Stephen Harper and the Great Failing Con War on Terror

I don't know if you've noticed, but Stephen Harper has suddenly stopped talking about the Great War on Terror, and the Great Terrorist Menace.

These days he wants to project a  kinder gentler image as a Great Friend of Children Leader.

So now almost every photo-op features a group of bored kids in the background...



But of course, there's a good reason for that. He is desperate.

And The Great War on Terror is going badly disastrously. 

Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney's Con Clown Tour of Iraq

It looked like a scene out of one of those On the Road movies with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

Except that this movie is not a comedy it's a horror show.

It's Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney on the road in Iraq,

Giving themselves another big, fat, juicy photo-op with OUR money. 

Bradley Manning and the Horror of Haditha

What perfect timing. Just as the U.S. ends its war in Iraq, not with a bang but a whimper. Bye bye Big Lie. Bye bye Shock and Awe. Bye bye mass murder. Bye bye Abu Ghraib.

In a junkyard near Baghdad, somebody came across the true horror of Haditha.

The 400 pages of interrogations, once closely guarded as secrets of war, were supposed to have been destroyed as the last American troops prepare to leave Iraq. Instead, they were discovered along with reams of other classified documents, including military maps showing helicopter routes and radar capabilities, by a reporter for The New York Times at a junkyard outside Baghdad. An attendant was burning them as fuel to cook a dinner of smoked carp.

The documents — many marked secret — form part of the military’s internal investigation, and confirm much of what happened at Haditha, a Euphrates River town where Marines killed 24 Iraqis, including a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair, women and children, some just toddlers.

To remind us that not ONE of the U.S. soldiers responsible has been convicted. And that just like the war criminals Bush, Cheney, and Blair they all got away. 

Stephen Harper and the Horror of Iraq

OK. Please play this YouTube but don't bother to watch it all. Because I just want to use it as background sound, to set the mood for what follows.

Now click on the following link to see revealed, on one page, the full horror of the Iraq War.

And of course, don't forget to read this brutal indictment :

The bottom line:

The Iraq war wasn't just a horrible mistake, it was a war crime.

George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Blair, and a legion of other neocons should, if there was any justice, be charged with crimes against humanity.

And of course, if Stephen Harper had been Prime Minister, we would be wiping the blood and the shame off OUR hands.

"Mr. Speaker, the issue of war requires moral leadership. We believe the government should stand by our troops, our friends and our allies and do everything necessary to support them right through to victory."

Stephen Harper, supporting the American invasion of Iraq, House of Commons, April 1, 2003.

And don't  you love this one?

"This government's only explanation for not standing behind our allies is that they couldn't get the approval of the Security Council at the United Nations - a body [on] which Canada doesn't even have a seat."

- Stephen Harper supporting the American invasion of Iraq, CTV's Question Period, March 30, 2003.

From the guy whose disgraceful behaviour just cost us a seat on the Security Council.

Yup. We can't change what happened in Iraq.

But for our own safety, and the security of the world.

We can and must get rid of Harper...

The Bloody Massacre of Gays in Iraq

It's a horrible story that just keeps getting worse.

Iraqi militias are torturing and killing "hundreds" of men in a growing, systematic campaign against suspected homosexual activity that may be aided by Iraqi security forces, an international human rights group said Monday.

Another man described how four masked men, dressed in black, kidnapped his partner of 10 years in April.

"He was found in the neighbourhood the day after," the man was quoted as saying. "They had thrown his corpse in the garbage. His genitals were cut off and a piece of his throat was ripped out."

And if it's not murder, or torture, it's rape.

Kamal was just 16 when gunmen snatched him off the streets of Baghdad, stuffed him in the trunk of a car and whisked him away to a house. But the real terror was about to begin.

"They told me to take off my clothes to rape me or they would kill me immediately...The other two kidnappers took off my clothes by force, and, at that time, I saw them as three dirty animals trying to tear my body apart."

So that's what "victory" looks like. And what do the Canadian defenders of this criminal war have to say about that? I know what Michael Ignatieff says. He's sorry...sort of.

But what would Stephen Harper say? Oh right. I forgot. God Bless America.

"...We Canadians are not and cannot be neutral any more than we can be for Saddam; that we are with our friends, our allies and our own troops; and that we support them for freedom, for democracy, for the reconstruction of Iraq, and for the liberation of its people.

