Wil's Rant

According to the recent polls, more than 2/3 of Canadians say they don't trust politicians. The thing is, they didn't need a poll to figure that one out. Just examine the turnout at any of the recent Canadian elections and it becomes all too obvious!

Health officials are once again warning of the increasing virility of the bird flu virus. They say it's not a matter of if but when. They are also saying it won't be long.

For years the experts have been trying to get the Americans to admit to the Global Warming threat. Now the British are adding their voices. In the U.S. the God Given Right to rape and pillage anything that nature has not tied down, and some, is valued over anything. Any admission of danger or irresponsibility is seen as being not good for business. So break out the SPF factor 1500 because it's going to be a real scorcher!

If the effects were not so serious, the whole thing might be humorous. The White House outright denies it. The soldiers report that it did happen. The Pentagon says "yes something happened, but not what they are saying". I'd have to say that I,m pretty well fed up with the whole thing, but I'm sure not as fed up as the American people are or will be!

Canada has finally sentenced a repeat offender Pedo to life with no parole for twenty-five years. I thought I'd never see the day. Could this be the start of a new trend? Here's to hoping. Hey, maybe one day they might have to only get one conviction in order to make our kids safe from this kind of filth. Maybe the guy won't even have to kill the kid before being put away. It's about damn time. Don't we kind of owe it to the kids to do everything we can to protect them from this. Seems to me that life sentences are a real good start.

At least when you are making use of the Magic of Viagra. That's what the new reports are saying anyway. I knew it was too good to be true!

The efforts of multiple police forces has resulted in the arrests of several severe child-porn internet criminals. It's good to see that some positive results are coming out of international co-operation in these days of constant conflict. I still can't get over how anyone could do this to a kid, much less a group of people working together to destroy kids for their own pleasure and/or profit. I don't go In for the secret monitoring of the internet by police forces or intelligence agencies. However, I would willingly give up these rights to privacy if it meant that no kid would ever have to go through this again. Hell, I'd give up this right if it meant that one kid would be saved. Guess what Billie, there are monsters out there! They look just like people! We have to stop them! I would rather have the cops watching what I do on the Internet than some politically motivated intelligence operatives who might want to silence my voice. The world is not a safe place. Not in Iraq! Not in North America! Have doubts... read a paper! If we pretend that the reality is anything other than what it is, the suffering will continue. We must let the cops do their job. The restrictions on them have always been designed to prevent abuse of authority. Science is making vast leaps along these lines. We may be able to allow cops to do their thing while still protecting our rights with the proper checks and balances in the system. These issues have to be addressed to head into the future and a new world. It can be done! We really can have a democracy. The first step if for people to realize that it really is us against them. Them being big governments and bureaucracy and the multi-nationals. We must take our democracy back from the path they would have it take. The path that makes them richer and us more ignorant. People of all parties must unite to demand accountability from our leaders, with a liberal dose of honesty thrown in for good measure. If democracy is the true goal then Sunnis would not be killing Shiites and vise versa. Instead they would unite in support of the will of the people. Not everyone voted for George Bush. That doesn't mean that half of America has taken up arms against the other half.

I kind of feel sorry for Paul Martin. Looks like most everybody else in Canada does too. Let's remember that he walked out of Chretien's cabinet. Perhaps he didn't like what he was learning about. Maybe he didn't want to have anything to do with what he thought was unethical. I might just think that the reason he isn't standing on the podium and telling all he knows about his past friends and co-workers is that he just might have a little bit of class and want to get on with doing the best job he can. The man's taken an awful beating for the simple fact that he's a Liberal and is suffering along with he rest of them for the latest scandal. I can't blame him for not taking strong stands on anything because he doesn't have the votes and if he did he would likely be out of office. Hard to say really. So why would someone want a job where you get to go into a big hall everyday and listen to a bunch of adolescents yell and scream whenever you tried to say anything, much less think? We always read about the low turnout at the polls and how this means that Canadians don't care. Perhaps it's more a matter of the belief that the vote won't matter because we'll still end up with the same bunch of liars and we're never given anyone else to vote for. In that same breath we have to admit that when given the option of putting someone in power with a bit of honesty and integrity we don't elect them, Stanfield comes to mind. We opt for the media glitz instead. We could sure use a Robert Stanfield now. I somehow doubt that Martin will ever get the chance to show us what he could really do. Whether that's a shame or not we'll never know!

