hillsongs chequebook

The central question in the Haneef case is not that he was held by the AFP and questioned, or even that the AFP acted on false information in a "keystone cops" fashion, the central point of contention is the action of the Minister for Immigration in rejecting the courts decision in favour of his own grubby, misplaced, politically inspired delusions.

The central question is should a politician (let alone one in an election year) without oversight be given the power to imprison anyone.

In an election year, with a grubby government willing to do anything to get back into power, should a politician have unrestricted power to place anyone behind bars with no oversight, no review, no limits, on their whim, then keep all of their reasons for acting placed behind the dubious rationale of national security. Our PM is once again playing his dirty little word games, referring only to the detention of Haneef by the AFP, in all his answers he mentions only the AFP case, not the one that has everyone on edge, his Ministers decision to overturn the courts and place Haneef back in jail. It smacks of political expediency, smacks of playing politics for polling gain, once more, with national security.

With the Kevin Andrews continuing to smear Haneef, then instantly hiding behind a cloak of national security, is it any wonder people are more than a little cynical, they have played that game so often in the past, making false claims, pumping out their hairy chests, then running for the cover of secrecy or blaming their departments for their own pomposity and incompetence. Andrews refrain of "if you only knew what I knew" wears very thin when he said the same things at the start of the case, and when we got to find out what it was that he knew, it just made your skin crawl that a thin tissue of quarter truths and outright distortions could land you in jail with no prospect whatsoever of being released. Clearly the laws governing the Immigration Department need to be reined in markedly, with genuine independent oversight desperately needed, just ask the 247 Australian citizens who have been locked away for up to six years on the back of the unlimited powers given the bureaucrats and incompetents fools governing their supposed oversight, eg, amanda vanstone, phil "disaster" ruddock and now the first fool in the workchoices fuck up, Kevin Andrews.

Kev is trying to squirm out of an inquiry by claiming that theres been inquiry's at every step.

"This process has been overseen by the judiciary at every step," he said.

Except when you overturned the results of the judiciary and placed Haneef back in detention, based on the same flimsy evidence that the magistrate saw and granted bail over.

Andrew Bartlett of the Dems said it best

"I was half expecting them to come out today and say Dr Haneef had all the weapons of mass destruction that we've been looking for all along."

The Howard Government will try one more wedge issue on National Security before the election, an increase in the governments powers, reflecting those that are in place in the UK. They will of course be hoping that Rudd will oppose them so they can accuse him of being weak on national security, but why would anyone let those clowns in power now have more power and less oversight on the back of this case. If we follow the UK rules, none of the bullshit surrounding this case could possibly have emerged, none of the already lax oversight, mainly by the press, could have occurred and two years down the track Haneef would have emerged from the process blinking in sunshine, wondering where his life has gone. Who in their right mind could endorse giving these people more power to play politics with individuals lives, especially as we know that no one will pay any penalty for utter incompetence or venal disregard for the rule of law.

If national security is truly important to this government, then an independent inquiry is crucial to get to the heart of this issue, or will the same incompetence rule the nation in the face of what Howard declares to be "a threat to our very way of life." What a joke, the real threat lies behind the ministers stuff up.

............................................................................

Lots of headlines will proclaim one thing, THE SURGE IS WORKING. This will be based upon one simple little fact, the number of US soldiers dying in the meatgrinder that is Iraq has fallen to its lowest level all year, a mere 77 dead in comparison to the average of well over a hundred.

One problem, July is, for any number of reasons, always the lowest month of the year for casualties, and in fact this July is the deadliest in the sordid history of the war, so the headlines should read, Surge Failing, provided you don't cherry pick the facts.

July 2007: 77

July 2006: 46

July 2005: 58

July 2004: 58

July 2003: 49

The idea that all progress is forward is utterly dispelled by this remarkable artifact, knowledge can just as easily be lost as well as well as built upon. I spent a part of my childhood devouring Erik Von Danikens explanations of this device, he call it an ancient "computer" brought to us from the furthest reaches of the stars by celestial visitors, I prefer the real version of what it is, so much more romantic than the idea that it may have been ET's bowel movement conversion kit.

http://richarddawkins.net/article,392,In-Search-of-Lost-Time,Jo-Marchant--Nature

..........................................................

