There's medals and medals

If anyone deserves a medal this man does:



He's the splendidly named Captain Chesley B Sullenburger 111.

The man who safely landed an Airbus with 155 people on board in New York's Hudson River.

What I think is an astonishing photograph shows just what he did:


Reuters photo

All 155 people walking out of the aircraft into waiting rescue boats.

Mind boggling.

But more than that, he's described by a friend as one of the last American gentlemen.

I can believe that because he demonstrated old-fashioned values, values which are so important in a civilised society but which are much derided these days.

Ability, professionalism, responsibility, concern for others.

Not only did he safely bring the plane down, he made sure the passengers and his crew evacuated safely - then he twice walked the length of the aircraft to make sure that everyone was safely out. Only then did he leave the aircraft.

I thought such values were all-but dead but Capt. Sullenberger restores my faith that maybe we haven't totally lost them.

Anybody want a role model? Forget entertainers and footballers and 'celebrities', this is the kind of role model we need to get society back on track.

I don't know what awards he'll receive but whatever they are they aren't enough.

But then there's the other side of awards.

Just a few days ago the worst-ever American president presented his country's highest civilian honour, The Presidential Medal of Freedom, to two of his cronies.



Photos: Ron Edmonds/AP and Reuters

Tony Blair, ex-UK Prime Minister and John Howard, ex-Australian Prime Minister.

Both almost equally awful as leaders of their countries as Bush has been. Three men who demonstrate values which are the opposite of Capt. Sullenberger's.

The White House spokesman said: "The president is honoring these leaders for their work to improve the lives of their citizens and for their efforts to promote democracy, human rights and peace abroad"

Oh really?

They supported Bush's catastrophic adventures in what was childishly named the Coalition of the Willing, causing untold damage to the world and to their own countries' reputations and standing.


BLiar, all spin and no substance, an unwarranted belief in his own importance and influence, the lies about Saddam and nuclear weapons, incompetence at home and abroad. Eventually, in spite of winning elections and thus keeping them in their lucrative jobs, his own MPs got sick of him and threw him out.

The world knows less about him so let me tell you about John Winston Howard.

Like Bush, Howard pursued extreme right wing policies and seriously damaged the reputation of a great country. Even more than Bush and BLiar, he was exposed many, many times lying to both parliament and the people. His strategy was wedge politics, dividing people as much as possible making it easier for him to retain power.

He put selfish personal ambition and the drive to hang on to power above all else. Above his party, his country, the people.

Like Bush he appointed a whole bunch of incompetent and extremist people to his government, several of them even more vindictive than himself. Australians will remember ministers such as Vanstone, Downer, Ruddock, Reith.

Often asked questions which would have been embarrasing to answer Howard's stock response was 'I find that question offensive' and he'd stalk off.

We had his mistreatment and vilification of asylum seekers, his so called 'Pacific Solution' sending them to spend years in prison camps in small island nations we paid to take them.

We had the deliberate lies and doctored 'evidence' of 'children overboard' when Howard condemned the “sickening behaviour” by asylum seekers of throwing children overboard into the ocean. In fact they were fleeing a sinking ship, parents trying to save their children first as confirmed by the Australian navy's HMAS Adelaide. It was just before an election so he used the lies in his campaign, based on 'not the kind of people we want here' and 'we decide who comes to this country'.

We had black-clad goons wearing balaclavas accompanied by very large dogs attacking striking wharfies on the docks, something Australians never thought we'd see.

We had the mistreatment of individuals through Howard's misuse of his draconian terrorism laws, such as Doctor Haneef, which I posted about earlier, here, demonstrating the spite and malice of his government.

He made lying by public figures acceptable, he made it acceptable to take no responsibility, he made it acceptable to blame others, he led the charge in our plummeting standards of decency and honesty, he made it acceptable to claim credit for things which in reality were other people's doing.

He encouraged a climate of selfishness, paranoia, of bigotry and racism.

He took the country to war against the wishes of the majority, he subjugated Australian policy to that of the administration in America.

He frittered away our money on vote-buying handouts while the country's infrastructure fell apart.

And his main claim to success, the booming economy and low interest rates, was almost entirely due to his predecessors and world events and nothing to do with Howard or his Treasurer Costello.

