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‘The last few weeks have seen
disastrous news breaking over the Bush administration, like Katrina come again.
This time, though, it's not hurricane winds and surging seas, but waves of
innocent blood overtopping the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates to turn
the White House crimson. Report after report of horrific atrocities - long held back
by a levee of lies, fear, obfuscation and the natural confusion of war - has
broken through, flooding the imperial capital with the reeking, corpse-filled
backwash of the vast criminal folly committed by its grubby little Caesar. 

So great is the stench of moral
corruption that even America's corporate media, for so long a simpering handmaiden
to the ruling thugs, have
been forced to take notice, just as they did, all too briefly, during the
Bushist abandonment of New Orleans. New sites of shame have entered the
American lexicon: Haditha, Ishaqi, Hamdaniyah, Samarra - places where horrors large
and small, confirmed and alleged, comprehensible and unfathomable, have marked
this beginning of the fourth year of occupation. 

But "everybody knows the
dice are loaded," as Leonard Cohen sings. "Everybody knows that the captain
lied." Everybody knows there will be no accountability for those who
authored this desecration: Bush and his dithering outrider, Tony Blair, two
murderous mountebanks dripping with self-anointed piety. Bush will retire with
his millions to putter about on his fake ranch, while Blair, robed in ermine,
will ascend to the House of Lords - and no doubt to a plum post with the
Carlyle Group or some other fine purveyor of backroom grease. 

So it will be with the other
perpetrators, like Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz:
nothing but riches, honors, security and respect – until death drags them
howling to the pit where they've sent so many innocent thousands.’ 

Everybody
Knows: Storms Of Horror In A Tormented Land

Bush love some warlords

From the Guardian

UN report accuses Afghan MPs of torture and massacres

· Publication delayed by fears over former warlords
· Diplomats unhappy over police chief appointments

Declan Walsh in Kabul
Monday June 12, 2006
The Guardian

A controversial UN report that has been shelved for 18 months names and shames leading Afghan politicians and officials accused of orchestrating massacres, torture, mass rape and other war crimes.
The 220-page report by the UN high commissioner for human rights, which the Guardian has obtained, details atrocities committed by communist, mujahideen, Soviet and Taliban fighters over 23 years of conflict. Originally scheduled for release in January 2005, the report's publication has been delayed repeatedly due to sensitivities over identifying former warlords still in positions of power.

"The UN has been intimidated. It is afraid to rock the boat because of these guys," said Sam Zarifi of Human Rights Watch. "But the boat is taking on water and they are going to pull it down."

read more at the Guardian
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Gus: Did Bush put these guys back in power so he could build his pipeline...?

"Friendly" totalitarian regime

From the ABC

Howard urged to pressure Singapore on death penalty
A barrister who represented a Melbourne man hanged in Singapore last year is calling on Prime Minister John Howard to raise the issue when he meets with his Singaporean counterpart tomorrow.

Lex Lasry, QC, represented 23-year-old Van Nguyen, who was arrested in Singapore in 2002 on drugs charges.

He was executed last year after an appeal for clemency was rejected.

Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong arrives in Australia tomorrow for trade and security talks with Mr Howard.

Mr Lasry says he wants Mr Howard to join a campaign to change Singapore's law regarding the death penalty.

"It operated very unfairly in the case of Van Nguyen," he said.

"Lee Hsien Loong said that the rule of law had taken its course when Van Nguyen was executed but it wasn't the rule of law at all.

"The only thing that's even worse than a death penalty is a mandatory death penalty which takes the courts out of the equation.

"Ultimately I say that Singapore will have to change that law, it's an extraordinarily unfair law."

read more at the ABC