‘It is requested that an act may be passed to the effect that any citizen of the United States who proposes to force this country into a war with Great Britain or with any other country on a dispute about boundaries or any other similar issue, shall be immediately conscripted or entered upon the army roll for service from the beginning to the end of any such war when it shall occur.

from today’s Sydney morning herald …..

‘Significant parts of the Government's terrorism laws may be unconstitutional, the recently retired High Court judge Michael McHugh says.

Mr McHugh believes the ability to detain people who are not suspected criminals is dubious, as are control orders imposed on people who have not been convicted of any offence. He also criticised the prohibition on praising acts of terrorism.

‘Military planners and White House budget analysts have been asked to provide President Bush with options for increasing American forces in Iraq by 20,000 or more. The request indicates that the option of a major "surge" in troop strength is gaining ground as part of a White House strategy review, senior administration officials said Friday.

‘The Government's case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

‘The hard core of detainees held at America's Guantanamo Bay detention camp will be held indefinitely even if there is insufficient evidence to bring them to trial, a senior Bush administration official said.

Of the 435 detainees being held at Guantanamo, only 10 have so far been charged with terrorism-related offenses. A further 14 detainees — the so-called high value detainees such as the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — are also expected to face trial now that the U.S. Congress has passed the Military Commission Act, which will finally enable America to commence trials of Guantanamo detainees next year.

‘What an amazing bloody catastrophe. The Bush administration's policy towards the Middle East over the five years since 9/11 is culminating in a multiple train crash. Never in the field of human conflict was so little achieved by so great a country at such vast expense. In every vital area of the wider Middle East, American policy over the last five years has taken a bad situation and made it worse.

from the centre for american progress …..

"[President Bush] decided, frankly, that it's not ready yet," White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said yesterday of the White House's promised Iraq plan. "[It] is not going to happen until the new year. We do not know when, so I can't give you a date, I can't give you a time, I can't give you a place, I can't give you a way in which it will happen." As the administration dawdles, the "grave and deteriorating" situation in Iraq continues to worsen. Yesterday, 70 Iraqis were killed in a truck-bomb attack, five U.S. soldiers died, and a grim milestone was reached: 25,000 U.S. soldiers have now died or been wounded in the war. Seventy-one percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's handling of the conflict, an all-time high. (Only 16 percent agree with Bush and Cheney that we're winning.) A change in strategy is desperately needed, yet the "search for a new plan for Iraq seems to be taking place with as much urgency as the deliberations over a new color for the dollar bill." The White House initially promised a new plan "before Christmas," but that has been pushed until January at the earliest. The decision to delay may be an attempt to "blunt the effect of the publicity" of the Iraq Study Group's report, or a way to keep a possible increase in troop levels under wraps until after the holidays. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) called the delay "unpardonable." "Every day that goes by," Hagel said, "we are losing ground." "The nation is in a crisis, and Americans need to hear how he plans to unwind the chaos he has unleashed in Iraq," the New York Times writes. "Americans need to see that he is prepared to choose among the undesirable alternatives, and clear the way for a withdrawal of American troops that does not leave even more killing and mayhem behind." (The Center for American Progress has a way: Strategic Redeployment.)

for johnnee, phil, alexander & brendan ..... 

‘After thousands of years of practice, you might have imagined that every possible means of inflicting pain had already been devised. But you should never underestimate the human capacity for invention. United States interrogators, we now discover, have found a new way of destroying a human being.

With all the worry of Iraq, the Wheat Board scandal, the ten years of environmental paralysis, a newly credible opposition and the impending retirement of that great friend George, our esteemed Prime Minister is surely in need of a helping hand to get the Citizenship Examination right.

‘Democracy is supposed to be about ordinary people, common folk, having a say-so in the decisions that shape their lives; the idea that there's an "inalienable right" to certain freedoms; that the only legitimate government is one that answers to "the people." In democracies, people are not subjects, but citizens.

In his farewell speech as Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan delivered a series of "lessons" which could be read as rebukes to the Bush/Cheney doctrine. Given at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, Annan's speech invokes Truman throughout, while conspicuously using Bush's name exactly zero times. The lessons:

Administration officials say their preliminary review of the Iraq Study Group Report "has concluded that many of its key proposals are impractical or unrealistic & a small group inside the National Security Council is now racing to come up with alternatives to the panel's ideas."

Below is an extract from the prime preanster’s press conference today, where he & Andrew Robb confirmed the government’s intention to introduce a “Citizenship Test”.

The irony of this announcement sharing the “subject” line with New South Wales lotteries says it all ….. 

11 December 2006

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER

THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP

‘What if the world's governments came together and agreed on the fundamental rights that every human being must have in order to enjoy basic dignity, opportunity, and a meaningful life?

What if their agreement was profoundly progressive, recognizing civil and political rights like free speech, due process, and non-discrimination, as well as economic and social rights like the right to health care and housing, to organize, and to receive a living wage for a hard day's work? And what if they memorialized those rights in a seminal document, from which more specific commitments and enforcement could and did flow?