The boom began two years before he won power, started by IR changes the previous government put in place not by Howard's policies. It continued with the demand from China and India for Australia's raw materials - nothing to do with Howard but he claimed credit for the booming mining sector.

The boom continued because his government used the same disastrous strategy as most of the world, with the government living beyond its means, in effect running up credit card bills with no thought for tomorrow, by keeping interest rates artificially and unsustainably low, by encouraging the population to keep spending beyond their means. Huge trade deficits were built up, budget surpluses were frittered away buying votes by giving billions in handouts to voters before elections instead of the money being invested in the country's future.

Eventually the electorate realised what an appalling leader we had and his party was decimated in a general election. The final ignominy was that Howard lost his own seat in that election.

Three leaders without whom the world would have been a much better place, thankfully now gone but the damage they've done will be with us for a long, long time.

If only we'd had leaders for the last decade with Capt. Sullenberger's attributes.

US foreign policy is run by?

A rare moment of honesty in the world of politics.

The New York Times reports a speech made by Israeli PM Ehud Olmert :

In an unusually public rebuke, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel said Monday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been forced to abstain from a United Nations resolution on Gaza that she helped draft, after Mr. Olmert placed a phone call to President Bush.

“I said, ‘Get me President Bush on the phone,’ ” Mr. Olmert said in a speech in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, according to The Associated Press. “They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care: ‘I need to talk to him now,’ ” Mr. Olmert continued. “He got off the podium and spoke to me.”

The only surprise is that the bragging about Israel's control over American policy in the region, obviously designed to gain votes in the upcoming election, publicly acknowledged what has long been known but officially denied.

The spin doctors must be in a panic on this one - the Israeli PM telling the US President to get off the podium to speak to him now, which he does.


The report is here.

Bush has learnt nothing

I've been listening to George W Bush talking about Gaza.

I wasn't going to post about him again but I can't resist.

The man continues to astound me. He's learnt nothing.

He's learnt nothing after two catastrophic terms, eight years of not only extreme ideology and a complete lack of understanding but also of the administrative incompetence that would be expected of a struggling third world country's government.

Mistake after mistake after mistake but he sounds exactly the same as he did at the beginning of it all.

The first impression was that his scriptwriter is still away on Christmas holiday because the speech was simply reading the press release issued by Israel's fantastic PR machine. A transcript of the speech is here.

Had he been the leader of a small country it wouldn't matter to anyone but his own citizens. But his decisions affect all of us across the entire world, have affected us, continue to affect us.

And the effects have been so catastrophic that I'm afraid it will take much longer than the incoming administration has to get us back on track

Just think about just a few of the disasters that are his legacy:

- the erosion of international institutions, the contempt for international treaties, the scrapping of the Geneva Convention that led to Guantanamo, the US kidnapping people around the world, 'extraordinary rendition', the CIA's black holes, the officially approved use of torture.

- the huge increase in terrorism, the war we're losing in Afghanistan, the catastrophy that is Iraq, Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda still operating.

- illegal spying on Americans, the apparatus in place for it and the culture of doing it.

- the erosion of America's standing in the world, unbelievable after the bonus he had to begin with after 9/11, when there was a huge surge of goodwill towards America.

- the worst financial crisis for generations with world-wide recession probably going into depression, a record number of Americans, nearly 32 million, relying on food stamps.

- incompetence in many government departments - the preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina, the lack of oversight of financial institutions.

I could go on but it's too depressing.

What a combination. The arrogance of all ideological extremists coupled with a lack of knowledge and lack of curiosity, who surrounded himself with similar people.

And here he is at the end of it all sounding exactly the same as he did before he made such a mess of the world.





Comments are now open for the infantile name-calling which I'm expecting...

Gaza: it was inevitable

Others are commenting about the massacres in Gaza, for example Moryarti has photos here which give a sense of what's happening.


I'll just say that it was entirely predictable. Huge onslaughts were inevitable before the end of the most pro-Israeli US administration in memory. The Israelis know full well that world opinion led by the US will support them whatever they do. But they weren't prepared to take a chance on the same level of support from the incoming administration so they were always going to attack at this time.


I think they were wrong in that uncertainty. Given the reality of the political equation in the US regarding Israel I don't expect a much different approach from the next administration. That scepticism has been supported by President-elect Obama's postures on the subject during the election run up and by his appointment of Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff.

