COMMENT & ANALYSIS: Value added facts.

Byline: Phil Redmond 

VALUES.In a week that saw Comic Relief 's Red Nose Day and the start of military action in Iraq we may all be reflecting on our shared values.

At the same time, the nation appears ready and willing to turn into a land of clowns to assist ``the Third World'',it also seems ready to acquiesce to military force being used in Iraq.

The very essence and intrigue of human nature. That capab ility to juxtapose what at first appear conflicting ideologies. Love thy neighbour,but bomb the hell out of them if they don't agree with you. I suppose,any time we engage in military conflict, there is a time of sober reflection when we realise that despite all the rhetoric, real people are going to die. During this time,questions are put against all the common mundane things of life. Is this, that or the other really important any more? Does it really matter? Va lues are questioned. It has proba bly always been so. Yet history also shows us that people soon move on and that great cliche,life must go on,comes into play.

So it will be with Iraq. No matter what we see, hear or read we all know that we are never going to get the full story, never mind the truth,because even the players involved never know the full scripts of these improvised pieces. Even with the passage of time and the removal of restrictions on access to public records things are usually distorted because all those involved are dead.

That is the point. To prevent the finger of blame being pointed. It has to be left to historical interpretation and we know that history is never written by the losers. It is also interpreted by the historian's own values.

With today's abundance of media,it would be easy to conclude that we are better inf ormed than we have ever been,but I doubt it. It is interesting to note that most opinion polls,as well as the crucial votes in Parliament,have remained unchanged during the build up to war, with approximately 60-70pcof the population agreeing with the interventionist policy.

It seems that people made up their minds pretty quickly and whether for or against they stood by their value judgment.

I belie ve this is because we all make our decisions based on our own set of values.

They can often be tested or put under strain but seldom revised.

Something the United Nations found. It is almost impossible to change the view of those who have already made up their mind, based on their own set of values.