A very simple plea, Kevin Andrews QUIT, right here, right now, right this very minute, do not pass go, do not try to collect an overseas diplomatic posting, just get the fuck outa a place you are clearly not fit to be in, a position of responsibility. But then the reality hits, its the Howard Government, no matter how incompetent, the minister stays, according to Howard there's only one judgement that counts, the voters, so let them decide Mr Pm.

...........................................................

When the Howard government gets thrown out on its well padded, pork barrelled arse, how many of these will we see revealed.

Bush Aide Blocked Report

Global Health Draft In 2006

Rejected for Not Being Political

A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/28/AR2007072801420.html

Now we have a $100 million campaign for Workchoices being endless repeated across our tv screens, with politicised public servants spruiking for their jobs, how many reports will we see revealed once checks and balances are restored in the senate. For example the building watchdog commissioned report, commissioned by the building watchdog and whose conclusion can be summed up in a few very short words "building commission good, unions bad", what a fucking surprise there. A report commissioned by the watchdog telling the watchdog what a wonderful job its doing, based upon the data supplied entirely by the watchdog itself, then leaked in a wonderfully strategic fashion, where none of the data given can be evaluated, just the conclusion the watchdog gives to itself. And, heaven forbid, the "independent" group conducting the report are closely tied to the Liberal party, now that's what I like to see, the governments own agencies, free, fair and balanced, contorted into strange shapes to blow smoke up their own arse's. So how much did I pay for that one?

And speaking of workchoices, how much are we paying to have our pay and conditions stripped away:

$56 million to promote the original work choices

$300 million to "regulate" the original workchoices

the add $100 million (or there abouts, we wont know till senate estimates can pull a figure from Joe Hockeys arse in a protracted and painful process) for the current update on workchoices ads.

add $476 million plus to the original 300 for administering the "simpler", "fairer" adjunct to the the simple and fair workchoices legislation.

What an outrageously expensive joke this government has become, can we afford to laugh at the punchline, ourselves.

...............................................................................

blame it on the bullshit: the week in review

A game for all the family, whenever a federal government minister is asked a question about Iraq, count the number of times they mention Al Queda. See if you can keep up.

...................................................

When the Haneef case was first revealed, Little Old Johnie and his first rate team of experts, puffed out their chests and demanded that the electorate look at how big they were in handling terrorism cases, how extra-minty strong they were on national security. Over scenes of blazing cars in the UK, Howard and his minions, trumpeted their credentials, overrode the justice system and did all they could to link their old order to the detention and deportation of a single man, a dusky skinned foreigner at that.

In 2001, they could play that card for all its worth and sit back and expect the voters to lap it up, Tampa showed just how far the voters were willing to suspend all sense of fairness and truth, in the search for that elusive goal of total national "security". How the world has changed.
Nowadays we have had so many lies and blatant distortions thrown in our face in the name of the "war on terror", that even such bastions of suspended disbelief, the herald/sun and the Australian, start to question the underlying assumptions of the governments self serving pronouncements, of courses that's always after trumpeting the government line for a day or so.

Our PM, when Haneef was first arrested: "I will say that Dr Haneef is entitled, like any other person, to a presumption of innocence."

.....but...

"All of this is a reminder that terrorism is a global threat. You can't pick and choose where you fight terrorism. You can't say I'll fight it over there but I won't fight it here. It's also fair to say that the anti-terrorism laws that this Government has enacted are all, to their very last clause needed … If we need to strengthen them, we will … But I am not going to make any comment about Dr Haneef's case."