This is a man described by Israeli newspapers Haaretz as "Israeli Rahm Emanuel" whose father, previously a member of the Irgun terrorist group, said of the appointment; "Obama is a pro-Israeli leader and will be a friend to Israel." Maariv newspaper headlined the appointment "Our man in the White House"

Had I been American I would have voted for Obama. I believe he'll do a good job, and even has the potential to be a great president. He's the kind of inspirational leader the US needs after the disasters wrought by eight years of BushW extremism - although I'm not sure that even two terms are long enough to repair so much damage.

But I don't agree with everything he's doing, the appointment of Emanuel and Clinton being two decisions I'd prefer he hadn't made.

I think the Obama era brings much to look forward to, but a fair and equitable outcome in the Israeli/Palestinian catastrophe isn't one of them.


The Haaretz article is here.

'Our man in the White House' is here.

For reports from inside Gaza, check out Sameh Habeeb's blog Gaza Strip, the untold story.

Hope at last

Barak Obama is President-elect.

He seems to be full of confidence for the future but in reality it would have been a good election to lose. It's something of a poison chalice because the breadth and depth of the problems facing him must be unprecedented in American presidential history.

The catastrophic George W Bush presidency has left such an unbelievable mess both in America and around the world that it will probably take more than one term, even more than the two terms which Obama may have, to get us all back to where we need to be.

Just think of the problems the extreme ideology of the far right Bush years have generated.

The collapse of the financial system, the world in recession, the US with trillions of dollars of debt, the erosion of liberties with the illegal snooping on Americans, state-sponsored kidnapping and torture, the junking of the Geneva Conventions, the erosion of international organisations such as the UN, the illegal, immoral and counter-productive invasion of Iraq, chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israel/Palestine issue worse than ever, the irresponsible use of robots and drones as weapon platforms which have killed hundreds of innocent people, unilateral attacks in friendly ally countries, the world a far more dangerous place than it was when Bush came to power, the encouragement by divisive wedge politics of racism, bigotry and xenophobia.

And so much more.

And added to the disastrous policies, the breathtaking utter incompetence of the way the policies were carried out, from Iraq to Afghanistan to New Orleans.

A lot of people are not going to like what I'm going to say, but it's not opinion it's fact.

Don't blame it all on Bush.

So many people say 'It isn't America's fault, it's the government'. Well, who put the government there? As unpopular as saying it may be, the American people must take their share of the blame.

As must the media. For example, Time magazine made him Person of the Year in 2004.

Incredible as it may seem, they said: For sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively), for reshaping the rules of politics to fit his ten-gallon-hat leadership style and for persuading a majority of voters that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years, George W. Bush is TIME's 2004 Person of the Year.

After the first four years of seeing exactly what their President was doing, about 100 million eligible voters couldn't be bothered to vote in 2004. Those who did voted to give him him another four years. He won 31 of the 50 states. Over 50% of voters agreed with his policies and the way they were carried out and voted for more of the same.

In 2004 over 62 million Americans voted for a continuation of the catastrophic George W Bush administration.

That's an awful lot of people who must take their share of responsibility for the disasters created by Bush in the last four years.

Even in what is being depicted as an Obama landslide, with at this moment as I write 338 electoral college votes to McCain's 168, a broader look at the figures shows that 21 states have voted Republican. Senator McCain has over 55 million votes, which is 47% of votes counted.

Fifty-five million people, and counting, have voted for a continuation of the disastrous policies of the last eight years and for a possible President Palin.

Unbelievable.


Hope for the future, and fear.

The hope is that President Obama can at least begin to repair the damage, to start on the work needed to bring a fairer society, to re-establish America's standing in the world, to move away from the extreme ideology that's blighted the world for the last eight years.

My fear, my real fear, is for the safety of the new president.

Here's more that a lot of people are going to froth at the mouth over but again it's not simply my opinion. Here are some facts.

The US is a violent country awash with firearms. It's worse than the 'lawless' tribal areas on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border because the over 200 million firearms (yes, over 200 million) in American society include many state-of-the-art military weapons.

Violent? According to the FBI there are over 16,000 homicides every year. That's about two murders every hour of every day of every week of every year. It's the death toll of 9/11 every five weeks.

