack of lies. ‘Coalition’ medical personnel have participated in acts of torture in occupied Iraq, people languish for years in a global gulag of which Stalin would have been proud, ‘Coalition’-run death squads are roaming the streets à la El Salvador circa 1986 and an entire country has been completed destroyed. If an act is deemed illegal and immoral, then if one participates in any aspect of that act, in law one is to be deemed an accomplice - murder being the appropriate example. If it is a recipe for chaos in the armed forces, then one has to ask who has brought this on? The answer is quite clear: senior figures in the structures of politics, the intelligence services and the armed forces. They were warned repeatedly, by both leftist and conservative forces and sometimes even by their own staff. They chose to disregard those warnings. And now, we are locking up British doctors for wanting to save lives. 18 months ago, the highly-respected UK medical magazine, The Lancet published a peer-reviewed study led by an American physician, in which it was estimated that 100,000 civilians had died in Iraq as a result of the invasion and occupation. The number now is likely to be double that. Just how does this square with the World Health Organisation’s definition of ‘health’? How does this square with the Hippocratic Oath? Of course, it is the antithesis of both. Dr Kendal-Smith and all the other armed forces conscientious resisters deserve a medal. They are the real patriots, and not the mafiosi politicians on both sides of the Atlantic who have brought Iraq unto the belly of Hell and who, as per the next step in their very obvious geopolitical strategy, are angling forcefully one way or another to re-colonise Iran. In the USA and the UK, both, if there was any justice we should be arresting and charging the 'capo di tutti capo' of each country. I hope that the General Medical Council, the British Medical Association and medical defence and health unions will vociferously announce their support for a medical practitioner who has made the only correct decision possible under the circumstances. As a doctor, I declare my wholehearted support of Flt Lt Dr Kendal-Smith's action and I call on other health care workers and organisations up and down the country to do the same. Silence is complicity. Suhayl Saadi Suhyal Saadi's novel, 'Psychoraag' (Black and White Publishing, 2004) won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and nominated for the IMPAC Prize. He is a practising physician based in Glasgow, Scotland. www.suhaylsaadi.com