Come In, Spinner...

Last night I heard that El Busho will be visiting Australia in October, following an APEC meeting in Bangkok. Oh, no! I thought. This means we will be sending in troops. For those who don't know, my homeland was one of the first to support the US invasion, despite over 80% of the public opposing the idea (and demonstrating loudly for weeks). There are currently only 800 (non-combat) Australians in Iraq. So far the PM, John Howard, has been resisting pressure to send more. He, too, has an election to face next year.

Australians this morning can read two seemingly disconnected stories of Bush's planned visit and his plans to ask for more troops. We can expect Howard to be pledging more troops very soon, whether we like it or not. So much for democracy.

Howard, like Bush, has become an expert at distorting truths and even telling huge, outrageous lies to the media, but somehow getting away with it. As an example of the genre, I particularly loved the following comment from supreme hypocrite and US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld:

"One of the things that took place in (Iraq) that I think contributed to the circumstances we are in today - the security circumstance - was that the war was never finished."

Funny, Bush didn't seem to agree when he landed on that flight deck many months ago and declared "Mission Complete."

Meanwhile, a few people are still pretending that the much-vaunted Road Map To Peace is "still alive". As Gandhi said:

"There is no road to peace. Peace is the road."