Python swallows Bush...Monty Python's Terry Jones speaks...

One of the strange manipulations of language you get into is that the war on terror is a war on an abstract noun.

An abstract noun can't surrender; it can't do anything really. How do you know when you've won? When the noun gets kicked out of the Oxford English Dictionary?

How did you first come to write these Op-Ed pieces?

It was incredulity that kicked it off. I just couldn't believe how our leaders responded to the events of 9/11. It seemed to me that at every stage they decided to take action that would quite clearly produce the opposite effect from what they declared they wanted. For example, after 9/11 George Bush said exactly the right things. He said we have to catch the evil perpetrators of this evil crime. But if you're going to catch the perpetrators of a crime, I would have thought that what you need is speed and secrecy. What you don't do is announce where you're going to look. [Shouts across the room] "We're going to look in Afghanistan, all right?" You don't say when you're going to do it. [Shouts]: "We're going to do it in two months' time. Two months' time, OK?" And you don't say what you're going to do. [Shouts]: "We're going to bomb you!" I would have thought any evil perpetrators would have got out of Afghanistan by then. I certainly would have done, if I were an evil perpetrator.

Then Tony Blair says, "We're going to make the world safe from terrorism. We're going to protect the U.K. from terrorist attacks, so what we're going to do is go and bomb ... let's see ... Iraq, yes, let's bomb that. That'll make the world safer." It's like the emperor's new clothes. People are making such stark, staring mad decisions and eventually other people just go along with it.

Do you think people go along with it because the government just keeps repeating the mad rationale so forcefully over and over again?

Yes, but it's also the power of words. Words do eventually have an effect. If you keep repeating, "Security forces are putting down insurgents in Iraq," rather than saying "Our illegally occupying army is killing the freedom fighters in Iraq," people will actually start believing it. If we were in France in the Second World War, we'd be talking about brave resistance fighters stopping the illegal occupation of France. We would call the Vichy government quislings and collaborators. Whereas we're talking now about the great [Iyad] Allawi, who's just doing what the Americans want him to do.

Another one is the four "civilian contractors" whose murders prompted the attacks on Fallujah. They were mercenaries. They work for Blackwater, and if you go to Blackwater's Web site, it's really quite interesting. They offer two courses on sniping.