from Mike Carlton in today’s SMH …..

‘The blatant dishonesty came towards the end, with a brief nod at the war on terrorism. "It remains," intoned Howard, "an inconvenient truth that if countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia simply abandon the people of Iraq this would be an enormous victory for the forces of terror and extremism around the world."

No mention of the deceit and incompetence that got us into Iraq in the first place.

‘When you hear that we must bomb Syria because it allows Iranian weapons to transit its territory, remember how our own Dutch allies have been deliberately turning a blind eye for years as one of its major international airports is used as a transit point for our shipment of illicit, non-conventional weapons into the Middle East.

Remember too that at the exact same time that the US Administration was demanding that Iraq be sanctioned and its children starved because Saddam Hussein was developing Chemical and Biological Weapons, our Department of Commerce was (and presumably still is) issuing export licences to facilitate the production of exactly the same weapons in Israel.

Last year the freedom of speech in South Australia was challenged by the forbidding of the public to gather on the steps of  Parliament.  Fortunately the voice of democracy was heard and we were allowed to protest US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld's visit.  One of the proudest moments of my life was helping to fix the rallying banner for peace  to the Paliamentary pillars.  It restored my faith in the voice of the people being allowed to be heard.

Foreign Minister Downer's words yesterday have changed my mind.  Faced with statistics suggesting that four out  of five Australians believed that our atempted mission in Iraq  was a faillure, Mr Downer turned a deaf ear to the point of view.

‘My fellow Americans, it’s official now: We live in a fascist nation.

Now, the term "fascist" has been thrown around over the last fifty years in a loose way that has drained it of much of its meaning. If someone wanted to cut 5% off of a leftist professor's favourite welfare programme, the professor would call his opponent a "fascist." I’m not using the word like that. I mean honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, 1930s style fascism, featuring such old favourites as:

‘It may be that the Roman republic was doomed in any case. But the disproportionate reaction to the raid on Ostia unquestionably hastened the process, weakening the restraints on military adventurism and corrupting the political process. It was to be more than 1,800 years before anything remotely comparable to Rome’s democracy - imperfect though it was - rose again.

The Lex Gabinia was a classic illustration of the law of unintended consequences: it fatally subverted the institution it was supposed to protect. Let us hope that vote in the United States Senate does not have the same result.’

from today’s Australian …..

‘North Korea last night stepped up its nuclear blackmail with the announcement that it will test an atomic device for the first time.

Blaming an American "extreme threat of a nuclear war and sanctions", Kim Jong-il's increasingly isolated regime announced that a nuclear weapons test was essential to bolstering North Korea's defence.

‘At Nuremberg, we rejected the certainty of execution for the uncertainty of a trial. The test was one of principle over power, and the United States passed.

President Harry Truman understood that our nation's ability to bring about a world of peace and justice was rooted not in our military might but in our moral authority; not on the ability to compel people with our tanks and planes but to convince them that our values and our ideals were right. He understood that our ability to succeed in spreading American values of freedom and human rights are only as effective as our willingness to uphold them.

from Alan Ramsey …..

‘We let David Hicks rot for almost five years, without trial, in an American military hellhole in Cuba, and the Howard Government does nothing. A Melbourne court sees videos of an elite Victorian police unit obviously bashing confessions from suspects, yet all the police do is cry foul at their public "humiliation". Now a 90-plus-kilogram policeman in a remote Aboriginal community behaves so brutishly his victim's liver is torn in half and four ribs are broken after a "fall" as he is being taken from the paddy wagon and dragged, on his back, by the arms to a cell.

 

In July 2003, George Bush said in a speech: "The United States is committed to worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes, whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit."

This week, former US Ambassador for War Crimes Issues, David Scheffer, said:

 

75 per cent of Iraqis resent the presence of the coalition troops.......

‘We have seen America’s president and vice president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, advocating exactly the same tortures techniques KGB used at the Lubyanka. They claimed beating, freezing, sleep deprivation, and drowning were necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, calling them by the euphemism, “tough interrogation.” Stalin made the same arguments, but did not stoop to euphemisms.

The White House insisted that anyone charged with vague “terrorism offenses” – including Americans – could be kidnapped, tortured, and tried in camera using “evidence” obtained by torturing other suspects. Bush & Co. reject the basic law of habeas corpus and US laws against torture. The UN says Bush’s torture plans violate international law and the Geneva Conventions. These conventions were enacted to provide basic protection to combatants and civilians in wartime, and regulate the behavior of occupying powers.

from our lovely ABC .....

US report 'devastates' Howard's credibility

The Federal Opposition says the release of a United States intelligence report torpedoes the Prime Minister's reasons for going to war in Iraq.

The White House has declassified parts of a leaked intelligence report that undermines its claims that America is safer since the war in Iraq.

from a New York Post exclusive .....

RICE BOILS OVER AT BUBBA
RIPS 'FLATLY FALSE' CLAIM ON BUSH'S BID TO GET BIN LADEN

By IAN BISHOP Post Correspondent

September 25, 2006 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday accused Bill Clinton of making "flatly false" claims that the Bush administration didn't lift a finger to stop terrorism before the 9/11 attacks.