The violence & chaos in Iraq are direct functions of its illegal invasion & occupation, along with the use of illegal tactics & weapons to support the occupation.

War Crimes Committed By The United States In Iraq & Mechanisms For Accountability documents these crimes & calls for the prosecution of military & civilian leaders for their clear & deliberate violations of International Law.

 
from the ABC …..

Howard urges calm as drought takes hold

Prime Minister John Howard says Australians need to keep a sense of perspective amid growing concerns about the drought.

The Federal Government today released the first stage of a national assessment of Australia's water resources, which found there is considerable room for improvement.

Given that Dhiren Barot's incarceration commenced with 12 days of solitary confinement, it's not surprising that he's told Coalition interrogators exactly what they want to hear.  Barot along with seven others was charged by British police with possessing reconnaissance plans of the Stock Exchange in New York, the International Monetary Fund in Washington, Citigroup in New York, and the Prudential Building in New Jersey, as well as having notebooks with information on explosives, poisons, chemicals and related matters.  

It seems that as the information would be useful to a terrorist planning a terrorist attack, the possession of the knowledge is illegal under U.K. law.   This, folks, is a scary precedent to set in the war on terror.  There's no doubt that unless the Wooden Tops scored a definitive "result" then Barot's imprisonment was going to look terrible on the history books.

‘Here is the great discovery of the little man who doesn’t read. America is not the land of the free, nor of the brave, nor of the politically sentient. Nor is it a country of laws or of principles. It is a country of those who just do as they want. A president can do anything he chooses. Who will tell him no? Nobody has.

Today there is speculation as to whether he will make war, perhaps nuclear war, on Iran. The universal assumption seems to be that if he wants to, he will just do it. The legislature, already having given up its authority to declare war, seems to regard the military as the private guard of the president. Is it not interesting that one dim, pugnacious, ignorant little man can bring on nuclear war all by himself?

A new NY Times/CBS News poll released Monday, shows that:

-          those approving of Bush's handling of terrorism dropped to 46% from 54% in the past two weeks

The U.S. Missile Shield, now controlled from Adelaide, would have looked from above like a cheap umbrella.  Still, while recycled paper and plastic were being exhumed from the South Australian outback and extruded into space-station "lifeboats" for Western Civilization, as long as it kept the Jihad at bay for a few years, the ageing Aegis system would have served its purpose.  These days people refer to it mostly as the Shield of Christ.  and the devotion with which its components are renewed at Port Adelaide is akin to religious fervour. 

The trick was going to be how to get the population off-planet and keep the allies of Allah out of Antarctica.  Bad enough if they got control of the Australian uranium reserve, but what if they got their hands on the mineral reserves beneath the ocean floor under the South polar icecap?   We'd be broke.  

‘As the bodies pile up in Iraq, new polls show that most Iraqis want us out of their country, and they want us out soon. At the same time, Al Jazeera acquired a letter believed to be from a high-ranking al Qaeda operative that shows that our worst enemies think a protracted occupation of Iraq is "the most important thing" for the future of their cause.

Yet the Bush administration and its mouthpieces insist that we must "stay the course" in Iraq -- either to bring stability to the war-torn country or out of some misguided belief that we can salvage America's dignity from an embarrassing Vietnam-style defeat.

‘The Australian and American governments have sought to label prisoners in Guantanamo Bay as dangerous and as evil; in their terms, as terrorists. The latest to join in this litany of inappropriate, pre-trial condemnatory comment is the new United States ambassador to Australia, Robert McCallum. It is another unwise intervention in Australia's affairs.

McCallum well knows that the American courts, Congress and President would not allow any American citizen to be tried in the military commissions, formerly established by President George Bush, now to be established, slightly modified, by law of Congress.

‘The Transportation Security Administration's secret no-fly list includes some very unlikely terror suspects - Bolivian president Evo Morales, 14 of the 19 dead 9/11 hijackers, and every single person named "Robert Johnson."

Journalists Susan and Joseph Tentro recently obtained a copy of the 44,000-name no-fly list and collaborated with CBS's 60 Minutes to investigate the names on it. They found thousands of inaccuracies and ambiguities on the list, not to mention some shocking omissions.

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: