why we fight

“It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people,” he said. “Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israeli’s and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me.“
-Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), the reason why the vote to start the war in iraq didnt need much to get through, pure fucking idiocy.

Rumsfeld told reporters at a NATO meeting that, in general, the value of intelligence reports can be uneven, and "sometimes it's just flat wrong."

But, I thought that.....nevermind...onto Iran we go...


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1130-07.htm

Its difficult to believe that the Bush Administration needs to pay to get good news stories into iraq, they should simply hook the Iraqis into a giant coaxial cable and make it compulsory for them to watch the american networks, plus as an added bonus give em all free Fox news. All the liberty to gush the administration line without the bother of paying a cent. The fifth estate is now looking more like a real estate shop front with the "journalists" shouting position, position, position.

http://iraqforsale.org/video_caci.php

My fav terror story of the week: watch out your gonna be killed by osamas spinach

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Health/story?id=2484738&page=1

Cost of war in Iraq to U.S. taxpayers each week, according to a new congressional analysis. The cost is “twice as much as in the first year of the conflict three years ago and 20 percent more than last year.” The report predicts war costs to reach 808 billion by 2016.

estimated number of refugees fleeing baghdad in the last month: 240,000

Bob Woodward on CBS news:

According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret. "It’s getting to the point now where there are eight-, nine-hundred attacks a week. That's more than 100 a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces," says Woodward.
The situation is getting much worse, says Woodward, despite what the White House and the Pentagon are saying in public. "The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], 'Oh, no, things are going to get better,'" he tells Wallace. "Now there’s public, and then there’s private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know," says Woodward.

Woodward also reports that the president and vice president often meet with Henry Kissinger, who was President Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, as an adviser. Says Woodward, ‘Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.'" Woodward adds. "This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will."


The right in the US have rehashed the old bullshit of the US portion of the Vietnamese civil war having been lost by the media so often, and with such vehemence, that self censorship is now the norm. AL Jazeera is seen as propaganda purely because it dares to show a differing perspective, it doesnt run the camera shots of the missile gliding down the chimney, it shows what happens after the camera has disintergrated and mingled with the people beneath the plume of smoke.

fuk the pope (like the catholic church has a history of peace)http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-09-17T1725

dick cheney, USVP, scumbag: "The real threat is the possibility of a cell of al Qaeda in the midst of one of our own cities with a nuclear weapon, or a biological agent. In that case, you'd be dealing--for example, if on 9/11 they'd had a nuke instead of an airplane, you'd have been looking at a casualty toll that would rival all the deaths in all the wars fought by Americans in 230 years."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/fearwatch-the-fearmonge_b_29737.html

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1619227.ece

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001548.php

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Sources_August_Terror_Plot_Fiction_Underscoring_0918.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/18/AR2006091800883.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/18/world/main2019714.shtml

nothing to hide here, please lets have a reasoned discourse on what "fair go" means in relation to how it may erradicate Australian muslims and ignore everthing that may embarress our government:

The relationship between Mr Hill and Mr Davidson Kelly is embarrassing for the Federal Government, which has gone to great lengths to distance itself from Mr Davidson Kelly and his company. The Government has refused to release 94 documents it has regarding Tigris to The Age under the Freedom of Information Act.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/former-defence-minister-dined-with-key-figure-in-awb-iraq-scandal/2006/09/17/1158431588916.html

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-09-17T172527Z_01_N17213289_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-PHOTOGRAPHER-AP.xml&archived=False

insecution

Lets do a little time travel, lets go back to the morning of 10/9/2001, the moment you woke up. Look out of your window, see whats around.

Now, travel a little forward, wake up and look out of your window on the morning of the 12/9/2001. Whats different?

For anyone living in New York, the answer is obvious, for anyone else the answer is nothing. Unless you look beneath the view and see the underpinnings of your society being dismantled, not by the terrorists, but by the very people who proclaimed that any change in our behaviour is a victory for the terror. Chalk one (no, two) up for Osama.

