how strange it is, that most people in most countries consider their own country to be superior to all others -- it seems to me that every country has its good points and its bad points, and these are changing all the time -- i used to want to go to the moon before it had half a dozen US flags stuck in it

Lest We Forget

once Tony Blair had pledged his support to George Bush's planned overthrow of Saddam Hussain, he had two months to come up with excuses to justify taking the UK into an illegal and immoral war

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/feb/03/iraq.usa

these are the people who lied -

* Tony Blair, the Prime Minister
* Alastair Campbell, the spin doctor
* John Scarlett, the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee
* Sir David Manning, the adviser on foreign affairs

these are the people who pretended to believe the lies -

* John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister
* Gordon Brown, the Chancellor
* Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary
* David Blunkett, the Home Secretary
* Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary
* Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the Chief of the Defence Staff
* John Reid, the Labour Party chairman

if there was such a thing as impartial international justice, they should all be charged as war criminals -- but might is right, and power fears neither legality nor morality

when it was finally accepted that the war in Iraq could not be won using weapons, the enemy was paid to stop fighting -- now Barack Obama and Gordon Brown are moving their troops to Afghanistan to waste yet more of the world's resources and end yet more innocent people's lives

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."

- Hermann Goering, Luftwaffe Commander, Nuremberg Trials 1946
from "Nuremberg Diary" by GM Gilbert (Signet, New York, 1947)

what is needed for those being held in CIA prisons is not "fairer" treatment, but fair treatment