Unbelievable!

This man alleges he lost a few night's sleep before joining Bush's War of Aggression against Iraq in 2003: "By now Iraq was dominating my thinking. Other issues were dealt with, but the prospect of ordering forces into battle in a conflict that would be divisive in Australia troubled me. I wrote in my diary on February 19 [2003]: 'Anyone who thinks that I'm a warmonger should understand how I feel. I think about it all the time, have broken sleep and hope that a late capitulation (very unlikely) or assassination of Saddam will remove the need for military action'." (Why we took on Saddam's Iraq, John Howard, The Australian, 25/10/10)

The Bush/Blair/Howard War of Aggression against Iraq, and the Belligerent Occupation which followed, transformed it into a scene from Dante's Inferno: "Hundreds of the leaked war logs reflect the fertile imagination of the torturer faced with the entirely helpless victim - bound, gagged, blindfolded and isolated - who is whipped by men in uniforms using wire cables, metal rods, rubber hoses, wooden stakes, TV antennae, plastic water pipes, engine fan belts or chains. At the torturer's whim, the logs reveal, the victim can be hung by his wrists or by his ankles; knotted up in stress positions; sexually molested or raped; tormented with hot peppers, cigarettes, acid, pliers or boiling water - and always with little fear of retribution since, far more often than not, if the Iraqi official is assaulting an Iraqi civilian, no further investigation will be required. Most of the victims are young men, but there are also logs which record serious and sexual assaults on women; on young people, including a boy of 16 who was hung from the ceiling and beaten; the old and vulnerable, including a disabled man whose damaged leg was deliberately attacked. The logs identify perpetrators from every corner of the Iraqi security apparatus - soldiers, police officers, prison guards, border enforcement patrols. There is no question of the coalition forces not knowing that their Iraqi comrades are doing this: the leaked war logs are the internal records of those forces." (Iraq war logs: Secret order that let US ignore abuse, Nick Davies, guardian.co.uk, 22/10/10)

Today, the man who aided and abetted this Crime against Humanity, former Australian prime minister John Howard, is basking in the media spotlight, and, presumably, sleeps soundly in his bed.*

Yet the man who blew the whistle on this Crime against Humanity, by leaking the Iraq war logs, is a fugitive: "Julian Assange moves like a hunted man. In a noisy Ethiopian restaurant in the Paddington district, he pitches his voice barely above a whisper to foil the Western intelligence agencies he fears. He demands that his dwindling number of loyalists use expensive encrypted phones and swaps his own as other men change shirts. He checks into hotels under false names, dyes his hair, sleeps on sofas and floors, and uses cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed from friends." (Assange increasingly on his own as former colleagues abandon him, Burns & Somalya, The New York Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 25/10/10)

[*"[I]n his first year of retirement, Howard has racked up a $1 million bill at taxpayers' expense." (Ex-PM John Howard costs taxpayers more in retirement, Peter Rolfe, news.com.au, 2/8/09)]