America is home to many terror groups. In recent years we've seen domestic terror groups from the far left and the far right and racist groups. And many disturbed, violent, heavily armed individuals.

We've seen the Oklahoma bombing, which killed at least 158 people including 19 children and injured over 850. We see regular mass murders at schools such as Columbine. We've seen anthrax being sent through the mail.

We've seen the shooting of President Reagan and Governor George Wallace, the killing of President John F. and Robert Kennedy and of Martin Luther King.

This cultural violence and aggression has been adopted by the government for at least the last six years, so extremism has been encouraged by government example.

Just last week we saw the arrest of two armed white supremacist skinheads for plotting to murder Obama.

So I have a real fear for President-elect Obama's safety.

He has so much to do, such huge problems to solve and I firmly believe he's the best chance we have. If I were a religious person I'd be praying for his safety and his success.

And to the 62 millon Americans who at last count have voted for him, thank you.

A change of BushW policy?

...a solemn Bush said outside the Oval Office.

"Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century," he said.

A change of policy? Ah, no, he's talking about Russia.

Do as I say, not as I do.


The quote is from here.

Can I come out now?

If it wasn't for the fact that half the roads are flooded I assume the rest of the one and a half million of us can now go about our business in Dubai.

What was the chaos and disruption all about anyway?

All the reports I've seen today say that BushW's Dubai visit wasn't related to Israel-Palestine, Iran or peace in this volatile region, it was a sightseeing trip!

'A tour of Dubai's landmarks. Sheikh Saeed's house museum. Folk music & dance shows. Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural understanding. A visit to Burj Al Arab' are the reports.

Other headlines indicate the other side of the story: 'Motorists left in lurch by numerous diversions. Roadblocks and mass confusion cause hours of traffic misery. Presidential traffic throws traffic out of gear. Residents awake to find cars mysteriously moved'.

And something I was ranting on about yesterday, the cost of closing a commercial city.

Dubai International Financial Centre, where 500 companies operate, was closed. Dubai International Financial Exchange didn't operate. Jebel Ali Free Zone was closed, so the 5,000 companies there couldn't operate for the day.

Gulf News has attempted to put a figure on the losses. The say: "Dubai's economy may have suffered a loss of more than Dh432 million (over US$117 million) as a result of the shutdown caused by US President George W. Bush's visit, according to estimates based on the emirate's gross domestic product.

Dubai's GDP in 2006 reached Dh157 billion (nearly $43 billion). If trade comes to a standstill, then the emirate, the Gulf's largest trading hub and the major supply line, might have just lost Dh1 billion (US$272 million) in export, import and re-export business for the day."

Information vacuum

The really unforgivable part of the problem was the complete lack of information. About anything.

Road closures? No advance warning.

Diversions? No signs.

Public holiday? A few hours notice.

Even when information was given the reality contradicted it.

A report says: "Contrary to traffic plans, the complete closure of Shaikh Zayed Road, the lifeline of Dubai, from the Mall of the Emirates to Al Garhoud Bridge, left most of the city paralysed on Monday.

The road diversion plans announced by Dubai Roads and Transport Authority and the Police for the arrival of US President George W Bush yesterday were changed without any intimation leaving thousands of motorists wandering on the roads.

All exits and entries to and from Shaikh Zayed Road were blocked contrary to the earlier plan... this major unannounced change led to traffic chaos as people had to wait for several hours to get to the other side of Shaikh Zayed Road. "

Drivers were forced to U-turn and drive back on the wrong side of the road. The police were helpful but many didn't know what was going on any more than the rest of us. People abandoned their cars and walked. One driver reported taking seven hours to travel 27km from Sharjah to SZR. Another said he was turned back from everywhere he went.

And something else I talked about yesterday - the airport.

One would-be passenger said: "All the linking roads connecting Al Wasl and Jumeirah Road to other parts of the city were closed. I missed my flight to the UK."

And the report goes on: Thousands of passengers remained stranded due to lack of public transport and taxis. Passengers who landed at the airport could not reach their homes or hotels for several hours.

What an advertisement for Dubai for all the visiting business people and tourists!

We've had reports from Karama residents that they were virtually under house arrest, told to go back indoors if they ventured out onto the streets. And some awoke to find their cars missing. They'd been towed away 'for security reasons' without any warning.

All of it in a climate of absolutely no information whatsoever.

