(Excusing) war is hell

It's been wryly observed elsewhere that the editors of Rupert Murdoch's 125,456 mastheads around the world instinctively knew they should support the recent war against Iraq, even though such an edict was never issued by the billionaire American businessman.
It's why someone at The Courier-Mail in Brisbane just knew the war pages for days on end had to be labelled "War on Terror", left over from the Afghanistan front, rather than the far-more-accurate "Bombing the Shit Out of Poorly Trained Young Conscripts Armed Only With World War II Weapons from a Great Height".
It was for that reason, too, that Courier readers were bombarded with feature story after feature story of Saddam eating babies for breakfast and his more evil son Uday raping young virgins for lunch and dinner.
In a family newspaper like this, we won't even mention what the other son Biday got up to after dark.
And once hostilities began, Coalition of the Willing forces were discovering almost daily a new grave of torture victims or another portable factory for producing chemical or biological WMDs.
Many of these startling claims have proven false with time, just like the reasons given to invade in the first place - Saddam getting uranium from Niger; Saddam with the capacity to launch WMDs in 45 minutes, Saddam with WMDs in the first place.
So with George WMD Bush, Tony Blair and our very own Johnny Howard facing growing and disturbing claims that they fabricated the reasons for sending their young citizens off to war, what sort of heading do you think some loyal sub-editor at the Courier came up with for a page on Saturday July 12 devoted to the growing scandal of false reports and dishonest reasons for war?
"Dossier of Deceit" or "Iraq: The Cover-up"? "War scandal grows"? Something flippant like "The Three Amigos"?
No, none of that. The jingoistic and totally inaccurate "Securing Our World".
We've got absolutely no idea what the fuck that means, but we guess next time Rupert is touring the building up at Bowen Hills, he'll give that sub a pat on the back.

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Our Der! Award for stating the bleeding obvious goes to The Courier-Mail's national political correspondent Malcolm Cole for the intro to a story on the aforementioned page.
It read: ACCUSED Australian Taliban fighter and terror suspect David Hicks should be released if the US cannot convict him of any offence, Prime Minister John Howard has said.

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Switching to the Courier's sports pages, as you do often much sooner than later, can anyone explain why the pages devoted to various football codes - league, union, aussie rules - are called Main Game?

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WELL DONE!

Just to show that this column is not always anti-Courier-Mail, we did appreciate – as we suspect tennis lovers across the nation did too – this excellent photo it ran of Mark Philippoussis having a surf off California after his hard-fought and see-sawing Wimbledon final against Roger Federer.

Finally, a news story we should have read ...

HOWARD CALLS IT QUITS

Prime Minister John Howard resigned yesterday, citing his failure to follow his own government’s recommendations on national security.
Mr Howard said he was quitting because he had not sought advice from the Office of National Assessments and other intelligence agencies on the veracity of claims made to justify the war against Iraq, in particular suggestions that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium from the African nation of Niger.
Mr Howard said his anti-terrorist information booklet, Let’s look out for Australia, mailed to households throughout the nation advised all Australians to “keep yourself informed” about developments posing a threat to the nation’s security.
“It’s there in black and white,” an emotional Mr Howard said at a farewell news conference.
“The booklet says ‘it is important that you try to keep up to date with the news’.
“Clearly I didn’t do that and if the Prime Minister doesn’t keep himself informed, how can he ask every other Australian to do so? I had complete access to the latest views of our intelligence agencies and didn’t ask for them.
“That’s a gross dereliction of duty on my part. There is no alternative for me but to resign as Prime Minister.”