Down under

Nice car in Australia.

Think about it.

...
Note: Headline links to source.

Australia Bolts Iraq Over Bush's Lies

File this under: When chickens come home to roost.

Ya don't wanna be pissing off a good ally like Australia. Of course its too late now. The next President will be saddled with this shit.

Editor’s Note: Even into the sixth year of war in Iraq – even as ex-White House press secretary Scott McClellan admits the deceptions used to justify the invasion – the U.S. news media still averts its eyes from the full ugliness of what happened in 2002-03.

In this story, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern notes the far greater candor occurring in Australia -- and cites the earlier whistle-blowing by members of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), which he helped found:

Matilda is walzing home from Iraq, and the Australians are lucky but chastened.

Lucky for having lost not one soldier in combat of the 2,000 sent to join the “coalition of the willing” attack on Iraq in March 2003.

Chastened because Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is now pulling no punches in decrying the subservience of his predecessor, John Howard, to Washington.

Announcing the withdrawal of the 550 Australian troops still in Iraq on Monday, Rudd echoed recent charges by former White House spokesman Scott McClellan about the Bush administration’s “shading” of intelligence to “justify” an unnecessary war.

Rudd told Parliament he was most concerned by “the manner in which the decision to go to war was made; the abuse of intelligence information, a failure to disclose to the Australian people the qualified nature of that intelligence”; and the government’s silence on “the pre-war warning that an attack on Iraq would increase the terrorist threat, not decrease it.”

Rudd added:

“This government does not believe that our alliance with the United States mandates automatic compliance with every element of the United States’ foreign policy.”

Stung by Rudd’s candor, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino fell back on the canard that “the entire world” agreed on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. As President Lyndon Johnson would have put it, That dog won’t hunt.

If all agreed, why then was President George W. Bush unable to secure the approval of the U.N. Security Council, without which an armed attack on another country is illegal under international and U.S. law?

Among “coalition of the willing” leaders not named Bush, only the faith-based former British Prime Minister Tony Blair hangs on pathetically to the notion that “everyone” believed Saddam Hussein had WMD.

Its just one more fucking burned bridge that has to be rebuilt probably at a great expenditure of time and money if it can be rebuilt.

I'm telling ya, the next President hadn't better get within 100mi (160km) of a lie.

The only good things to come out of all this are it should be nearly impossible for the moron to build a "coalition of the willing" for attacks on Iran, Syria, Lebanon, NoKo.

And its also possible a few Republicans will finally realize they haven't had a principled, honest, intelligent, diplomatic man in the White House for nearly eight years.

Note: Headline links to source.

Australia to apologize to Aborigines

Its about fucking time. Now how about the US?

Reparations aren't necessary, but a simple "We're sorry" will do. Spoken as a part (1/8th) American Native.

Australia will issue its first formal apology to the country's indigenous people on Feb. 13, a senior minister said Wednesday, a step that could ease tensions with a minority once subjected to policies that included removal of mixed-blood children from families on the premise that their race was doomed.

Via Yahoo! News.

Smokin' OPs*

Stolen in its entirety from a bunch of numbers.

Where there's a will, Bunky, there's a way

By Ted Compton

The headline is all you need to know:

Teen cracks AU$84 million porn filter in 30 minutes

So funny. I never noticed the damn first apostrophe is in the wrong place on this album title and the second is unnecessary.

Personal note: I used to own an original master of this album. Unfortunately it's gone. C'est la vie. Or in American, shit happens.

Folks, unless you're as sick, demented, perverse as I am you may not respond to this as did I. I laughed my fucking ass off.

*Bob Seger "Smokin' other people's (cigarettes).

Australian cleric credits climate change to the ungodly

Super idiots are not confined to the US.


Muslim cleric Sheik Mohammed Omran

Victorian Premier Steve Bracks said Sunday that Sheik Mohammed Omran's sermon linking rainfall to piety was just plain wrong.

The radical Muslim cleric on Friday called climate change the prophet's pay-back for a sinful world.

"While we have free speech in Australia, people will have the good sense to reject those things which bear no relationship to the truth," Bracks said. "I've a lot of faith in the people of Victoria and the people of Australia to stand up and say 'No, that's wrong.'"

(courtesy link to Raw Story)

Ex-Guantanamo inmate to run in Australia election

Australian Mamdouh Habib speaks to the media
in Auburn February 2, 2007. REUTERS/Ed Giles
So far this story makes the US look pretty silly if not worse.

And what if he wins? That means Australians elect terrorists to office? Highly unlikely.

An Australian once detained in Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of helping al Qaeda said on Friday he would stand for election to the New South Wales state parliament.

Mamdouh Habib, released in January 2005, was held in Guantanamo Bay without charge for almost three years after he was arrested crossing from Pakistan into Afghanistan three weeks after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

"We're here in Australia, this has nothing to do with Afghanistan," Habib told a news conference in Sydney called to announce he would run as an independent in the March 24 contest.

"This has nothing to do with terrorism -- we have no terrorists in Australia. If you want to talk about terror then talk to the U.S.," he said.

(read more)