‘As the President prepares to announce an increase of an additional 20,000 American troops for the civil war in Iraq, editorials in newspapers across the country are joining the wide-ranging criticism of the war's escalation. Calling it "a futile gesture" and noting that there "is nothing novel" about the President's latest tactic, editorials from Atlanta to Albuquerque, and Dallas to Milwaukee are calling for a "new strategy," for the President to put "far more pressure" on the Iraqis, and for a greater attempt at diplomacy, as the bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommended.’

A convoluted trail is emerging that involves allegations of Russian-based international money laundering, direct government dealings with the administrators of Saddam's Australian wheat bribes, and a government representative taking up a position in a cloudy corner of the corporate world.

The Australian Trade Commission has published claims made by Firepower, a Perth based company that its technology provides reductions of environmentally harmful emissions of thirty to sixty percent,, Firepower claim they've been checked by "several world leading independent testing institutes" but don"t say who they are. Austrade refer to testing carried out in Russia... though the sources of the testing are not mentioned on the company's website.

from today’s Crikey …..

Alexander Downer is heading to the US – but to join the likes of Bindi Irwin and the Wiggles for the G’day USA promotion in LA, not to stand alongside the President as he speaks to the nation. Perhaps that’s the best place for him. Perhaps, if Australia wants to make a mark in Washington, we should be putting Bindi in the Beltway.

‘People should not be tortured, abused or held indefinitely without charge, whether perceived guilty or innocent. Holding anyone without charge, citizen or non-citizen, is a violation of the United States Constitution and international law.Torture is immoral, ineffective and absolutely illegal under domestic and international law.

from the Centre for American Progress …..

No Blank Check

As early as Wednesday, President Bush is expected to deliver a national address announcing an escalation of tens of thousands of U.S. forces in Iraq. A Pentagon official admitted to NBC News last week that the escalation is "more of a political decision than a military one," favored because Bush "has few other dramatic options available to signal U.S. determination in Iraq." U.S. troops should not be ordered into the deadliest hot spots of Iraq's civil war so that President Bush can send a "signal." New congressional leaders Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) agree, telling Bush in a letter on Friday that escalation "is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed. ... Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain." Congress must hold Bush accountable to ensure that U.S. forces are deployed for the right reasons. A recent Center for American Progress memo suggested that Congress "place an amendment on the supplemental funding bill that states that if the administration wants to increase the number of troops in Iraq above 150,000, it must provide a plan for their purpose and require an up or down vote on exceeding that number." Yesterday, Pelosi pledged that Congress not issue Bush a blank check. "If the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it,” Pelosi said. 

‘Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

‘Gordon Brown yesterday moved to announce himself as the pre-eminent figure in British politics, forcing Tony Blair to break his silence on the execution of Saddam Hussein and issuing what amounts to a scathing criticism of the Prime Minister's foreign policy.

‘Telephone logs recorded by the National Security Agency and obtained by Congress as part of an ongoing investigation suggest that the vice president may have used the Oval Office intercom system to address President Bush at crucial moments, giving categorical directives in a voice the president believed to be that of God.

‘Bush is still the Christian-crusader President, still lodged inside a bubble universe filled with neo-con advisors - and that means more troops in Iraq, even if the idea doesn't make a lick of sense.

Every now and then, you have to take a lesson or two from history. In the case of George Bush's Iraq, here's one: No matter what the President announces in his "new way forward" speech on Iraq next week - including belated calls for "sacrifice" from the man whose answer to 9/11 was to urge Americans to surge into Disney World - it won't work.

So, four years after the non-Islamic part of the world violated a nation's sovereign rights by beginning the process of invading, seizing its ruler and at the very least assisting in the creation of the outcome of his execution, is the War On Terror over?

Every Western civilation is five times as scared as it was before of bombs detonating in its city streets. Is the War On Terror over?

3,000 US soldiers are dead, and a couple of hundred thousand Iraqis, who-knows-how-many have been injured. London has been bombed. Al Qaeda has threatened Australia. You can't walk two blocks in Adelaide without your face being filmed twenty five times.

‘After six years of spending the American taxpayers' money like an overindulged, forever prepubescent Ivy League frat boy on spring break with his Daddy's credit card; George W. Bush has decided that he has a plan to "balance the budget by 2012."

Let's keep in mind that this is the guy who put together "the plan" - the "victory strategy" - for Iraq and, following Hurricane Katrina, the recovery plan for the Gulf Coast. In other words, if Bush decides to stick with his plan to balance the budget by 2012 and Democrats are goofy enough to go along with his foolishness - the deficit will double by 2008.

‘Not long before Christmas Day 2002, a young man was being held in a US facility known as the Bagram Collection Point, in Afghanistan. Like many other Afghan nationals, he had only one name: Dilawar.

He led a simple, quiet life. He had a wife, a young daughter, and one friend. He was 22 years old, and weighed only 122 pounds. He had become a cab driver because he couldn't feed his family as a farmer anymore.

from our ABC ..... 

PM promises $25m for SCG stand

The Federal Government will provide $25 million for a new grandstand at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

Prime Minister John Howard says he expects the New South Wales Government to fully match the Commonwealth's contribution.

‘Energy will be a central theme of President George W. Bush's state of the union speech this month, as it was in last year's address when he briefly caught national attention with the claim that the country was "addicted to oil".

But his critics doubt that he will do much more than call for more spending on alternative fuels, and again fail to embrace international efforts to agree a post-Kyoto regime to tackle greenhouse emissions.