Monday 23rd of December 2024
Home » Blogs » John Richardson's blog

good old uncle dick .....

‘Last week's grim milestone of 2,500 American military
deaths in Iraq will look even grimmer after tonight's "Frontline"
documentary, "The Dark Side." 

The damning 90-minute exposé (10
p.m. PBS) stops short of laying those bodies at Vice President Dick Cheney's
feet. But it does finger Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — through
more than 40 interviews with CIA veterans, journalists, politicians and others
— as the ones who ignored, suppressed and manipulated intelligence after the
9/11 attacks to lead us into war with a country that had nothing to do with our
attackers. 

And you wonder why the GOP hasn't
exactly been a sugar daddy for public television.

Comedians have made countless Darth Vader jokes about Cheney, but the film's
title is no joke about The Force. It's from Cheney's own words about America's
response to terrorists: "We have to work the dark side, if you will. We've
got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs
to be done here will have to be done quietly without any discussion, using
sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies." 

But apparently he didn't use the
actual intelligence from the agencies. 

The CIA and its then-director,
George Tenet, knew immediately that al-Qaida in Afghanistan was responsible for
the 9/11 attacks and said so. But author James Bamford says that while the
Pentagon was still smoking, Rumsfeld said, "We've got to see, somehow, how
we can bring Saddam Hussein into this."’ 

"Frontline"
Documentary Makes Case That Cheney Used 9/11 To Go To War

The days of their lives

From the ABC

Bush says US wants to shut Guantanamo prison
US President George W Bush, seeking to reassure Europeans over the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, says he wanted eventually to shut the prison and send inmates back to their home countries.

Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel says Europeans were calling for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, but they had also received a commitment "no torture, no extraordinary or extraterritorial positions to deal with the terrorists".

US forces captured hundreds of foreigners abroad following the September 11, 2001 attacks on suspicion of belonging to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, but almost all have been held without charges - some of them for more than four years.

"I'd like to end Guantanamo. I'd like it to be over with," Mr Bush said at a news conference after talks with European Union leaders.

"One of the things we will do is we'll send people back to their home countries."

He gave no time frame.

----------------------------

Gus time frames at the mouth:

In the Kommanda in chief's own mind, the year-date was a blank after the first two figures he had drawn in the sand... Two... zero... then: blank... blank... Was the date two thousand and something? Yes, it was the average best the prezident could do, but he believed the US thus could win the "war on terra" by 2099... otherwise he would have to change the zero to a one and hopefully not to have to change the two into a three, in the landing time of Piggy airlines at Furphy airport.

Only in the USA

From the New York Times

Two Killed in Florida Detention Center Shooting

By CHRISTINE JORDAN SEXTON and MARIA NEWMAN
Published: June 21, 2006
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. June 21 — A gunfight broke out this morning in a federal prison here between federal agents and prison guards, as the agents tried to arrest six guards on charges that they traded alcohol and drugs for sex with female prisoners.

Read more in the NYT
-------------------------

Training ground for Guantanamo?

En suite

Brought to you by L,I and T: Bush says US wants to shut Guantanamo prison. Requires one response BU**SH**!

Is Howard's own desire for offshore detention proving to be a watershed? Angry reactions from Howard's dogs, as in Migration laws delay angers MPs will encourage decent people like Judith Troeth to stick to their position. Howard is out there praising the democratic principles that allow these debates, while his faithful hounds rip into their colleagues for not kowtowing to Howard on every point. I expect the Indonesians to respectfully and quietly point this anomaly out to Howard, when they meet next week.

Pryor, Canberra Times, has a great cartoon.  It's a  take-off of Mutiny on the Bounty, with Howard, Costello, Vanstone, Ruddock ,etc, in the rowing boat, and a figure in the stern of the ship Backbench who looks a bit like Turnbull.

This one is going to be an election issue. If Howard pulls out before Xmas, it will be Costello's bit of grief. Can Costello differentiate himself from Howard, or will he push along as the compassionate conservative who "wants to close down our offshore camps" but cannot do it just yet? The next lot of kids in detention are very likely to be from Papua. Black kids behind the razor wire, Peter? Will you provide a live-in kiddie-fiddler, too?

Costello could separate himself from Howard's legacy on one thing - fixed terms for the Reps. But is he game?  

Costello may be hoping he can trade off his reputation for doling out cash. My mum told me to watch out for the dirty old bugger, in a raincoat and riding a girl's bicycle, who would sneak up to boys at the footy ground, and offer a free lolly. What came next is best left to the imagination, but it involved two bob. Costello is that shifty bloke in the raincoat, unless he can find it within himself to stick up for decency and human rights. They can't get away with offering to lock up the mothers and kids in separate enclosures. Cheney and Bush like to ease their bowels in front of a global audience, but the sanity of normal people is dependent on privacy.