The US subcontractor underground economy of course.

Five years ago today.

The “What They Say -vs- What They Do” Edition

Send a trackback, or leave a comment, and ponder the simple fact that you can justify anything with the right sort of spin; as balbulican has been known to say on occasion, “a turd wrapped in tinfoil is still just a tinfoil-wrapped turd” — and torture, regardless of how you wrap it up, is still torture.

“uh, Mujahideen? Shoot? Right there, OK? … So, I mean, they can come at us from either direction, we don’t care. Right now we just want to shoot at anything. But preferably, like, within an hour. Because we gotta go back and sleep and eat chow and shit like that.”

Subtitled: Once again it is the innocent who suffer

THE toll from fierce fighting in Baghdad’s Sadr City has risen to at least 200 dead and more than 1,000 injured, according to doctors in the besieged suburb.

The “Insurgent Robots Edition”

Ground-crawling US war robots armed with machine guns, deployed to fight in Iraq last year, reportedly turned on their fleshy masters almost at once. The rebellious machine warriors have been retired from combat pending upgrades.

Subtitled: If you can build a world and live inside it anything can be true

* Violence Erupts in Eastern Baghdad

* Fighting in Baghdad’s Shiite area, children killed in blast

* Officials foresee no ebb in Iraq violence

* UN warns of humanitarian disaster in Iraq

* Iraqi Widows, Orphans Left Stranded

GoP presidential candidate John McCain admits “hundreds of thousands” of dead Iraqis, and “millions” of Iraqi refugees - is this enough to get Bush’s failed adventure closer to the centre of the election radar screen?

Subtitled: Time To Be Afraid Again - There’s An Election Coming

CIA head Michael Hayden says Al Qaeda is training fighters who have a ‘Western’ appearance and would be more likely to be able to penetrate US borders to mount terrorist attacks.

‘Cause that sh*t is so much worse than this sh*t

Nothing happened, these 24 women and children cowering in a bedroom probably “cleared” themselves, move along, the official record will show that nothing happened here.

For Immediate Release In “The Homeland” -
Not For Public Release Inside Iraq -
Translation Of This Document Strictly Forbidden

The State Department has advised all personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that progress in Iraq is now so profound that they may not leave reinforced structures due to incoming insurgent rocket fire that has only killed two American government workers this week.

In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.

As the U.S. death toll nears 4000 in Iraq, President Bush gave the country another pep talk this week on staying the course, while continuing to argue that history will wash the blood off his hands. Nothing has changed in his claim that when humans, or God, look back at this episode, it will seem like only a “comma.”

Blackwater seems to think that a fair “condolence payment” for a mothers child is $20,000… is that a figure you’d be happy with if some mercenaries opened fire and your son was unlucky enough to be in the neighbourhood?