"President Bush, as we know, wanted to remove Saddam Hussein through military action. With that in mind, the memo damningly explained, 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'  That's the kind of deceit that was in play as American men and women were suiting up and marching off to combat at the president's command. Mr. Bush wanted war, and he got it. Many thousands have died as a result. Even in Afghanistan, where the U.S. had legitimate reasons for going to war, the lies have been legion. Pat Tillman..."

There is much more in like vein including that George has "proved time and again that he's a skillful practitioner of the art" of "dissembling, which means to deliberately mislead or conceal." Has anyone previously called out George so strongly? A direct call for INDICTMENT was the only thing missing.

The next day I read a Donald MacIntyre piece "We killed police for revenge, Israeli soldiers confess"   http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=643659  where, "in graphic testimony, one soldier confessed that he 'really enjoyed' a chase in which he shot an unarmed Palestinian in the head who was trying to escape during a series of reprisal raids ordered " "'from high'­ including the Ministry of Defence". There is hope yet for the I.D.F. killing machine when there are young men of courage and integrity are prepared to come forward and shine a light on the squalled world in the occupied lands.

It may have been the performance of the Scotsman George Galloway that showed the way in back bone. Whether he is truly honest or not, he certainly put on a performance not equalled by another in such circumstances and where the accused totally won. He certainly could give lessons in public speaking on your side of the pond. I don't think Senator McCain will have to worry about Mr Coleman in 2008, thanks to our Celtic George.

Amnesty may have been a bit over the top with their Gulag reference, but it did get the White House attention. For "the Wall Street Journal to accuse Amnesty International of "moral degradation" is a particularly brazen instance of projecting one's own sins on one's opponents." "Those who run the Wall Street Journal's editorial pages, using half-truths, distortions and lies as their basic modus operandi, have earned for themselves an international reputation as journalistic thugs." from "US press takes umbrage at Amnesty's 'gulag' charge" http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/may2005/amne-m28.shtml but it flushed out some misguided White House supporters. The US would have claimed for the highest standard previously on POWs, but now competes with the very worst standards.

Newsweeks lack of back bone was obvious to all. How the Koran was certainly misused as a means of abuse is equally obvious. For a country that holds the Bible in such high esteem, it's shocking to learn how a sister faith's Holy Book is treated. The excessive bullying tactics used by the White House on Newsweeks may have worked this time but I've a feeling they have used up all their credit for some time.

We now know "Shocking and detailed accounts have emerged of how two Afghan prisoners were tortured to death by American interrogators and prison guards at Bagram air base, outside Kabul. A 2,000-page report on an internal investigation by the US military leaked to The New York Times and published yesterday provides exhaustive detail on how the two were kept chained in excruciating positions and kicked to death." from "Afghan prisoners were 'tortured to death' by American guards" http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=640070  and many other reports and leaks from good Americans sickened by the results of superiors' illegal demands.

I believe the next author got in right. What is the point of  "Closing Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, or other individual facilities means little or nothing. What counts is a change of attitude, a change of policy, a change of morality, which will likely only occur with a change of government in the United States of America. Impeachment could be the fulcrum on which the change of American government would hinge." from "It's the Torture, Not the Torture Location, Stupid !" at   http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/15713 Instead Reuters reports "WASHINGTON, June 16, 2005 - A Halliburton Co. unit will build a new $30 million detention facility and security fence at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States is holding about 520 foreign terrorism suspects, the Defense Department announced on Thursday." At least some friends of Dick are making money out of prisoners.

If you have seen the brilliant documentary "The Power of Nightmares" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm  by Adam Curtis, a British filmmaker and a senior BBC producer, explaining how terrorism is a two-way street, then you will understand how "this administration was re-elected largely on the basis of its perceived competence to protect us from further terrorism. This is a triumph of fear over rationality. If you doubt the role of fear in our lives, look at our current fondness for evangelical Christianity, with its visions of a rapture in which the believers are saved and the rest of humanity is consigned to apocalyptic punishment. Is it a coincidence that our fear-driven foreign policy is the creation of a faith-based administration?" from "A foreign policy driven by fear" http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.fear09jun09,1,1754750.story on June 9.

Another contribution was made with "The docile White House press corps, which until the press conference had never asked the president about the Downing Street memo, predictably neglected to press Bush and Blair on those issues, allowing them to get away with mere obfuscation and meaningless non-answers. At the end of his response to the question about the memo, Bush simply repeated his mantra, 'The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.'  For his part, Blair managed to assert with a straight face, 'No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all.'" from "The revenge of Baghdad Bob" at http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/cole-salon3.html    Also "It has gotten so that on the subject of Iraq, the way you can tell when Bush is lying is that his mouth is moving." Do you remember Comical Ali in Bagdad pre-invasion? Its easy to remember him when Cowboy Comical George speaks with 'fork' tongue.