The PM puffs out his chest and brands the man a terrorist, ties him in with Iraq, ties him in with his own desire to beef up laws that were not needed in any case, but then the case falls apart. Falls apart even though the Immigration minister has told the world that innocence or guilt or justice will play no part in his man handling of the case. In the old days the arrest and deportation of a foreigner would have given Howard an instant boost in the ratings, his declaration would have run along the tampa line, "we will decide who comes to this country" or he might have branded Haneef "the worst of the worst" as he did with David Hicks and then let the matter drag on for as long as possible to get the most traction in the polls. Well the Hicks case, as Michelle Gratten points out in the age today, was probably the straw that broke the camels back. The people are no longer prepared to sit back and allow the lie to continue a minute longer than the burden of proof allows. Perhaps the Hicks case simple allowed the public to grasp hold of a face, a real life person, an individual, upon whom the injustices of the war on terror can be visited and not just a government slogan about their own sheriffs status.

If the government wonders why its falling so low in the polls, its a simple matter of 11 years of outright lies accumulating until even the most blind can see that they are being spun a right load of bollocks, yet again. The perception of the public has shifted and repeating the same falsehoods to an already skeptical public just reinforces the idea that you are being fed a right load of crap, and nothing, except a complete, bald reversal on everything you've stood for can alter that ie: global warming. That then runs the risk that you seen as being in a total, flailing panic, and that's what we have at every turn, the last days of Howard have turned into one crisis after another, from water, to climate, to indigenous affairs, to housing, to interest rates, to ...the list is endless. In the lead up to the seemingly never to come election, the politics of fear are being ramped up to an hysterical level, if you cant win the voters with ideas, you can win them over with a dozen phony crisis, but that then makes people wonder, who's been in power while all these "crisis" have been allowed to occurred.

Of course, then there's the government denial that this or anything else in their arsenal of bullshit has anything to do with politics, the only people who play politics are the opposition. So we have Downer, the incompetent fool Ruddock, and the Pm himself actually blaming Rudd for agreeing with them, declaring a vast conspiracy of Labor leaders in order to play politics with an issue they claim has no political value. For fuks sake.

To add to the complete unreality of the situation, the government claims that its complete stuff up of the Haneef case, is a rationale for imposing even tougher anti terrorism laws, somehow claiming that the right to a magistrate to review any case is a fundamental injustice done to the nation as a whole. In the UK, which has the toughest anti-terror laws in the western world, the people charged have a whole month in confinement, a whole month where the press can only print the word of the governments and polices strategic leaks, then when the matter comes to court, the press is once again muzzled from printing anything. So in the Haneef case, under the UK laws, we would have had a whole month of nothing but the governments underground line, the sim card was found in the blazing truck, not several hundred miles away, the plot to blow up a gold coast highrise and a thousand other lurid lies slowly filtering out through the compliant press.

Howards defence and excuse now is to look at the AFP, saying, well they are independent of us, they are at arms length from the government, we have nothing to do with anything at all. Remember back to when AFP Cheerleader, Bill Kelty, said that the war in Iraq was possibly fueling resentment and terrorism, remember how quickly Howard jumped on the "independent" leader of the AFP. Within 24 hours the spineless government lackey Kelty had completely reversed his position and was forced to retract in a publicly humiliating fashion, everything he had spoken of the day before. But of course, he is utterly independent of the Howard government. There are so many issues at play regarding the blatant politicisation of the public service that only a change of government will bring the vile nature of the incumbents will suffice to add balance.

Its only been in the last few weeks that Dick Cheney has been forced to hand over any documents in relation to his 2001 energy commission task force. The situation was that the energy policy of the entire US was being written by the fossil fuel lobby at the behest of the VP in the first real display of Cheneys power in the US before 9/11. Cheney has fought tooth and nail not to reveal any details whatsoever about even who was at the meetings, keeping everything within the purview of executive privileged. Everything pointed to the modern equivalent of crony capitalism, the chief exec's of the major oil and fossil fuel industries directly writing their own legislation under the loving gaze of the their own bought and paid for president. It set the tone for the rest of the Bush administration, with the Iraq war possibly the first US crony capitalist proxy war of the modern era, just witness who makes the most profit from the invasion, all the old chums of the VP.

We see the same in our own country, the Gunns group in Tasmania, practically dictating the terms of their own legislation to ever so willing pollies, the Hugh Morgans et al, not even bothering to show any decency by waiting until the PM has a chance to announce their agenda in parliament, before registering companies of nuclear intent.