This is not a question on how this war happened or whether it should have occurred in the first place. It is something very different. It is now how this will play out and how we will stand in it."

You mean stand in the blood of gay people?













And what do you think Harper's homophobic ReformCon government would do if a gay Iraqi asked for asylum in Canada?

Answer: send him back to be murdered like they do with all the others.

Oh boy. I'm so angry and so sad. The war criminals turned a secular dictatorship into a religious one, and called it victory.

The poor gay people in Iraq are being massacred.

And nobody will help them...

Big Oil and The Forever War

It was just one of those moments. I'm in this Maine castle, and I'm reading Dexter Hilkins' awesome book on Iraq and Afghanistan The Forever War. Which begins with this quote from Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses:

He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought the world's heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world's pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower."

On the TV in the living room Iraqis are cheering the withdrawal of American troops from their ruined cities.

And to make the moment complete I'm wondering whether that big speed boat coming from the direction of the Bush family compound is taking Georgie fishing, and whether the apocalypse he unleashed ever bothers him.

Then I read this.

Iraq is locked in a struggle with the world's largest oil companies over contracts that would see "Big Oil" return to the Iraqi oilfields for the first time in almost 40 years.

And I realized that even in his sober moments the chimp must be smirking. Mission Accomplished. History may vilify him. But they'll be bronzing his hairy ass in Houston and Calgary for the rest of his life.

While Big Oil pumps out the Iraqi oil fields as fast as they can, to keep us hooked on cheap oil, even as the planet burns.

Because of course it was always about that. From day one of the occupation when mobs looted government buildings, stole priceless treasures from the Baghdad Museum, and the only building the Americans guarded was the Ministry of Oil.

Freedom was the vision of a flower they held up to try to justify the slaughter.

But it was just power and greed and the black guck that is killing us all.

The speed boat disappeared into the distance. The moment passed. Sébastien arrived and we went down to the beach for the last time before heading home.















But not before I read the other quote on the opening page of The Forever War...this one from Herman Melville.

Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! from which not the mightiest whale is free.

For that they turned the world upside down.

For that so many people died...

-------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE:

Iraqis not surrendering cooperating. Big Oil outraged. Hold the celebrations. Call back the marines...

The Day the Chimp Came to Town

When I heard that George Bush was in town I couldn't wait to let him know how much I love and admire him.

And that while he might get a standing ovation from some Canadians.

And a blow job from the Blue Lemon.

If only all these wastes of skin would always stay home the city and the world would be much better.

All the nasty little chimp can expect from me and my friends is a one-finger salute. And a demand that he be ARRESTED.















Because not only is he an idiot, a torturer, a mass murderer, and a war criminal.















He's also a dangerous Christianist nutbar.

Stranger still are new accounts emerging from France describing how former president Jacques Chirac was utterly baffled by a 2003 telephone conversation in which Bush reportedly invoked fanatical Old Testament prophecy – including the Earth-ending battle with forces of evil, Gog and Magog – in his arguments to enlist France in the Coalition of the Willing.

"This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins," Bush said to Chirac...

Chirac, in a new book by French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, is quoted as confirming the surreal conversation, saying he was stupefied by Bush's reference to biblical prophecy and "wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs."

So know we know why all those people died. And how lucky we are to have survived him.

Or have we?

Did you know the biggest Canadian "expert" on the Battle of Gog and Magog is the Christianist bloater Charles McVety? Who lectures about that gibberish all the time.

Did you know that he was Finance Minister Jimbo Flaherty's SPECIAL guest the day he brought down his first budget? And that the PMO is crawling with sinister religious nutbars who believe that the end of the world is coming. And that's a GOOD thing.

Including Stephen Harper.

Yup. The Bush legacy lives on in the heart of the ReformCon government....and of course in the bitter core of the Blue Lemon. That waste of lemon peel.

How can we be sure that these Christianist Cons are thinking about the end of the recession, and not the end of the world?

Defeat them, SQUEEZE them, finish them off.

Before they END our country....

Why Should that Iraqi Journalist have all the Fun?

When you can throw a shoe at Chimp Bush yourself.

Or a pretzel, or a tomato, or the Bill of Rights.

It seems it's a phenomenom.

Oh goody. The Chimp must HATE it. Those flying shoes must haunt him. It must be awful to look out at the ruins of your country, see your Presidency going down in flames, and hear the whole world LAUGHING.

Muahahahaha.