That is unforgivable.



If you can face reading the full horror stories, Gulf News has many. I won't put all the links here, but if you go here you can read the first one and then click on the others at 'Related Articles'.

Ladies & gentlemen, we got him.

So Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has confessed to being responsible for all the terrorist attacks over the last ten years.

That's good then, BushW can declare victory and withdraw - from EyeRak, from Afghanistan, from the very War on Tear itself. The Good Guys won.

I might add that I'm surprised KSM didn't admit to assassinating JFK, pushing Jack down the hill and being the killer of Cock Robin too.

One of the reports is here

In that strange parallel universe...

They live in a different world don't they. Black is white, wrong is right, it's all someone else's fault.

We've had BushW yet again repeating his mantra that "America doesn't do torture."

Now Karl Rove, the man known as 'White House political guru' and 'presidential adviser'...in other words the brains behind BushW (pause for hysterical laughter)...has come up with another doozie.

According to a Gulf News report, from Reuters/AFP/AP sources: "...Karl Rove blasted Democrats for even suggesting the US withdraw from Iraq, saying the US can't leave one of the world's largest oil reserves in terrorist hands."

Dontcha just love it!

Who the hell caused the terrorists to go into Iraq! Who jeopardised the oil reserves! Terrorists weren't there until the invasion and the monumental cock-up of the situation since.

Take a bow Mr Rove. Acknowledge your key role. You were a vital part of the cabal that caused the disaster.

He went on to say: "More sacrifice is going to be required." The report doesn't tell us exactly who he's volunteering to do the sacrificing. But you can bet your life - like too many literally are - that Mr Rove and his cronies aren't about to be doing much personal sacrificing.

By the way, the same report gives more support to my firm belief (which I posted on Wednesday) that the US is rapidly moving to 'declare victory and withdraw'.

A statement from BushW and Puppet Prime Minister Maliki outlined three goals: speeding up the training of Iraq's security forces; moving ahead with Iraqi control of its forces; making the Iraqi government responsible for the country's security.

Declare victory and get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. Mission Accomplished and anything that goes wrong after that is the fault of the Iraqis.

That's the plan.

The full Gulf News Report

"Declare victory and withdraw"

It seems quite clear to me that the US is planning for Iraq what Senator George Aiken urged President Johnson to do exactly 40 years ago.

In October 1966 the Senator urged Johnson to “declare victory and withdraw” from Vietnam.

The noises now coming from various US politicians seem to be suddenly moving in that direction. In spite of reports that the training of the new Iraqi army – America having disastrously disbanded the original army! – is going well enough to hand over to them, a report by Lt. Col. Nick Demas paints a very different picture.

The colonel’s soldiers, most of them inexperienced reservists from Maryland, had been tapped to serve as advisers to the Iraqi army. Bush has touted such advisory teams as key to the US strategy for stabilising Iraq and bringing American troops home. Lt Col Demas and his troops expected some of the best instruction the army had to offer. His report says: " In my 28 years of military service, I have never seen such an appalling approach to training. Nowhere else in the army system would this have been acceptable." His soldiers received only a few hours of instruction in Arabic, Iraqi culture and advising foreign forces.

However, whether the Iraqi army is ready or not, victory will be declared, Bush and his poodles Blair and Howard will claim they stayed the course, saw it through until the job was done, didn’t cut and run. They will wash their collective hands of the devastation they have caused, the civil war, the ongoing carnage, the likely break-up of the country into three.

The Iraqi government will then be blamed for what happens in the future.

Foreign forces need to be withdrawn, of that there is no doubt. But to leave without taking responsibility for causing the disaster is dishonest in the extreme.

Thought-provoking reports.

Some items in today's papers caught my eye:

Dubai's traffic

According to Emirates Today "Dubai's intelligent traffic system is expected to be up and running next month". Well that's good news - but as it's being beamed at unintelligent drivers I'm not convinced that it will be much help.

Is it going to stop people speeding dangerously, using the hard shoulder, pushing in front of queueing vehicles, jumping red lights, making illegal U-turns?

You bet your life it isn't.

Priorities guys - get more traffic police, trained and professional please, out patrolling the streets. Increase the penalties for traffic violations, including confiscating the vehicles of drivers endangering the lives of others. An intelligent traffic system is excellent, but it isn't the most pressing thing to be focussing time, effort and money on.