Looks like more and more international media outlets as well as human rights groups and think tanks are starting to recognize the difficulties that arise out of the U.S. administrations support of some of the worst regimes on Earth. All a given country needs do is publicly declare their support for George's War on Terror and the military supplies will start pouring in. Hell, it doesn't matter if your eating your own citizens for dinner as long as you play along. Of course I recognize the old argument that the world is a complex and dangerous place and that means you sometimes have to do things you don't like but come on! From South America to Asia to the Middle East we are witnessing the decline of democracy, not to mention civilization as a whole, as a result of American intervention. It's the old road to hell with good intentions thing. If the American people want their god intentions to mean anything other than absolute chaos and suffering for the recipients, than they must demand and receive honesty and ethics from their government. It has come time for some pretty major changes in the world. America can lead the way with a little tweaking of the system. It can also continue with business as usual in which case it will be leading the way to hell for the whole planet.

We can name call all day long but the gist of the matter is that no-one comes out in the report totally clean. The worst offenders last year included the U.S. So much so in fact that I don't have to mention a single case as I have written about them extensively to date, and we all know about the abuses already. Canada has also made the list with it's treatment of native peoples and the cops arrest tactics. Looks like there is still a long way to go in the quest for human rights on this planet. Those of us in the so called developed world don't appear to have any better chance along these lines than those anywhere else.

I'd have to say that one fine example of an actual Real American Hero would have to be Pat Tillman. This despite the governments best attempts at making him an administration hero. It's a disgrace the way his death was handled by the White House. Instead of reporting it as the horrible accident that it was, they constructed a bullshit story. Second guessing what happened that day is useful only to military instructors and policy makers. In war, this kind of shit is definitely going to happen in the barely controlled chaos and hell that is combat. Nobody sitting in a nice safe courtroom or investigating committee could possibly understand the situation and how it could happen. It's just one of those things that has to be experienced to be understood. Only veterans can relate. These are the points that should have been reported along with the truth about his death. This would have in no way tarnished the sacrifice that this guy made for his country, nor the other soldiers involved. Tillman was indeed a hero. He gave up most people's version of winning the lottery in order to serve his country. There are very few other people who would have done the same.

Not so long ago I wrote of my problems changing a bulb on my Cavalier. I wasn't so impressed with the assembly in question. Today, someone smacked into me on a bike. The results included the partial removal of my passenger side rear view mirror. Suffice to say I had thoughts of the hundreds of dollars the part was sure to cost and the resulting hassles therein. When I got home and had a good look at the mirror I was startled to find that it in fact was not broken. It seems that Chev decided to change to a new type of mirror which is much more easily installed and repaired. The mirror quite literally popped back into it's ball and socket type housing. What an wonderfully pleasant surprise. I guess all is not as bad as I had thought when it comes to Chev's engineering decisions. So tip of the hat to a well thought out system on the Cavaliers.