As I said before..... the monster got off lightly. But history will be brutal.

Now gimme a WATERMELON !!!!!

The Chimp's War in Iraq in Two Minutes

THE BEGINNING: Shock and Awe



THE MIDDLE: Suffer and Die.

THE END: Duck and Cover.



The bloody bastard chimp got off easily. He really did.

I don't know what's going to happen to that poor Iraqi journalist.

But tonight he's the hero of the long suffering Iraqi people.

And my hero too....

Stephen Harper: The Puppet and the Dummy

Well hang me kangaroo down sport. Or throw another Con on the barbie.

I always knew that Stephen Harper was George Bush and Karl Rove's puppet. Their little stooge bum boy.

But who knew he was John Howard's DUMMY?

A Conservative campaign worker has quit over damaging revelations that a major 2003 speech by Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then leader of the Opposition calling for support for the Iraq war, copied almost word-for-word a speech just two days earlier by Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Can you believe that? A Canadian political leader delivers the most important speech of his career, on a matter of life and death. And he copies it from a doddery old racist and George Bush poodle ......in AUSTRALIA?

Never in the entire history of our country has a political leader sunk so low. Or crawled on all fours through the gutter of treachery. I'm just stunned.

And confused.

Is it really possible to be a poodle of a poodle of a poodle? Is that a chihuahua or what? Are these RepubliCons even Canadians? Or just wannabe Amerikans....or Aussies? Huh?And if so can they be ARRESTED for working for a foreign power?

But never mind. We don't have enough prisons. Yet. And I have an even better suggestion.

From now on can we call Stephen Harper Great Kangaroo Leader......or MATHILDA.....like we used to call Stockwell Day DORIS?

And follow Bush/Cheney/Howard's puppet wherever he goes....or hops....or bounces.

And sing this song for him....

And the TV cameras?



So Canadians can be reminded once again that if Stephen Harper had been Prime Minister of Canada our soldiers might still be in Iraq. Fighting and dying and being mutilated in a crazy criminal war.

Reminded too...that Great Kangaroo Leader takes his marching orders from the international neocon conspiracy, NOT from the people of Canada.

And the sooner we can expel this nasty Chuckie dummy from power. Like the turd that he is.The sooner Canada will be Canada again.

And the SAFER we'll all be...

John McCain and the Big Iraq Lie

As I watched the Presidential debate tonight I wondered whether Obama would fall for John McCain's Big Iraq Lie. And sure enough he did.

He allowed McCain to claim that The Surge was a big success....and that the United States was winning the war in Iraq.

“Senator Obama doesn’t understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy.” Mr. McCain also that “Senator Obama refuses to acknowledge that we are winning in Iraq.”

“That’s not true, that’s not true,” Mr. Obama muttered.

Which made McCain look like a wise soldier, instead of a senile idiot.

Because as I pointed out recently, The Surge is a mirage. And the only winners are the mullahs in Iran.

And because of that, victory in Iraq is more like a nightmare....especially for women and gay people.

Large parts of Iraq are now under the de facto control of the militias and their death squad units. They enforce a harsh interpretation of sharia law, summarily executing people for what they denounce as "crimes against Islam". These "crimes" include listening to western pop music, wearing shorts or jeans, drinking alcohol, selling videos, working in a barber's shop, homosexuality, dancing, having a Sunni name, adultery and, in the case of women, not being veiled or walking in the street unaccompanied by a male relative.

It is a death sentence in today's "liberated" Iraq to love a person of the same sex, or for a woman to have sex outside of marriage, or for a Muslim to give up his or her faith or embrace another religion.

Even children suspected of being gay are abducted and later found shot in the head.
















They destroyed the only secular country in the region, where women were relatively liberated, gays were relatively safe, and turned it into a slaughterhouse run by religious fanatics, who take their orders from America's biggest and most dangerous enemy.

That's not victory, that's defeat written large. Or just insanity.

But Obama either bought the myth that the surge was a success, or he knew he couldn't fight it. Because he let John McCain get away with murder. He let a dangerous myth sound like the truth again. And it will come back to bite him.

Wouldn't it be ironic if the war that should have won the election for the Democrats...ended up losing it for them?

Because the truth didn't set us free. The screams of the women and gays of Iraq fell on deaf ears.

Obama bought the biscuit.

And the Big Lie killed us all...

More Evidence that The Surge is a Fraud

If the Americans can't understand that The Surge was a mirage... or a fraud.