So do we trust this PM to do anything besides look after himself and his cronies, on any matter. Do we trust him to say or do anything, other than that which will play well in the polls? Do we trust the man not to spit in our faces, yet again and tell us its raining. The answers are in the polls, a resounding no.

When it comes to bullshit, the Bushies have no parallel:

Alberto Gonzales, testifying : "The dissent related to other intelligence activities," Gonzales testified at Tuesday's hearing. "The dissent was not about the terrorist surveillance program."

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, Thursday: the government's terrorist surveillance program was the topic of a 2004 hospital room dispute between top Bush administration officials.

Tony Snow, the bushies offical mouthpeice: "There is no contradiction in the testimony"

Background: House chief of staff Andy Card headed to a Washington hospital room, where a sedated Ashcroft was recovering from surgery. Ashcroft had already turned over his powers as attorney general to Comey. Comey was in the hospital room as well, and recounted to senators in his own sworn testimony in May that he "thought I just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me." Ultimately, Ashcroft sided with Comey, and Gonzales and Card left the hospital after a five- to six-minute conversation. Gonzales denied that he and Card tried to pressure Ashcroft into approving the program over Comey's objections.

The simple rule is, if you say it aint so, it just aint so. The truth is always exactly what you want it to be. Watch out for major terrorism anouncement, made to order, to distract the viewers from the stench. Maybe the capture of a top tenner, or a foiled plot or just another "credible threat", that one always plays well to the news cycle.

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On Iraq: the US embassy, the biggest embassy in the entire world, is being bult by slave labour.

During testimony before the House Oversight Committee today, Rory Mayberry, a former subcontract employee of the firm responsible for the construction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, said he believes that at least 52 Filipino nationals had been kidnapped to work on the embassy project. He testified:

Mr. Chairman, when the airplane took off and the captain announced that we were heading to Baghdad, all you-know-what broke out on the airplane. The men started shouting, it wasn’t until the security guy working for First Kuwaiti waved an MP5 in the air that the men settled down. They realized that they had no other choice but to go to Baghdad. Let me spell it out clearly: I believe these men were kidnapped by First Kuwaiti to work at the US Embassy… I’ve read the State Department Inspector General’s report on the construction of the embassy. Mr. Chairman, it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. This is a cover-up and I’m glad that I’ve had the opportunity to set the record straight.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/07/26/slave-labor-used-to-contruct-us-embassy-in-baghdad/

just make it up as you go along

Core and non core as hardcore bullshit flows from the silent one

"You talk about a whole lot of things when you're trying to convince people to do things," Mrs Howard says in the book. "But you don't go back and honour every single one of those unless you have made a firm commitment about it, and John wasn't into making firm commitments."

Even Janette knows what a lying peice of crap our PM is.

The signal for the death of the US economy? Or just another way stop on the long slow decline...

"The credit losses associated with subprime have come to light and they are fairly significant," Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee in a second day of testimony on the Fed's twice-yearly economic report. "Some estimates are in the order of between $US50 billion and $US100 billion of losses associated with subprime credit problems," he said, referring to a segment of the mortgage market that caters to borrowers with shaky credit.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/subprime-losses-could-hit-us100-billion/2007/07/20/1184560010480.html

In Iraq, Specialist Middleton said, "a lot of guys really supported that whole concept that, you know, if they don't speak English and they have darker skin, they're not as human as us, so we can do what we want."

What are we told about the withdrawl of troops from Iraq:

it will be a victory for the terrorists

it will be a victory for Al Queda

it will be a bloodbath, a massacre.

the government would collapse

there will be chaos.

so whats the difference?

does anyone believe the people who fucked up everything so badly in the first place, the people who did not get one single fact right. Follow the next two links to see the two sides of the same coin. Watch em and weep.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/07/19/inside-the-surge/

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/07/19/generation-chickenhawk-max-blumenthals-unofficial-college-republican-tour/

Ahh the NSW liberal right, always fun, always corrupt, always stranger than the fiction they push as truth. Will we get to see any links to secretive christian cults the NSW right just loves to coddle up to....