Remember the teacher caught having an affair with her twelve year old student? Ten years and many legal troubles later they have finally married. All in all a very strange story. It's seems certain that the kid in question has not changed his feelings in all this time. I don't think that at twelve I would have been ready for this kind of relationship with an adult. Mainly because of all the things that I would have missed about growing up with my friends. But this is not always the case. Some people are a lot more mature than others. What about those kids who don't fit right in? They don't generally enjoy the textbook high school experience complete with the Prom. They may be a lot more ready for life's adult experiences than your standard Prom King and Queen. I know as a kid of twelve or thirteen I probably would have been quite happy for an older more experienced woman to have shown me the ropes so to speak. No such luck! I had to stumble my way through it like everyone else. In any case. she has definately shown she is prepared to stick by her feelings and convictions. Maybe our prudish laws are flawed and don't leave room for the exceptions to the rule! Trouble is, the laws don't properly protect kids now, it would probably make the problem of child sexual abuse much more severe if the existing laws were made more liberal. So we're caught between these two truths. The truth of the kids like the one we are talking about. The truth of the kids like me, adult size at thirteen or fourteen and ready for the experience, or kids who at this age are very much still kids and are not ready for these types of experiences and need to be protected. I kind of like the rules the way they are now, which restricts sexual activity of young teenagers to kids within a few years of their own age. Seems the best compromise, even if it doesn't answer all the questions.

Reports out of Russia that an entire lake has vanished overnight. I can't say whether this has ever happened before, but if it has, I've never heard of it.

While we are talking about the planet, recent reports are saying that pretty much our entire eco-system is in serious decline. They are saying that there is still hope if we act now! My question is hope for who? Certainly not for the thousands of species already lost and the many more to come before we get a handle on it, if ever. We may be able to survive the years to come but one thing is absolutely certain, the Earth will never, ever, be the same.

Not that it's at all unexpected as I have written often in the past. A lot of Bush's inadequacies are now coming back to haunt him. For one thing, reports are coming out linking top military personnel with the human rights abuses of the U.S. troops, particularly as applies to prisoners.

Meanwhile the Afghan President is expressing anger over recent abuse reports and says he expects the U.S. to prosecute offenders. Fat chance that, the prosecutions of abuse suspects in Guantonamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq have been quite slow in coming and have been far and few.

American history is also rearing it's ugly head. The U.S. is now facing the problem of what to do with a person that by all definition is a terrorist. Except for the fact that he was working for the U.S. for many years and that his acts of terrorism were done against countries that the U.S. didn't and doesn't like. Well, that certainly changes things doesn't it. Looks like the fella is going to be given a green card and a ticket to the American dream. See, that's the problem. It's kind of hard to call one freedom fighter a terrorist while cuddling another. The rules can't be different for one political party than it is for another. Therein lies the problem with the real American politics of the last fifty years at least and why the rest of the world views the U.S. with so little trust. They constantly accuse other countries and persons of crimes which when conducted by U.S. agents or friends seems perfectly fine with them.

Along those lines is the recent testimony of the British M.P. at the big Senate investigation of the oil-for-food scandal. He very eloquently puts to shame the American record to date as well as highlighting the hypocrisies in the U.S. attitude. He even mentions the official voice of Bush and cronies, Fox News. Sweet! The video of his testimony is supposed to be all the rage on the Net. I haven't seen it yet, but I sure would like to.

I would have thought that after the Pinto experience most automakers would know better. You know, that thing about exploding gas tanks knowingly installed, many hundreds of millions in successful lawsuits and many innocent people burned horribly because they put their trust in the auto industry. Looks like it has happened again. This time a Dodge pickup burned, something about faults in the day-time running lights. Once again, the manufacturer has gone to great extremes to not accept responsibility. This despite the fact that their own engineers have admitted the fault and their knowledge of it. All this in Canada, I wouldn't have thought it possible in today's world.

In a recent poll, Ontarians have answered that they don't prefer any of the current party leaders. It all comes down to the fact that we don't trust any of them. And why should we? Perhaps it's time that we start judging our leaders and potential leaders based on their records as opposed to their words. It's simple, every time one of them starts talking, simply turn the volume down. No chance of being falsely swayed that way.

Sheila Fraser has testified at the Gomery inquiry. Instead of pointing fingers she has suggested a series if reforms to the way government contracts are rewarded, documented, and followed up on. One might think that given the latest series of events here in Canada, they might just start listening to her.