Even when the not so glorious truth is staring them in the face.

Maybe they'll understand what REALLY reduced the level of violence in Iraq, by checking out the satellite image.

Satellite images taken at night show heavily Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Baghdad began emptying before a U.S. troop surge in 2007, graphic evidence of ethnic cleansing that preceded a drop in violence, according to a report published on Friday.

"By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left," geography professor John Agnew of the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study, said in a statement.

"Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning," said Agnew, who studies ethnic conflict.

They didn't understand the country they were invading. They didn't learn the lessons of history.

Even after all those years, all those dead and wounded, all those billions and billions of dollars, they STILL don't understand what happened. What's really going on.

All hail the Mighty Surge !!













Or maybe just spare a thought for the once mighty American Empire.

Stumbling through the twilight blind...

McCain, The Surge, and the Ferris Wheel

Of all the Big Lies that come out of Poppy McCain's piehole these days...the absolute worst one is the one about how The Surge is such a big success...it has won the War in Iraq.

And what truly terrifies me is that so many American now believe that myth, even Obama has bought the biscuit.

"I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated ....It's succeeded beyond our wildest dreams."

When of course it's all bullshit.

Shorter version: To strike back against the religious fanatics who attacked them on 9/11, the United States invaded the only secular country in the region, and turned it into Shiite dictatorship. Where the Sunnis now cower in their segregated neighbourhoods, waiting for the inevitable civil war. Hundreds of thousands are dead, millions of refugees can't go home. And the only winners are the Iranians. Who made the surge work...and now control a Shiite empire stretching from Iraq all the way to the Gaza Strip.

How can McCain call that victory when it's the greatest geopolitical DEFEAT in the history of the United States.

But doncha love that Ferris wheel?

The only one in the world where you have to be strip searched and take out life insurance before you get on.

You know I'm glad that at long last Obama is going after McCain's Big Lies.



But until he can go after Poppy's BIggest Lie. Until Americans understand what's really happening in Iraq.

Obama will be fighting McCain.

With one arm behind his back...

Blogging in Paradise and my Internet Addiction

I'm ashamed to admit that even in paradise... where life is slow and there are so many other better things to do... not having internet access in my secret hideaway was driving me up a palm tree.

Until I finally got my twitching fingers on a computer... and was shocked to discover that my internet addiction was now a mental disorder.

An editorial in this month's issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry says Internet addiction -- including "excessive gaming, sexual pre-occupations and e-mail/text messaging" -- is a common compulsive-impulsive disorder that should be added to psychiatry's official guidebook of mental disorders.

Like other addicts, users experience cravings, urges, withdrawal and tolerance, requiring more and better equipment and software, or more and more hours online, according to Dr. Jerald Block, a psychiatrist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Dr. Block says people can lose all track of time or neglect "basic drives," like eating or sleeping. Relapse rates are high, he writes, and some people may need psychoactive medications or hospitalization.

So now I'm REALLY sorry I bothered to get back online.

Now I figure I'm in rehab...like Britney and her friends.

Just having a minor relapse.

By the pool...














But then some days are harder than others.

Like when I found out that George Bush had declared the War in Iraq a success.

And I had to leave it to Steve Bell to sum up how I feel about the dum ape, his delusions of grandeur.

And his camel shit hat...
















While I went down to my favourite beach.

Thumped and kicked an imaginary punching bag.

And let the blue green waves cool me down....














I don't know why but I find that REALLY helps me not to think about the internet....or what's happening in the news.

Although once I fell asleep on the powdery white sand and had a horrible dream that I was back in snowy Canada.

Where so many people had their heads up their asses....about everything from the state of the weather to the state of Dion.... they were starting to bump into each other.

Scooze me....scooze me... oops....sorry. Fart.

As Emperor Harper fiddled ..... and the economy went down the toilet.

Yikes. Thank goodness it was just a nightmare....or I might have to stay here forever.














Which wouldn't be TOO hard.

Because let's face it.... Canada is a pretty grim place these days. Winter drags on in Spring.The left fights itself and then wonders why the dirty Cons are in power. Hope is in short supply. Mediocrity rules. And the blogosphere is a foul partisan jungle....full of boring nerdy lezras and small dead pigs.

It's the same thing in the United States where the Democrats are tearing themselves apart....snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and drowning Obama's message of hope in a cesspool of racism.

