Newspaper headline :War on Terror! Terror Wins!

This from The Guardian:

"In the summer of 2004, as Lewis Paul Bremer III, America's viceroy to Iraq and head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which had run Iraq's government for 14 months, prepared to depart, electricity generation remained stuck at around 4,000 megawatts. This resulted in less than nine hours of power a day to most Baghdad homes - instead of the 6,000 megawatts he had pledged to provide. The new army had fewer than 4,000 trained soldiers, a third of what he had promised. Seventy per cent of police officers on the street had not received any CPA-funded training. Attacks on American forces and foreign civilians averaged more than 40 a day, a threefold increase since January. Assassinations of political leaders and sabotage of the country's oil and electricity infrastructure occurred almost daily. In a CPA-sponsored poll of Iraqis taken a few weeks before the handover of sovereignty, 85% of respondents said they lacked confidence in Bremer's occupation administration."

I can't believe the utter crap, and that is only what it can be described as, coming from Lewis Paul Bremer the Third.... there is no doubt that Saddam was a shit, but to say that Iraq is better place? I wouldn't want to live there and hats off to all who do by choice.

Thankfully,Tony Blair has finally committed to systematically taking his troops out of Iraq (hmmm....May 1st council elections must be fast approaching). Yet, Howard is committing more troops to Afghanistan (yes, I know it's slightly different, but it's still the War on Terror). John Howard's commitment to Iraq and Afghanstan makes me feel like I should be doing more to stop this madness, but as I've said on this blog before, I feel helpless.

I have just read this horror story in Vanity Fair (if I'm travelling on a plane I tend to buy a random magazine), which cited a paper from a neo con think tank called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm". Essentially the paper asserted that "by waging wars against Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon... Israel and the U.S. could stabilize the region" and "the neoconservatives argued that this policy could democratize the Middle East". So, Iraq and Lebanon have happened, I guess Syria is next, although there is a mass of troops culminating on the coast near Iran....

War on Terror - Terror Wins! Forcing democracy on a country is not democratic. The troops in the Iraq army are corrupted and infiltrated by insurgents. I just can't see any peaceful outcome. Can the sectarian leaders of Iraq along with Hezbula, Hamas, Fatah, Isreali leaders, Syria, Iran... can they all just fucking sit down over a cup of tea and have a chat and at the same time, can the women sit down and talk? And can the ideas from the flip charts be brought together? Otherwise, this is going to spread further through Afghanistan and Pakistan.....I guess not ever having been in a situation where sectarian lines are so ingrained that you can't actually be in the same room with someone from the opposite side, it's easy for me to say "sit down and talk".

Because somewhere, there is a small group of kids who just want to go to school and then play some football or skip rope. And they are terrified, and the longer we let this go on, the more and more bitter they will become. And suddenly, they will be the fourth generation of displaced children and they will be very very angry.

Is there hope? Yes there is...click here.