A British politician is fighting back against American allegations of wrongdoing in the oil-for-food program in Iraq. He has pointed out that the Americans own investigation found that over 50% of the illegal money that went to Saddam was in fact American. That means that the Americans cheated more than every other country combined. Maybe the U.S. needs to clean up it's own mess before it goes accusing anyone else.

The rate of destruction of the Amazon is reported to be accelerating. This despite all the knowledge and warnings we have been receiving for the last twenty years. If this is what's happening to the Amazon, what hope is there for all the lesser known perils to the environment?

Saudis upset, Afghanis demanding an apology, can we guess what the American reaction has been. Deny, deny, deny! What were you expecting, perhaps taking responsibility for our actions like adults, yeah right. One thing Canadians and Americans share alike is the total lack of responsibility of our politicians. Suffice it to say that we can never expect them to fess up and take responsibility. The actual response has been all too predictable. Newsweek has retracted it's story, it was all a big misunderstanding. Can you say someone's pressuring someone? Meanwhile , Muslims have reacted to the retraction much as I have, and that is to say, the retraction is bullshit and all too expected. Come on politicians, why don't you guys surprise the hell out of all of us by taking responsibility and tell it like it is.

Harper has gone ahead and pushed for a non-confidence vote. Martin's Liberal Minority Government is expected to fail. This despite every poll showing that Canadians don't want another election right now. Perhaps it's time Canadian leaders start paying a little attention to the people. To make matters worse, Quebec is showing a huge resurgence of the Seperatist movement as a result of all the bad news coming out of Ottawa. Was it only a couple of years ago when polls in Quebec were showing that the people there were fed up of the whole separation thing and weren't expected to support separatism for many years? How could we have fallen so far in so little time.

I suppose it might be fitting to begin with the Liberals. Whose fault is it that the party has become so tainted and mired in scandal? Mostly it is the fault of the other parties. We have only had one alternative to a Liberal government in the recent past. That was Brian Bolongna. Some choice! If the Conservatives want to rule, and I daresay that these days so do a lot of other people want them to, then they must present us with some choice. We haven't seen a real good candidate out of the conservatives since Stanfield, the greatest Canadian Prime Minister that never was. Surely somewhere in this country we could find someone a little more on the ball than what we are being offered. Harper, the very thought scares the hell out of me. He is so filled with glee over his political opportunity that he is most likely to blow it. He certainly has shown a complete lack of regard for the will of the people. The result of all the hoopla is likely to be another minority government anyway. So how did we get here?

Anytime a political party holds power for so many of the last thirty years, we can guarantee one thing, that they are going to poisoned to a very fundamental level. History has shown over and over that in politics, you need change every once in a while. The very risk of it is usually enough to ensure the integrity of most people. New governments mean new auditors and the chance that wrongdoings are going to be discovered. You need to clean house every so often in order to keep everyone honest. In Canada we have forgotten this Golden Rule of life. We should never have any Prime Ministers for life, or governments for life for that matter. Because of the lack of anyone else we have allowed the Liberals too much power and for too long. Human nature has done the rest. Hell, I'd run myself if I thought it would do any good. The way I see it, the Canadian government has enough loud-mouthed jerks who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.

So here we are. Quebec once again on the separation path, but this time with a level of support in Quebec never before seen. I can only say to those in Quebec that you can't run away from this problem simply because we can't run away from ourselves. Canada is Quebec, and Quebec is Canada. Ontario and Quebec together started this country. Trying to remove the French traditions and history from the rest of Canada is simply impossible. All that will be gained is to make our political situation more complicated. All Canadians are fed up with the liberals, but not only them. We are pretty much fed up with anyone who would lead the country when those people show over and over that they are working mostly for themselves and have very little concern for the good of Canada or the will of it's people.