And now the FINAL blow. If all that doesn't drive you crazy the internet will !!!!!!

Although this guy doesn't agree.

And if you read the Journal article, it does mention that 86 percent of the "internet addicted" also suffered from another mental problem.

Which in my mind makes a monkey out of the study. Even though it does help explain the Blogging Tories.

But as for me I'm not taking any chances. I'm taking rehab seriously. No more internet in paradise.

From now on just sunsets....















Ooh.... ahhhh. That's an eight-point-five !! No way that's a WINNAH!!!

Yup.Throw another lobster and a couple of steaks on the barbie Sébastien.

Soon it'll be time to head back to gloomy old Canada.

Scooze me....scooze me. Fart.

But tonight we're still in paradise....

The Lost Legacy of Martin Luther King

"When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

On the day when America honours the great Martin Luther King. And some worry that his full legacy is being lost.

Nearly 40 years after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., some say his legacy is being frozen in a moment in time that ignores the full complexity of the man and his message.

Worry that people are forgetting how unpopular his views had become. Even on the left.

By 1968, King's opposition to Vietnam and his unwavering commitment to nonviolence made him largely an outcast. The far right still despised him and everything he represented. But even more telling was the rejection he received from the left. He endured editorials from the Democratic establishment calling for a moratorium on civil rights and a break from marches. He was called a "disservice to his cause" and his people.

A reminder of what the great man had to say about a crazy war.

With some pictures from the latest one...



Also some words from Barack Obama at King's church yesterday.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community. We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them.

Brothers and sisters, we cannot walk alone.

In the struggle for peace and justice, we cannot walk alone.

In the struggle for opportunity and equality, we cannot walk alone

In the struggle to heal this nation and repair this world, we cannot walk alone.

Before Obama and Hillary attacked each other like pitbulls tonight.

And finally a picture of George Bush and a black child today.

That just about says it all.













Or at least speaks to how I feel.

Whatever you do.... don't let our differences... gender, race, or anything else DIVIDE us.

Remember Martin's journey. Focus on bringing down the REAL enemy.

Because our hopes for a better more just and peaceful world are riding on your shoulders. And if you let us down.

We will never EVER forgive you...

Iraq, Pakistan, and the Ghost of Saddam Hussein

Trying to find something positive in Iraq is like looking for the proverbial pony.... in a mountain of bloody manure.

But this has to be good news.

Especially since Osama Bin Laden is so worried.

"Our duty is to foil these dangerous schemes, which try to prevent the establishment of an Islamic state in Iraq..."

So you know it's got to REALLY hurt.

And what must hurt the most is the fact that Al-Qaeda is being expelled from Iraq not by General Petraeus....although he deserves some credit.

But by their fellow Sunnis .....and the ghost of Saddam Hussein.











Hussein was a brutish dictator but he was a secular one. So in the late seventies when Saudi Arabia started building Wahhabi religious schools or madrassas all over the world, they couldn't build any in Iraq.

Which meant that although the country was extremely sectarian, the common culture remained secular...and nationalist. And the stateless religious fanaticism that Al Qaeda depends upon never took root.

So while at first the Sunnis were glad to have the foreign fighters on their side...it didn't take long before their fanaticism and indiscriminate brutality turned them off.

Which is why after the Americans leave...and the Shiites and the Sunnis and the Kurds work out a power sharing agreement with or without a civil war...Iraq might have a chance of being a modern secular nation one day.

While a country like Pakistan is doomed.

It allowed the Saudis to build thousands of religious schools. Its corrupt military used them to provide the Taliban with recruits and suicide bombers. So now Pakistan is crawling with religious fanatics...including many in the armed forces.

Nobody is safe. And anything could happen.

Some US intelligence analysts fear Benazir Bhutto's assassination could be part of a broader al-Qa'ida and Taliban offensive against Pakistan's secular leadership, focused on spreading militant influence inside the country. Success in this endeavour would pose a direct threat to the US and the broader Western world.

So much for the Great War on Terror.

Let's see if I can get it straight.

To get back at the religious extremists who attacked America, Bush and his neocons invaded the only secular country in the Middle East...and turned it into a magnet for religious fanatics. They never got Bin Laden, but they allowed the Taliban to regroup in Afghanistan, turn Waziristan and other barbarous places into safe havens for Jihadi terrorists. And they helped create the conditions for Al Qaeda to destabilize Pakistan .... the only Islamic country with nuclear weapons.

