The other form of collateral damage from this exercise that nobody wants to talk about is Truth.

We are being fed a contant diet of lies and half-truths to keep this sideshow on the road.

Just before the invasion , remember all the chest-thumping that was happening after some Australians were arrested in Afghanistan for (illegally) trying to convert Mulsims to Christianity? They were going to be tried for breaking the laws of a foreign country but there was no shortage of diplomatic representation there.
Yet when another person is illegally detained - without charge and tortured - for years by an "ally", we look the other way.


Johnny may enjoy being George's bitch and may even believe that he is striding the world stage like some sort of collossus but morally, he's really just sold us all down the river for the cost of a shonky trade deal.

Mirko should be locked away without trial for 7 years. However he should not be in solitary confinement. He should share a cell with Leigh.

PS Mirko and Leigh are only to be tortured once a fortnight.

Pragmatism? Of what possible use could that be?

What price pragmatism when our own sly-boys get duped over Wheat-gate and Hicks remains a hostage?

Pragmatism, when our army is compelled to act in a dangerous and thinly disguised piece of posturing?

Pragmatism, when the US Government treats friend and foe alike with contempt?

Pragmatism means throwing more bones to the same hyena, hoping for a different result. They already tried that in the 1930's.

*

Principle, now there's a concept for you.

Principle means never sending someone else's child to war unless you and your family are prepared to shoulder arms yourself.

Principle means never prescribing torture for others unless you are willing to taste it's rare delights for yourself.

Above all, principle requires that we see ourselves as we really are.

- no wonder it's too hard.

Until he faces trial,Hicks is a innocent man.That the Yanks are prepared to use kangaroo courts to convict him only proves that they are on shaky ground.As for him belonging to a group that has murdered thousands of innocent civillians, he is no more guilty than the Bush,Blair,and Howard in their rampage in the Middle East. Please remind me, Why are our troops over there? The chaos following the apparently free and fair election result in Palestine shows that nobody cares about bringing Democracy to the Middle East unless the elections can be rigged. The Yanks are having the same problems now as they had in Vietnam,for the same reasons. Indiscriminate bombing,torture,murder and now,allegedly,rape of the people we are supposed to be saving only degrades Democracy.

Well, you could have easily predicted that Mirko would come out with yet another obtuse and diagonal piece of analysis like this - just for the sake of it. Surely legal scholarship is more than foraging around for angles and triangles and quandrangle points of views.
All it lacks is some suggestions on how to best conduct torture. Reading it was torture enough for me.