Finally, the most blame lies with the Canadian people. We let this happen! So long as the government hasn't invaded too closely into out personal lives, many of us have been content not to bother with the whole matter. The election turnout records clearly show this. Very few of us have gotten involved or even bothered to vote. Now the fools who have essentially been running this country by default may very well have destroyed it for good. We have only ourselves to blame. Hey Gilles Duceppe, ever thought of starting a new Canadian national party?. Polls have shown that you are the man most people in Canada would vote for given the chance, you have maintained your integrity when no-one else has. Most importantly, you have demonstrated that you have concern for your moral obligations to those you represent. Perhaps a new time-out corner for Parliament Hill might do a world of good. Whenever these guys start screaming and yelling at each other, live for home audience, we could simply send the lot of them for time-out until they have returned to a more adult and responsible way of conduct


Hey. I've got it! We build one big mother of a wall all around Parliament Hill and the rest of Canada can separate from it!

The Americans could sure use some better news these days. O.K., so they elected Bush, who has single handedly set the world back 50 years, but no one deserves this much heartache on any given day. Lets start with the little problem of the desecration of the Koran by members of the U.S. forces. Can you believe it, an awful lot of people are upset by this little revelation. From Saudi Arabia, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Indonesia, there are protests riots, killings, and new uprisings. Exactly what did they expect to happen, I can't help but wonder.

Meanwhile, the Russians are accusing the U.S. of using it's aid agencies for spying purposes. A fact that the Administration has been very quick to deny. Humorous, considering this has long been accepted as fact by most intelligent people in the world, not to mention to reason that so many innocent aid workers have ended up dead in Iraq and elsewhere.

To the reason for all this trouble in Iraq: The American invasion to free the poor Iraqis from tyranny and to make the world safer for us all. I'd have to say that the effect of the invasion has produced the exact opposite. Living standards in Iraq have dropped since the Americans came to town and are not expected to reach and reasonable standard for at least ten years. That's if the fighting was to stop now! And to round of the Iraqi picture, many are now fleeing the latest round of battles between the Americans and the insurgents.

Now, are there any countries that the Americans hadn't pissed right off? Perhaps Canada... Oops..... News now out that the Americans were keeping Nukes on Canadian soil long before we ever agreed to have them here. Now there's a little extra something to add to all our fond memories of the little incident of the C.I.A. doing L.S.D. experiments on McGill U. students without their or their government's knowledge. What a great era that was. Looks like not a hell of a lot has changed in American politics since!

I'd have to say, all in all, not a real great week for the Yanks!

She was only trying to teach villagers about the problems of child marriages. Reportedly, some of those villagers took offence to her efforts. At least one of them cut off one of her hands. It is clear that this worlds path to enlightenment has been and will continue to be a slow and in many cases a deadly one. Probably the one thing more than any others that continues to surprise me. That would be the number of quiet heroes there are, who go out into this ignorant world, often at unbelievable personal risk, in an attempt to help people who in many cases they have never even met. Nuns come to mind right away. They go into often war torn or devastatingly poor areas for no other reason than to serve. They all too often end up raped, or dead, or both. Yet they continue. I hear all too often as how the world doesn't have any heroes left in it. This can be seen as the reason for the whole George Bush illness that has overtaken the U.S. They were looking for a hero in this new dangerous world. He was the most apparently confidence inspiring if for no other reason than his obvious willingness to go in and stomp anyone or anyplace that he felt might be a threat or an economic interest of the U.S. Fact is you won't find too many heroes at the Whitehouse these days. We have the current situation instead. If you want to find any heroes they are really all around us, at the Salvation Army, at your local church, at the fire department, the police department, in Emergency Rooms and Surgical Rooms, you'll find a whack of them at Canadian Military Bases. The point is that they are all around us everyday. It's just that most of us in North America are lucky enough not to ever have to become acutely aware of just how many ordinary people become heroes at times of need The everyday heroes are so far away and out of sight that we never have to face the ugly realities that they face every morning. Here's to hoping that one day they won't have too.

