‘Tony Blair believes
he will be judged by God for his decision to send British troops into Iraq, the
Prime Minister reveals today.  

In a rare departure from his usual
reticence about discussing his faith in public, Mr Blair talks openly about his
Christianity in a television interview to be broadcast on ITV tonight.’ 

‘Every generation or so an evil
arises which is so monstrous, so degrading to the human spirit, so morally
bankrupt that even to debate it is a sign of moral corruption. Native American
genocide, slavery, totalitarianism, and Jim Crow laws are evils so unspeakable
that we cannot understand today how anyone with a shred of decency could have
once supported them. Today, torture, a practice far more degrading to us than
to our victims, represents such an evil. 

The issue has become urgent
because Bush has chosen to demand the legal right to torture anyone he wishes.
When torture was revealed at Abu Ghraib, the administration - falsely and
shamelessly - attempted to shift its own responsibility onto foot-soldiers like
Lynndie England. Since then, however, leaks have revealed that the CIA has
tortured terrorist suspects all around the world, using techniques like
"waterboarding." In response, Senator John McCain proposed an
amendment, attached to the 2006 Defense bill, that would ban torture. 

‘President Bush today said his
landmark nuclear cooperation agreement with India marked a crucial advancement
in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons - ensuring for the first time the
presence of international inspectors at civilian nuclear reactors. 

But administration officials
conceded that the agreement was not everything the U.S. had hoped for -
permitting India to keep eight of its 22 reactors under wraps as secret
military sites. 

‘Stung by growing criticism of his Iraq policy which has
manifested itself in all-time low public opinion ratings, President Bush last
month embarked on a tour in which he delivered five speeches outlining his
"Plan for Victory" in Iraq, as well as offering a defense of his
decision to invade Iraq. "It is true that much of the intelligence [used
to justify the invasion] turned out to be wrong", Mr. Bush said in the
fourth of these speeches. "As President, I'm responsible for the decision
to go into Iraq." 

From the ABC

Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile has announced the sale of 350,000 tonnes of Australian wheat to Iraq worth up to $70 million.

Mr Vaile made the announcement as he and other Nationals
parliamentarians addressed a rally of around 400 farmers in the New
South Wales central-west.

I forgot if this already appears on the site... But I drew this just when Mr Vaile was leaving Australia for negociations with Iraq... Not hard to guess the result...

From the ABC

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer says he supports a decision by the United States to deliver nuclear technology to India.

Australia has ruled out selling uranium to India because it has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Prime Minister John Howard is due to visit the country next week, but Mr Downer says this development will not cause discomfort.

"We've considered very carefully over the last few months the American proposal for this agreement that President Bush has signed with the Indians, and our view of it is that it's a good step forward... 

Gus radiations:

 From the ABC

The Federal Opposition says cables warning of alleged kickbacks in AWB's wheat contracts tendered to the Cole inquiry yesterday were sent directly to the Prime Minister nearly six years ago.

Labor says the cables dispute Prime Minister John Howard's claim that the first he knew of information suggesting AWB was paying kickbacks to Iraq was long after the oil-for-food program had ended.

Mr Howard has repeatedly told Parliament that he had no knowledge of suggestions AWB might be paying kickbacks until the matter was investigated by the United Nations.

 
‘Never before has one word, or
its relentless repetition, done so much for one man as the word `terror’
(`terra` in Texanese) has for this Texan from Crawford that now resides in the
White House. No other single word, it seems, is so much responsible for Bush`s
continued fame among certain naive American quarters. 

Whether it is the external or
internal policies of this administration, the word terra remains the
cornerstone of all its past, present and future plans of action. Be it
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Katrina, domestic elections, passing of sham
legislation, the Guantanamo Gulag, the discovery of torture dungeons or the
scandal of spying on own citizens, no crisis has ever been strong enough to
withstand the magic mantra of terra, terra, terra. 

‘The memo is a chronological account, submitted on July 7,
2004, to Vice Admiral Albert Church, who led a Pentagon investigation into
abuses at the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It reveals that
Mora’s criticisms of Administration policy were unequivocal, wide-ranging, and
persistent. Well before the exposure of prisoner abuse in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib
prison, in April, 2004, Mora warned his superiors at the Pentagon about the
consequences of President Bush’s decision, in February, 2002, to circumvent the
Geneva conventions, which prohibit both torture and “outrages upon personal
dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” 

Thank you for attending this State Liberal Party Fundraiser- the more money raised for them through my name, the more I own them.

Most have you have probably been wondering if I work for Prime Minister Howard or President Bush.  The truth is that I actually work for both, in that I'm "on secondment" to the White House.  It must give the listener great reassurance to know that when I speak it is the voice of authority that you hear.

We had to start the War On Terror- without new markets to exploit the US economy would implode within decades, taking all the money we'd invested in Carlyle and Halliburton with it  As long as the war doesn't end, everything will be fine.

‘"Terrorism" has been made The Issue of the
Year, for which Americans are expected to tighten their belts, pay countless
billions in taxes so the U.S. government and its allies can arm to the teeth,
and suffer an escalating repression of their liberties. 

Yet who the terrorists are
supposed to be remains vague and shadowy. Their only apparent common
characteristic is that they are swarthy and foreign; no Nordics need apply.