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22102696-11949,00.html

the 300

giving your cousin a pre-paid SIM card that still had some credit 12 months ago, before leaving the UK- cost: getting arrested for terrorism

Giving $600,000 to a registered charity - cost: getting arrested for terrorism

Giving $300 million plus in bribes to a corrupt dictator, whom you claim to be a key al queda supporter, to buy weapons to attack your own troops - cost: get away scott free with over a million dollars in bonus's for the good work that you are doing.

priceless.

There's nothing rotten in the state of Denmark, its all fine and dandy, but there is something wrong with the state of Australian justice. Like so much of the Howard Governments recent attempts at governing, it all smacks of political expediency, cheap, nasty populism and absolute flailing incompetence.

In the Haneef case, the minister for immigration declares that no matter what the outcome of the courts, innocent or guilty, he will expell Haneef from the country on the basis of evidence which he cannot reveal on the grounds of national security, which Haneef cannot see, on the grounds of national security and which obviously can only be leaked to certain favourable media organisations, on the grounds of national security. He then goes on to explain something about the right of the charged to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Phil Ruddock, AG, doesn't wish to intrude, he just wants the court to address the charges, which according to Kevin have been rendered null and void in terms of his decisions.

Defending any charges of "terrorism" in this day and age is a bitch, public opinion is firmly against you from the start, you are guilty in the eyes of the populace just for being charged (see herald/sun polls for a good overview of stupidity in action). Most people will ignore the fact that a magistrate has seen all the "evidence" presented and made the decision to grant Haneef bail, setting it at a very low, for "terrorism", of $10,000, a good indicator of both the strength of the AFP case and lowly nature of the charge.

Lateline Tony Jones, asking some good questions to the rambling, very tired shell of incompetence, AG Phil Ruddock:

Boiled down, this is about a SIM card he gave to his cousin Sabeel Ahmed. The problem is that the British police have not charged Sabeel Ahmed with being part of a terrorist organisation. So how do the Australian police make a connection to a terrorist organisation when the British police do not?

Very briefly, how can you be charged with providing anything to a terrorist organisation when what you're being charged with is giving a SIM card to someone who in another country is not being charged with being part of a terrorist organisation?

Let me ask you this - what effect does that protected information, the secret information, have in law - because Dr Haneef and his lawyers are not entitled to see it and therefore it's very hard to defend yourself against it?

In this instance this information has been used, it appears, to take away a man's liberty, and yet here's the strangest thing of all. On page nine of this document assessing Dr Haneef's character, it says "if Dr Haneef continued to reside in Australia, he may make a positive contribution to the Australian community". How do you explain that statement?

None of these questions were answered in any way, shape or form of substance, Weary Phil, he of the monotone, quasi-legalese speak, merely wanted to point out that, in bringing terrorism cases to a magistrate, the judiciary was severely amiss in weighing up the evidence for what it was and granting bail.

"I will just say again that one of the matters we will be looking at is the question of the presumption against bail in terrorism matters."

So we have the immigration minister declaring that whatever a court decides, is completely irrelevant, and Australia's chief legal officer, stating that courts can't decide upon what they see and hear, they can only act in one manner, whatever the circumstances. Forget even the illusion of the presumption of innocence, we now have the one allegation and your out rule. Regardless of the strained quality of the hearsay, the paucity of evidence, the poverty of the charge, irrespective of the fact that the defendant may not, as a matter of national security, even see the case against him or her, you are guilty. Now Haneef, a man charged with the most piddling of unintentional terrorism offences, the sort of offence that I would characterise as charging a waiter with aiding a terrorist for bringing him a glass of water at a restaurant, will face several years in a detention centre awaiting a trial, which regardless of the outcome, he will be punished for, even if found completely innocent. To add to his misery, he will be charged by the day for the privilege of his own detention, something that he would not face if he were left languishing in jail.

Its not popular, but for shame.