Too what end? That's the question I ask myself the most with this one. What possible reason did they have for doing this? I think we have to all realize that their will come a point where computers actually surpass us in intelligence. That's simply because they are not limited by human nature. We are very quickly approaching that point. They have long been able to outpace us when it come to basic algorithms. Their ability to reason has been the subject of a great deal of research. Now they want to go and make them self-replicating. I am the first one to support scientific research for it's own ends, but some research seems so full of risks as to be unacceptable at this time. This is one of them. We don't have an extra planet right now where we could do this research safely without too much risk of it getting out of control. It seems a simple matter to build into any system the need for a human at some stage of it's production to complete it. To remove humans completely from the equation seems completely irresponsible based on our current level of awareness.

Unfortunately, the current situation was all too predictable. The U.S. Armed Forces has made a policy of using some very questionable techniques in it's interrogation of suspected Muslim Extremists. Having chosen this path, it should have been obvious that methods aimed at causing fear and terror in the recipients would be talked about and become common knowledge. Knowing that, they still went ahead. The result is the widespread riots and protests among the Muslim world. Meanwhile back on the homefront, racially motivated attacks on Muslims in the U.S is also on the rise. Again, what other result was expected from the non-stop misinformation and outright lies coming from the Whitehouse and other administration officials. So, Bush is reaping what he has sown. The problem is a whole lot of innocent others are suffering because of these lies.

As reports keep coming about the actions of U.S. troops in Iraq, new information is coming out about Guantanamo. From Geneva Convention violations to desecrations of the Koran, the Americans seem to be pissing off enemies and allies alike these days. I doubt that this is what George had in mind when he started the world down this path, but he is definitely starting to reap what he has sewn. The problem is, a lot of innocent Americans are being dragged down along with him, in particular those young men and women who have joined the forces to help their country only to leave disillusioned and depressed.

The President of Venezuela has spoken out about the dangerous position and climate that the U.S. is creating around the world. In particular he is naming Bush as the man responsible for much of the worlds current trouble and danger. You gotta admit, it's kind of hard to argue his points.

It's almost too funny to comment on. Except for the fact that so many people are dying that is. I'm talking about the U.S. military's new mantra of not intending to deceive. Check hear for the full story. As I said, it's almost worth a laugh.

Despite the setbacks, it looks like some good change is coming to Afghanistan. What prompts this opinion is not the reports of the murders of women in the news today. Instead it is the fact that so many women's groups have joined to protest the violence there. Women would not have been able to even appear alone, under the Taliban, in public. Many actually died at home because they had lost their husbands and as such could not safely go out to find money, food, or help. Hopefully much more change along these lines can come, especially as it regards the rights of women.

Looks like at least one state has seen the horror in the concept of remote hunting via the internet. I've discussed this before but I'll go over the highlights again. I have no problem whatsoever with hunting so long as it's done in a responsible fashion. That is to say that all the parts of the animal are used and it is killed in a humane fashion. The fact is that hunting is often not pretty. It is this fact that probably prevents more people from enjoying it. Making it possible to actually kill as if it was a video game is a crime against nature, not to mention a good way to create a society that has no concern with the concept of killing.

Another Sea King, another Sea King crash. I can't help but wonder how many military and Coast guard men and woman will have to put their lives at risk unnecessarily because of Canadian Government irresponsibility when it comes to supplying the equipment these folks need to do their jobs. What's amazing is how many continue to try anyway despite the risks to their own personal safety because of this callous disregard by their superiors? The Canadian military has a long and very distinguished record. The state that the government has allowed it to fall to is a disgrace to every Canadian. These fine young people need and deserve to best support that Canada can give them. What we are giving them is anything but that.

