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.

‘….. 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.

The Editor,

Sydney Morning Herald. December 30, 2006.

Man of steel, John Howard, reckons he’d be happy to live next door to a nuclear reactor (‘PM bets house on uranium’, Herald, December 30).

‘Tony Blair's Christmas holiday sparked controversy yesterday after it emerged that the Prime Minister was staying in the Florida mansion of rock star Robin Gibb, who just weeks ago lobbied the government to beef up musicians' rights.

It emerged that Mr Blair would be staying at the £5.8 million home of Gibb, a singer with the band the Bee Gee's and a leading voice of the British Academy of Composers and Song Writers.

Nearly four years after US led forces invaded Iraq & jughead junior declared victory, the US has experienced its worst month of casualties all year …..

With three days left in December, 109 service members have died, according to figures provided by the military & news releases of combat deaths.

The total number of US military deaths in the Iraq war stands at 2,983: a tragic statistic that, nevertheless, pales to insignificance when compared to the carnage wrought against more than 650,000 innocent Iraqis.

‘In today’s America there appear to be several articles of faith on which people will brook no debate: One is that the U.S. military, the most destructive organizational force in human history, is capable of crushing any and all resistance. This faith is, of course, false. U.S. forces in the Middle East are failing not due to a shortage of destructive might, but because of the limits imposed by the moral level of action.

‘An article in a leading Norwegian newspaper last weekend lambasted Israel and Judaism and said Israel has lost its right to exist in its present form.

Entitled "God's chosen people," the article by author Jostein Gaarder in Aftenposten is raising a storm in Norway. Gaarder, author of the book "Sophie's World," links the Israel Defense Forces' acts in Lebanon to Jewish history and foresees the coming dismantling of the state as it exists today, with the Jews becoming refugees.

‘George W. Bush knows how to get Generals to concur with his disastrous plans: he fires all that disagree and promotes the numbskulls who agree. When Bush wanted to invade Iraq, General Shinseki warned that it would require a few hundred thousand troops ... not to win the war, but rather to secure the peace. Bush and his people -- Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz chief among them -- disagreed. They fired Shinseki and, of course, we all know now that the General knew exactly what he was talking about and that the President and his people were fools.

‘Embattled wheat exporter AWB has been dealt another blow, with Iraqi citizens seeking massive damages from the company for its role in the oil-for-food kickbacks scandal.

A civil lawsuit, filed in a US court today on behalf of northern Iraqi people, seeks $255 million in damages from AWB in conjunction with action against European bank BNP Paribas.