GW Bush - Think Dan Quayle in cowboy boots

This picture is to distract homeowners from 2morrows interest rate rise

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The press (well, the UK press) finally join the dots and expose the blatant hypocrisy of the Bushies in their pursuit of a suitable trigger for war, and as a confirmation for my post of yesterday, come more details of the reason why there are 15 british sailors enjoying the high life in Iran.

I am still unsure of why the Poms are, seemingly so willing to shoot the breeze while in captivity, isnt it meant to be name, rank and serial numbers or has my avid watching of WW2 films led me up another garden path of self deception. If you cant trust hollywood propoganda, what the hell can you trust.

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.

US officials in Washington subsequently claimed that the five Iranian officials they did seize, who have not been seen since, were "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraq and coalition forces". This explanation never made much sense. No member of the US-led coalition has been killed in Arbil and there were no Sunni-Arab insurgents or Shia militiamen there.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2414760.ece

But then thats all the way over the other side of the world, whereas here, right here, right now, we have a major problem, his name is Rudd. According to our ever so clever enviroment minister, Malcolm "clearfell" Turnbull, this Rudd chap is going to completely close down all industry by the year 2012, which is just in time for the earth to be destroyed, according to Aztec legend.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, we will not set targets that are going to devastate the Australian economy. if Australia were to set a 60% cut in greenhouse gas emissions unilaterally, without the rest of the world joining in, that would devastate our economy.

Who could disagree with that, very few people have made it into power on the back of policies to "devestate" the country, although I believe serial arsonist, Torch Hendry, came close to being voted PM in 1915 with his catchy slogan, "I will pour petrol on your children and burn the country to ashes", but we were in a time of war and the populaces nerves were a bit frayed. I have looked at Rudds policies and some pages do mentioning killing selective people and blowing up some landmarks, but only some, and only those owned by extremely wealthy slave owners, like Malcolm.

Also, Rudd, seems to think that many people overseas have heard about global warming and climate change, unlike Mal, who thinks that only Australians have read a newspaper in the last ten years

PAUL BONGIORNO: We're the biggest emitters on earth at the moment.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: We're not the biggest emitters on earth at the moment. That's completely untrue. The reason we do have big emissions, let me finish, per head of population, is because we have so many energy intensive export industries.

see take that, Paul, we are not the worlds biggest emmiters, its a big fat lie, we have BIG emmisions because we are big emmiters, so when you add the two together it may look bad on a per head of population scale, but really halve what we do by subtracting BIG emmisions from energy industries and you have a realistic appraisal, so that puts paid to that, once and for all.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think religion is a very poor guide to public policy.

Take that tony abbot, even Mal thinks you are a cunt. But then its Malcolm who was a director of a company which engaged in clearfelling large swathes of the Solomon Islands (but only for profit), who is now planning on giving the same company money to plant (but only 4 profit) the trees they chopped down.

from last nights

4 corners on david hicks

LT CDR CHARLES SWIFT, DEFENCE COUNSEL FOR SALIM HAMDAN: If you've written a crime so broad that everyone is guilty, you're guaranteed not to have anyone escape punishment in our rationale, but if you think about it for a second, you should have already known it.

The Australian Government has always insisted that Hicks had to stay at Guantanamo because in 2001 he had broken no Australian law.

JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER: It's fundamentally wrong to make a criminal law retrospective.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: But Hicks' lawyers have argued the charge he's now pleaded to does exactly that.

MAJ MICHAEL MORI, DEFENCE COUNSEL FOR DAVID HICKS: Material support for terrorism is not an offence under the law of war. It's not an offence under Australian law. So now they're creating it with the Military Commission Act in 2006 and they're applying it to conduct back in 2001.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The US Government disagrees.
But isn't it fair to say that this charge results from -

BRIG GEN THOMAS HEMINGWAY, LEGAL ADVISOR OFFICE OF MILITARY COMMISSIONS: The Military Commissions Act.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: - the Military Commissions Act -

BRIG GEN THOMAS HEMINGWAY, LEGAL ADVISOR OFFICE OF MILITARY COMMISSIONS: Right.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: ..which is a 2006 Act and it's referring to actions taken in 2001 which were not at that time offences under this Act?

BRIG GEN THOMAS HEMINGWAY, LEGAL ADVISOR OFFICE OF MILITARY COMMISSIONS: They were violations of the law.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Which law?

BRIG GEN THOMAS HEMINGWAY, LEGAL ADVISOR OFFICE OF MILITARY COMMISSIONS: The - the extra-territorial application. And for somebody to say, "This doesn't have any application to me," means that they didn't have any sense that the conduct in which they were engaged was criminal.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: But the US State Department's most senior lawyer cast doubt on that. When asked about the specific charge Hicks has now pleaded to - material support for terrorism - he conceded that in 2001 there weren't enough laws on the books to charge those who trained with Al-Qaeda.

Can you understand, though, why people might make the distinction between this offence and a very serious offence? It's not what people would normally consider to be a war crime?

JOHN BELLINGER, LEGAL ADVISER, US SECRETARY OF STATE: That's really what's so difficult here, is that - I think, now that we all look back in retrospect, we find that there were gaps in our laws both domestically and even internationally, and we have all had to scramble to fill in those gaps, but I don't think that we should simply say "Well, it's too bad, looking back that on September 11, that we didn't have enough laws on the books and that therefore these people who all trained in acts of terrorism" ought to just go free."