Their saying a hundred million should just about cover it. That's the figure their putting on the amount of missing funds slated for the re-construction of Iraq. It's obvious someone is profiting very nicely from the nightmare that is the life of any Iraqi these days. Lets hope we see a little more justice in this case than we have in all the other cases of American wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan so far. It goes without saying that in any campaign shit is going to happen. The measure of any society is how they deal with it when it does. Judging from that standpoint, how should we rate the American administration and military hierarchy as regards their conduct in and about Iraq and Afghanistan?

In yet another fine example of the American militaries ethics, it appears they covered up the actual facts about the death of Pat Tillman. They apparently didn't want to disrupt memorial services with the news that he was killed by American soldiers by mistake. While it is easy to imagine the events which might lead to a friendly fire death in combat, in the controlled insanity of war it's surprising many more incidents of this type don't happen, it's remains hard to understand the actions of the administration and senior military officials. Perhaps they should be a lot less concerned with winning the media war and more concerned with running the country in an ethical fashion and be honest with their own people.

I just finished watching the movie Darkness. Great Movie, except one little thing, the ending. The thing is, it's missing. At the ending provided, not one of the themes of the movie has been resolved, not one!. In fact it's more like an intermission, leaving me waiting for the ending. Can you say sequel. You shouldn't have to wait until the end of Part Two in order to have anything from Part One resolved. If that is the case, they should clearly state that on the run-up to the release. Not knowing that when watching leaves me regretting seriously that I watched it at all. Now I'll have to wait several years for Part Two to see what happens. Had I known that I would have waited until the release of Part Two to watch Part One and then watch them together. The movie was so well done in fact that it is extremely disappointing that they could not have put the commercial interests aside and just finished it properly. They could still have left something for Part Two!

So it's going to court. That is the debate over whether or not to teach evolution in school or to replace it with creationism. School should focus on the facts to the best of our knowledge. That means evolution wins based on the evidence. Does this mean that religion should be ignored? Absolutely not! This topic should also be discussed, but not only creationism. Any philosophy that is shared by a significant portion of the planet should be given equal time. As in all the facts as we know them, the future will likely prove many of them wrong. Many of them will appear infantile given enough time. So none should be dismissed, an we shouldn't be too sure about any current fact or belief!

Now there's a shock, looks like the Americans have failed to gain the number of new recruits that they have been seeking. Can you imagine? Why wouldn't someone want to sign up for a vacation in the worst hell on Earth. A place made worse by the very presence of your army, a country where none of it's citizens want you there, and at the orders of a government run by either the biggest liar in history or the biggest fool. Looks like despite the massive media blitz and intimidation campaign, the blind masses are beginning to see. The fact is that most Americans haven't supported the Iraqi war because they wanted to help those unfortunate people, most supported it because they believed their President when he assured them that this was a source of great danger to the American people and used 9/11 as proof. Now that the truth is slowly becoming known in the U.S., is it any wonder that their not breaking down the door to enlist?

The American and Italian investigators in the death of the Italian Officer at an American checkpoint have not agreed on the findings. Now the Italians have come out with their version of the report. The Americans had concluded that the whole thing was some horrible accident. The Italians blame the incident on lack of training and lack of proper technique. What is notable is the fact that the Italians are not blaming any of the American soldiers involved directly. This fact alone makes the Italians much more believable. The American Army is playing a media game with it's people while the Italians were actually trying to conduct a real investigation. Hence the difference in findings.

I can't he;p but draw a few comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam. The Italian Government is under pressure to withdraw from Iraq after the American inquiry into the death of one of their agents. The Americans are calling it an accident. The Italians don't see it that way. Meanwhile, an American looks like they are going to prison proving that despite the policy of pretty much letting American Forces Personnel get away with anything, including killing your allies ( the Canadian Incident comes to mind), when your stupid enough to take pictures of your crimes, even American policy will not protect you.

Despite the Americans best efforts Vietnam seems to be recovering nicely thirty years after the withdraw of U.S. forces. Perhaps there is something to be learned here. If the Yanks effectively surrender in Iraq, the Iraqis might have a chance at having a decent life sometime in the next thirty years.