Another traffic story in EmTod quotes Brigadier Mohammed Saif Al Safeen, Director of Dubai Traffic Police Dept, as saying "another rule to be introduced will see truck drivers who jump red lights being deported."

Excellent news. But truck drivers are mentioned specifically. Does that mean you get away with it if you jump red lights in anything other than a truck? A 3-tonne 4X4 for example? A speeding exotic sports car?

Blair should explain

The muslim veil in Britain is an interesting story too, carried on the front page of Gulf News. Tony Blair has jumped on the bandwagon now, calling the veil "a mark of separation".

He said that the veil presented difficulties with Muslim communities and immigrants needing to integrate into western societies.

What I find interesting is that in the past governments haven't said the same about the sari, worn by many Indian women in Britain. Nor the Jewish yamulke, Pakistani shalwar kameez, Sikh turban. Or any of the many other items of national/cultural/religious clothing being worn throughout Britain.

If they are not a mark of separation, if they don't stand in the way of integration, why is wearing the veil?

And if they do present the same problems why have Ministers not said so over the decades they've been worn in Britain?

W's parallel universe.

Also on the front page of Gulf News, President Bush yet again proves that he lives in some strange parallel universe.

He pushes through a law that allows non-American citizens to be detained indefinitely, to be subject to harsh interrogation, for CIA secret prisons to be operated overseas, for people to be labelled enemy combatants and outside the protection of the Geneva Conventions.

Then comes the surreal "As I've said before, the United States does not torture. It's against our laws and it's against our values."

Mr President, you've just passed a law that makes it one of the US' values. That brings it within your laws.

What you've done, yet again, is to change the things the US has traditionally stood for.

And he went on: "This bill spells out specific recognizable offenses that would be considered crimes in the handling of detainees so that our men and women who question captured terrorists can perform their duties to the fullest extent of the law."

Alleged terrorists, Mr President. Alleged. You've declared them guilty before they've even been detained!

Note "can perform their duties to the fullest extent of the law." The law has been changed to cover what they've been doing. Retrospective lawmaking. Do something illegal, change the law, now it's legal.

This is not what America should be about.

Spare us from fanatics!

I watched a documentary on Osama bin Laden yesterday.

He's doing what he's doing because God is telling him to.

I've heard George W. Bush say those exact words too.



Most people who do things because voices in their head tell them to are locked safely away...

A whole lotta sense...

Bush's belief in a worldwide Islamist conspiracy is foolish and dangerous

We can only see off the serious threat we face if we separate real Muslim grievances from al-Qaida's homicidal mania

Max Hastings
Monday August 14, 2006
The Guardian

George Bush sometimes sounds more like the Mahdi, preaching jihad against infidels, than the leader of a western democracy.

In his regular radio address to the American people on Saturday he linked the British alleged aircraft plotters with Hizbullah in Lebanon, and these in turn with the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

All, said the president of the world's most powerful nation, share a "totalitarian ideology", and a desire to "establish a safe haven from which to attack free nations". Bush's remarks put me in mind of a proverb attributed to Ali ibn Abu Talib: "He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere."

In the United States a disturbingly large minority of people - polls suggest around 40% - remain willing to accept Bush's assertions that Americans and their allies, which chiefly means the British, are faced with a single global conspiracy by Islamic fundamentalists to destroy our societies.

In less credulous Britain one could nowadays fit into an old-fashioned telephone box those who believe anything Bush or Tony Blair says about foreign policy.

The full article is well worth reading.

Due process?

On Guantanamo:

Bush said 200 detainees had been sent home, and that most of the remaining 460 are from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Afghanistan.

"There are some who need to be tried in US courts," he said. "They're cold-blooded killers. They will murder somebody if they are let out on the street."

450 people are still being held without even being charged with anything (only 10 have been charged) some for four years so far. Yet Bush can declare to the world that they are cold-blooded killers who will commit murder if they are released.

Due process means nothing, US and international law means nothing, innocent until proven guilty means nothing.

This is what people are dying to defend, and to impose on others?

Absolute "must reads"

There were several articles published over the weekend about the Haditha massacre of civilians.

Two in particular I thought were brilliant pieces and should be required reading by everyone.

They're here:

The horrors really are your America, Mr Bush

America's shame