Early last week, Simon Crean stepped down as leader of the Australian Labor Party, and Mark Latham has taken his place. Latham will be challenging John Howard for the big chair next election, which I personally think would be a nice change. One thing I like about the possibility of Latham becoming PM is that he can see G.W. Bush for who he actually is, and was recently quoted saying "(Bush is) the most incompetent and dangerous president in living memory". I second that notion :-)

With the news that Saddam Hussein has finally been captured by US forces in the Middle East, comments have been heard from all corners of the planet regarding Hussein's punishment. Yesterday Latham was criticized for his comments when he said that he had no objection if Hussein was given the death penalty. Let's examine this for a moment shall we? First, here is a refresher course on Hussein's contribution to humanity.

• The use of poison gas and other war crimes against Iran and the Iranian people during the Iran-Iraq war. Hussein summarily executed thousands of Iranian prisoners of war as a matter of policy.
• Hussein dropped chemical weapons on Halabja, in which as many as 5,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed.
• Crimes against humanity and war crimes arising out of Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait.
• Crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq, including the destruction of over 3,000 villages. The Iraqi government's campaign of forced deportations of Kurdish and Turkomen families to southern Iraq has created approximately 900,000 internally displaced citizens throughout the country.
• Crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against Marsh Arabs and Shi'a Arabs in southern Iraq. Entire populations of villages have been forcibly expelled. Government forces have burned their houses and fields, demolished houses with bulldozers, and undertaken a deliberate campaign to drain and poison the marshes. Thousands of civilians have been summarily executed.

I think, considering what we are dealing with here, the death penalty is probably not going to be enough. So to those idiotic fools who think that criticizing a respected politician because he has no objections to executing an evil dictator who is directly responsible for the deaths and oppression of thousands of innocent lives, I say to you, "Wake up, get a life, you close minded tossers."

In spite of the good news of the mad man's capture, there is one negative aspect that may come out of all this. The US forces captured Hussein during a war that was instigated by the Bush administration, thereby increasing G.W.'s popularity, and that will likely give him a better chance of being re-elected next year. Let us all hope that does not happen.

Hussein is likely to be interrogated for a long time, and do not be surprised if Bush eventually announces something to the effect of:

"After several weeks of interrogation, it is apparent that Saddam Hussein is not going to disclose the location of his weapons of mass destruction. But I want to assure the American people we will continue to search and we will find them."

Weather the weapons exist or not (and let's face it, they don't), Bush has to stick to his story that they do exist, as this was his justification for going to war in the first place. Basically, there is no way in the world he can say otherwise. Try to imagine G.W. at a press conference:

"Whoops! Looks like they were telling the truth after all! Erm, sorry about that UN. Oh, and sorry for bombing all those innocent children in the Middle East. I hope you don't think I am a war criminal now, but I really thought it was for their own good! My bad!

Oh I and really didn't mean to ignore Russia's recommendation to keep the UN weapons inspectors searching for forbidden weapons. Boy is my face red! Tell you what; I will give back some of the oil wells we stole from the Middle East in the first place. But we will keep a few. After all, we did rescue them from a dictatorship.

And gee am I the goose for getting Australia and England involved. Crikey those guys must really hate me now for lying to them. I guess I won't be getting Christmas cards from Tony and John this year, let alone being invited to play golf with them anymore.

But let's not argue over who said what, who ignored whose policies and who fraudulently started what war, I just hope we can put all this behind us and move on.

Anyway, now the war on terror is nearly over, I was thinking about starting a new war. How does 'the war on stuff that does not agree with US policy' sound?"

I may have gone a little far with that last remark. Sue me :-)