‘Bush is still the Christian-crusader President, still lodged inside a bubble universe filled with neo-con advisors - and that means more troops in Iraq, even if the idea doesn't make a lick of sense.

Every now and then, you have to take a lesson or two from history. In the case of George Bush's Iraq, here's one: No matter what the President announces in his "new way forward" speech on Iraq next week - including belated calls for "sacrifice" from the man whose answer to 9/11 was to urge Americans to surge into Disney World - it won't work.

So, four years after the non-Islamic part of the world violated a nation's sovereign rights by beginning the process of invading, seizing its ruler and at the very least assisting in the creation of the outcome of his execution, is the War On Terror over?

Every Western civilation is five times as scared as it was before of bombs detonating in its city streets. Is the War On Terror over?

3,000 US soldiers are dead, and a couple of hundred thousand Iraqis, who-knows-how-many have been injured. London has been bombed. Al Qaeda has threatened Australia. You can't walk two blocks in Adelaide without your face being filmed twenty five times.

‘After six years of spending the American taxpayers' money like an overindulged, forever prepubescent Ivy League frat boy on spring break with his Daddy's credit card; George W. Bush has decided that he has a plan to "balance the budget by 2012."

Let's keep in mind that this is the guy who put together "the plan" - the "victory strategy" - for Iraq and, following Hurricane Katrina, the recovery plan for the Gulf Coast. In other words, if Bush decides to stick with his plan to balance the budget by 2012 and Democrats are goofy enough to go along with his foolishness - the deficit will double by 2008.

‘Not long before Christmas Day 2002, a young man was being held in a US facility known as the Bagram Collection Point, in Afghanistan. Like many other Afghan nationals, he had only one name: Dilawar.

He led a simple, quiet life. He had a wife, a young daughter, and one friend. He was 22 years old, and weighed only 122 pounds. He had become a cab driver because he couldn't feed his family as a farmer anymore.

from our ABC ..... 

PM promises $25m for SCG stand

The Federal Government will provide $25 million for a new grandstand at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

Prime Minister John Howard says he expects the New South Wales Government to fully match the Commonwealth's contribution.

‘Energy will be a central theme of President George W. Bush's state of the union speech this month, as it was in last year's address when he briefly caught national attention with the claim that the country was "addicted to oil".

But his critics doubt that he will do much more than call for more spending on alternative fuels, and again fail to embrace international efforts to agree a post-Kyoto regime to tackle greenhouse emissions.

from our venerable ABC …..

US would have executed Saddam 'differently'

By Washington correspondent Kim Landers

The United States says it would have handled the execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein differently, but is also insisting that "justice has been done".

from the Center for American Progress …..

‘CNN reports that President Bush is "expected to announce his new Iraq strategy in an address to the nation early next week." According to the BBC, "The speech will reveal a plan to send more US troops to Iraq." The Pentagon is already drafting plans "extending U.S. military units already in Iraq and moving troops from other locations" in anticipation of the announcement. One thing that hasn't been decided: what the extra troops would do in the middle of a civil war. The BBC reports "The exact mission of the extra troops in Iraq is still under discussion." Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) says Bush's plan for escalation in Iraq is "Alice in Wonderland," adding, "I'm absolutely opposed to sending any more troops to Iraq. It is folly."

from the Sydney morning herald …..

Hicks case needs to be resolved: Ruddock

‘Pressure is building on the Federal Government to take action to end the US detention without charge of the Australian David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay.

‘There is simply no way to understand the reign of Saddam Hussein, nor the past few decades of Iraq's history, without including the very real and important role that the United States has played in shaping these realities.

The reason that tens of thousands of American soldiers have been killed and maimed – and that hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been slaughtered, and millions more plunged into hellish suffering – is because this history has been buried, perverted, ignored or forgotten.

bush issues new year’s resolutions for 2007 –

vows to Invite hugo chavez to lunch at taco bell …..

In an unprecedented televised address to the nation last night, President George W. Bush announced a list of his New Year’s resolutions for 2007, telling the American people, “I am a big believer in abiding by resolutions, as long as they don’t come from the United Nations.”

‘As George Bush hacked down brushwood and rode his bike at his Crawford ranch this weekend, he gave the impression of a US president little preoccupied by two Iraq milestones that complicate his deliberations on a change of strategy.

The first, the hanging of Saddam Hussein, found Mr Bush asleep, and according to advisers he spent only a short time discussing the execution. The second, the reports of the 3,000th US fatality in Iraq, evinced only a general remark.

i have started a 'citizen register' at

http://auxarmes.blog.com/

please visit and enroll if you think lighting this kind of candle is useful. i am certain that the first party to lose an election because 'their' demographic has done a lysistrata will have a re-think about instituting actual democracy in australia. the labor party in particular has had cir in their policies, until the apparatchiks supplanted the true believers.

the roll needs to be in the tens of thousands before the mainstream of politics begins to take notice. finding 10,000 concerned and active ozzies might be difficult, but at least doorknocking not required- fingers can do the walking. dont hesitate to help!

‘….. and the remaining population were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives. On one journey in rough seas, the copra company's horses occupied the deck, while women and children were forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertilizer.

Remember the day the War On Iraq supposedly ended? We saw the statue of Saddam topple and then our screens went blank. Now, as the screen in Saddam's mind is about to be broken by a hail of US sponsored bullets, let's wonder what the New Year's Day news bulletins will show.

George Bush: "This New Year's Day heralds a new century of peace. The dictator who supported Al Qaeda's war on terror is no more, and those who would continue to perpetrate terrorist acts on America and American interests should heed the lesson we're giving here.

The lesson is that if you run a country and we don't like how you're doing it, we're going to take over your land and reorganise it so that we can make a lot of money from your resources. Then we're going to kill you.