And now it turns out that the most powerful weapon in the fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the main reason it hasn't turned into another Pakistan, was the ghost of the man they hanged.

Spare a thought for the old dead tyrant.

Isn't it a crazy world?

The Basra Retreat and the Leon of Scotland

I see the British handed over Basra to the Iraqi security forces today, and made it sound like it was some sort of victory.

When in fact the Battle for Basra was more like the siege of Kut Al Amar.

A disaster from start to finish.

I mean just ask the police chief.

"They left me militia, they left me gangsters, and they left me all the troubles in the world...."

OK ..... so maybe he's biased after having survived 20 assassination attempts in six months.

But look what's happening to the women.

Their autopsies revealed painful deaths. One woman found in “a red dress” had a 9mm bullet wound in her left hand, three in her right hand, three in her right upper arm, and three in her back. Two of the women were beheaded, one with a saw.

If anyone can call that victory they must be insane. And The Civil War: The Main Event hasn't even started.

But luckily for the chickenhawks almost nobody in Britain was paying attention today. Or wondering how many lives that "victory" cost....or whether it was worth it. Or how the fuck they are going to get the rest of their shrinking force out before the place explodes.

The big topic of conversation today .... apart from the big football match between Arsenal and Chelsea.... was Saturday night's X-Factor Grand Finale. And how Rhydian....the odds on favourite.

Was beaten by the Leon of Scotland.



Wow. Holy kipper. From Whitburn, to a GAP store in Glasgow, to million dollar stardom...or close to it...

"If he's hoping to buy his mammy a house in the Highlands, he may have to wait a while..."

Now I believe ANYTHING is possible!!!

Except victory in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Oh I know. We all want to believe in miracles.

But sometimes we can't...

------------------------------

P.S. Leon says his idol is our very own Michael Buble!!!! Can you believe THAT????

Yup...

Because Sometimes in Iraq.....

....it's better to laugh than cry.









I don't know what the Iraqis think about this party patrol.

But it sure beats killing them....

Mind Battles and the Hidden Wounds of War

The other day I wrote a post about the hidden wounds soldiers can suffer from when they fight wars like this one....



The toll is already heavy.

Now comes a new report that suggests it could be even worse...because many of those hidden wounds can be like ticking time bombs.

Soldiers who have served in Iraq are suffering substantially greater mental distress several months after leaving the combat zone than when they first return home.

"When you come back . . . you're almost euphoric . . . you don't have any problems in the world," said Brig. Gen. Stephen L. Jones, an Army assistant surgeon general. But after a few weeks, he said, "the stress starts to resurface."

If you want to know what that feels like you should watch this great CBC story about a young Canadian soldier and his moving Mind Battle.

Good for that young soldier for being brave enough to talk about a problem many still consider shameful.

Good for his mum for standing up to the military.

He lives with his wounds.

We live with ours.

Isn't war wonderful?

Prince Harry and the Nasty Buzzard

You know something REALLY bothered me about this story.

And not just the sight of one of the Windsor Boys lying on his back dead...instead of just dead drunk.

Or that Harry is missing his ears. But you can buy them if you want.

A bronze casting of his "severed ears" will also be on display at the hotel and will go on sale on the popular auction website eBay at a later date.

Or that the sculptor doesn't know what he is doing or what he is talking about...

"Prince Harry's spirit must have died the day they told him he couldn't serve."

Like fuck it did.

Or even why people would pay tribute to a royal wanker who never went to Iraq because it was too dangerous...and he was too rich. Instead of paying tribute to those who did.

Although that one does bother me a lot.

No. I have to admit that what REALLY disturbs me is why Dead Harry seems to be in a state of.....um....













arousal....












And what IS that nasty buzzard looking at?











Oh no. What an awful statue. What a nasty bird. What a horrible thought. That's enough to make ME snort vodka. And I don't even drink.

But of course it could have been worse. Dead Harry could have been wearing his Nazi fancy dress costume. With a swastika on his arm, a drink in one hand, and a cigarette (gasp) in the other.

And instead of his ears they could have put his humongous cock up for auction on e-bay. Can you imagine how much THAT would have been worth?!!!!!!!

Lawdy Lawdy. What WOULD we humble hosers do without the monarchy?

Do you really think we could be a REAL country one day?

And STILL keep Dirty Harry around to entertain us and.....um..... INSPIRE us?

What a lovely thought...