Ruddocks last two departments, Immigration and Indigenous Affairs, have all ended with the minister taking over from him blaming him for the disastrous state of affairs within their portfolios, with numerous of the governments own reports using such glowing praise as "disastrous","dysfunctional", "a culture of incompetence" and so on and so forth, where ever the fool lays his hands. Both Tampa and the Children Overboard were Phils work, as were many of the 257 plus Australians locked up/detained for up to 6 years by the immigration department, so god knows what state the Australian legal system will be in when he is overwhelmed by his own bland spin of ineptitude and his successor pins all the departments overwhelming failures on his shoulders.

The Whitewash Papers (Cole Inquiry) handed down its findings in November of 2006, end result, not one single charge laid, not one. While Trevor Flugge, Andrew Lindberg and the lilly white boys and girls of AWB sadly get away with nothing more than their million dollar bonus's for funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to the man our PM describes as "worse than Hitler", we should ponder the nature of justice, in Howard's Australia, she is not only blind, but clearly venally stupid, as well as a politically motivated whore.

Meanwhile an Indian doctor pays us for each day he sits on Christmas Island....

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http://soundportraits.org/on-air/feature_documentaries/

yes, sound can be interesting and informative. Check out the section on executions, quite breathtaking.

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Blatant Hypocrisy of the day:

GW Bush

"We are showing the Palestinian people that a commitment to the peace leads to the generous support of the United States. These (Fatah Palestinian) leaders are striving to build the institutions of a modern democracy," said President Bush. "By following this path, Palestinians can reclaim their dignity and their future and establish a state of their own."

conflation

some numbers that count:

62%
australians want our troops withdrawn from Iraq

Voting intentions

Labour 58%
Liberal/Nationals 42%

Preferred Prime Minister

Rudd 49%
Howard 42%

23% Less for an AWA

A TYPICAL Victorian worker on an Australian Workplace Agreement earns 23 per cent less than a comparable worker on a collective agreement, according to a study commissioned by Industrial Relations Victoria. Its a 16.3 per cent shortfall for workers nationwide

100%
amount 0f support enjoyed by PM John Howard from his own Cabinet

3-1
Iraq beats Australia in soccer

50%
the number of saudis in Iraq who are suicide bombers

45%
of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia

15 /19
hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks were Saudi.

41%
the number of americans who believe that the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi

0%
the number of Iraqis involved in the 9/11 hijackings

GW Bush, July 12, 2007
“The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”

160
the number of Saudis tried and convicted in Iraq for insurgency related crimes

"Hundreds"
the number of Saudis awaiting trial in Iraq for similar offences

135 out of 19,000
LA Times estimate of the number of foreigners held as "insurgents" in Iraq by the US military

97-0
US senate vote censureing Iran for "complicity" in the killing of US soldiers in Iraq.
that “the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable act of hostility against the United States,” and demands the government of Iran “take immediate action” to end all forms of support it is providing to Iraqi militias and insurgents.

0
Number of votes condemning US ally Saudi Arabia

0%
the offical number of Iranians held by the US in Iraq in relation to "insurgency"

200
estimated number of Iranians killed by US supported Kurds in Iran
German ARD TV "Kurdish terrorists hide in the U.S. protected areas of North-Eastern Iraq. From there, they send fighters over the border into Iran and attack Iranians. In the past two years, they have killed over 200 Iranians."

3
the number of Reuters journalists killed in Iraq last week

33%
the number of Iraqi security forces on "leave" at any given moment.
Iraqi army commanders overreport attendance “so that he gets a payroll share more than he deserves and thereby pocket it.”

6
the number of Iraqi battalions who can operate wholly independently of the US forces in Mid 2007 according to Gen Peter Pace

Lt. Col. Kurt Pinkerton, US army in Iraq
“I could stand among 1,800 Sunnis in Abu Ghraib,” he said, “and feel more comfortable than standing in a formation of Iraqi soldiers.”

Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, saturday
"We say in full confidence that we are able, God willing, to take the responsibility completely in running the security file if the international forces withdraw at any time they want."