Since then we have:

scrapped, or are in the process of scrapping, the double jepardy rule.
allowed the rules of evidence to be lowered.
allowed hearsay obtained under tortured in as evidence.
re-assigned/re-aligned innocence as the right of every accused.
facing your accuser is now on a case by case basis, with national security trumping your rights.
justified torture as a means to an end, and allowed it to become apart of our legal system.
permitted internment without trial.
allowed thoughts, not actions, to be the basis for criminal sanctions.
equated dissension with treason.
allowed our governments to create a class of people to whom no law applies, yet allow the testimony of those people to be brought before the courts as evidence.
created those legal black holes.
forced accused to plead guilty by threatening them with expulsion to these legal black holes.
threatened and jailed lawyers for defending "terrorists".
rolled back and trampled civil rights.
given the powers that be more powers than they know what to do with.
created a new class of crimes.
made it an offence to tell anyone that you are under suspicion or have been charged with terrorism offences.
made it an offence to "unknowingly" (or even innocently) contribute to any group or person who may be involved with terrorism.
made the geneva convention a quaint idea that may or may not be adherred to in the prosecution of a war, depending on the ever shifting circumstances and justifications of those in power.
corrupted the notion of soveriegn nations by allowing secret rendition, secret prisons and disapearances to become a normal part of our societies.
allowed the rule of law to be subverted by the rule of neccessity (as defined by those who deem whatever they do necesary).
redefined the word torture to allow torture.
redefined how our governments relate to their populations though secrecy provisions in legislation.
allowed our governments to seek unlimited powers with no oversight.
diminished/undermined/redefined our values.
redefined law enforcement to the point where it no longer proscecutes crimes, it can now proscecute and jail for "aspiring"to commit crimes (as opposed to those under previous laws who had to be actually planning crimes, a huge difference that is becoming very apparent in a large number of australian cases and convictions).
made paranoia of the nixon variety into the states mantra.
redefined terrorism as a purely Islamic action.
made justice seem as quaint a concept as the geneva convention.
made the war on terror a global fight for freedom while rolling back the very freedoms we are meant to be fighting for.
invaded a country which had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11 on the pretext that the country had something to do with 9/11.
criminalised being a refugee.
convinced ourselves that unless we subvert our societies underpinnings that a couple of thousand armed extremists living a long way from our shores will subvert the underpinnings of our society.
promoted fear ahead of sense and allowed it to be used for purely political whims and gains.
declared war on a word.


not bad for a guy in a cave, I would even go so far as to say that Osama has already won the War on Terror by default.

like u know

in a month when my exasperation level has reached dangerous levels, I wonder for how many more years will we live beneath this steaming pile of political crap known as the war on terror.

PETER FARIS QC: I think the issue here is the power of a democratically elected Government to make laws for the citizens of its country, as they have done here. And I think judges, activist judges like we've seen in the UK, should not be - they're unelected judges, they're unaccountable and I don't think they should be striking down laws in the way they've done, which have been passed by the Parliament. I think the Parliament has the duty of protecting its citizens. We are at war, this is a war of terror. A war against terror, I should say. We are at war. And this is a very important function for the Government to protect its citizens. And I think trying to say, well, the judges, these seven High Court judges or whatever, are going to sit over the top of the whole country and effectively run the war against terror and tell us what we can do and what we can't do, is not desirable.

I love the import and export side of our nation, we have a US republican talking point, "activist judges" tailored to suit a sure to be called for law change so we can elect our very own public servants, the judicury. Wait for the call, its coming, if Little J gets elected again. Its just like outscourcing justice to the people, worked for the prisons and refugees.

the long war exposed as politcal bullshit to keep tyrants in power:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/01/AR2006090101418.html

one of the many great travesties of justice that are coming at us thick and fast from the war on terror. Lawyers may be jailed for representing thier clients, a fair and balanced approach to justice.

http://www.courttv.com/news/2006/0905/lynne_stewart_ap.html

spot the talking points:

Michael Ledeen
Giving Khatami prestigious platforms all over America is a dumb move, and it will enormously discourage the Iranian people. For those who believed Bush is serious about regime change, this is a numbing blow. Would FDR have given Goebbels a visa while the Reich was attacking Czechoslovakia?
Whatever the intent, this looks like blatant appeasement and the people in the Middle East will certainly “understand” it that way.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzhmNTQ0NDQ3MmIxZDlmZWVlNmViMzE0YjkzMTNiYmM=

for the flipside and a bit of sense:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14640262/site/newsweek/