10
the number of Iraqi battalions who can operate wholly independently of the US forces in Mid 2006 according to Gen Peter Pace

160, 000
the number of US forces in Iraq as of July 2007

1,000 - 5,000
estimated number of "al queda" fighters in Iraq

Majority
estimated number who are Iraqis

“The president wants to play on Al Qaeda because he thinks Americans understand the threat Al Qaeda poses,” said Bruce Riedel, an expert at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and a former C.I.A. official. “But I don’t think he demonstrates that fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq precludes Al Qaeda from attacking America here tomorrow. Al Qaeda, both in Iraq and globally, thrives on the American occupation.”

The American military and American intelligence agencies characterize Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as a ruthless, mostly foreign-led group.

30 plus
GW Bushes references to "Al queda" RE Iraq durring one press conference in july.

9
Alexander downers References to "Al Queda" RE: Iraq in answer to two questions, before I turned out and stopped counting.

1.3
the number of attacks the UN reported per day inside the "safe" Iraqi Green Zone in May

.5
the number of attacks the UN reported per day inside the "safe" Iraqi Green Zone in March

$600 billion (in todays dollars)
Cost of the US involment in Vietnam 1963-75

$700 to 1,000 billion plus
Projected costs of US involvement in Iraq, 2003-?

December 25, 2006
Date that US casualties surpassed death toll of 9/11

933 / 13,000
number of dead / wounded contractors in Iraq since March 2003 up to July 3, 2007

100
Estimated Iraqi civilians killed per day

50/1
estimated ratio of iraq deaths to US deaths

10.1%
average amount of airtime on Fox News devoted to Iraq

9.6%
average airtime devoted to Anna Nicole Smith

iraq

http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/

it all makes sense when you get there..

.............................................................................................................

"President Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans' demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened - the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war."

"It is frighteningly clear Mr Bush's plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor.

Whatever his cause was, it is lost."

the new york times editorial

The most important article you will read on the US in Iraq this year is not the above, its here

The mounting frustration of fighting an elusive enemy and the devastating effect of roadside bombs, with their steady toll of American dead and wounded, led many troops to declare an open war on all Iraqis. Veterans described reckless firing once they left their compounds. Some shot holes into cans of gasoline being sold along the roadside and then tossed grenades into the pools of gas to set them ablaze. Others opened fire on children. These shootings often enraged Iraqi witnesses.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hedges

What a pity the new york times began the war as one of bushes main cheerleaders with the skanky trollop judith miller forcefeeding dick cheneys lies to an eager board who were more than happy to splash their front pages with sheer propaganda. Back when there was possibility of the war being stopped before it began, the New York Times did all it could to further the call to arms, pushing false rumours and outright lies from the adminsitration and its lackeys like achmed chalabi, to the fore, now it claims a mea culpa of sorts, while ignoring its own culpability. The right of american will simply point out that the NYT is a liberal paper and so what do you expect, the truth is the paper is in the real world a conservative bastion, more than willing, even to this day, to print anonymous government scources in copious amounts of drivel.

Just look back over the papers website and trawl through the utter crap they are willing to shill over Iran and its connection to the ongoing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan with barely a hint of the sceptisism that should accompany such a prestigous house of "journalism".

So how much of the $10 billion dollars a month that the bushies are spending on war in Iraq should the NYT cover out of its own expenses.

But then we get to Australia where the arguments are not even as mature as the facile ones we see in the simplified version of the US, Bushies Amerika. The usual tell tale signs of the lockstep in terminolgy has filtered through to the coalition of the blinds pronouncements on Iraq, gone are the insurgents, its now exlusively about Al Queda, depsite the US military admiting that at best 3-5% of attacks being carried out by those who claim affliation (at worst according to colin powell 10%). Once more we are left with naught but spin as a substitute for any real policy, the latest polls in Iraq tell us that only 22% of Iraqis want us there, down from the hardly flattering 32% last year, so why are we there.

Mention oil and you wll get slapped, mention WMD and you will get a puzzled look from our polis and the phrase "move along", mention the dsyfunctional Iraqi government and you will get back the words democracy as if it means something in the middle of a hellish war zone. Mention AL queda and you will see the lights go on in the PM's face, just dont mention that there was no AL queda in Iraq before his disatrous invasion.

the word on the Iraqi streets
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6295138.stm

US racism and justice at its worst

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/10/1413220