I was watching the news last night and as usual it featured a report from the war in Iraq. “Boring boring boring” I thought to myself as they showed scenes of American soldiers riding in armored vehicles, guns at the ready. The reporter talked of the numbers of victims there have been since the war began five years ago. This lead me to wonder why it is we never really see those victims in reports like this. The figures were shocking, but nonetheless they’re only numbers and in that sense I wondered how connected any of us could be to the reality of the horror behind them.

Of course, we see plenty of pictures of the fallen soldiers (nearly 4000 so far), but those pictures are usually head and shoulder shots that resemble something from a high school yearbook. We never see their lifeless bodies covered in blood or scorched from a bomb blast. We also rarely see scenes of death that show any one of the vast number of civilians who have been killed or maimed in this war which seemed to lose its way some time ago.

It’s not that I want to see disturbing pictures of the horrors of war, what decent person would? But as I struggle to recall what it is we’re actually supposed to be doing out there, I find myself thinking that the lack of truth being beamed into my living room has brought me to the point where I actually consider the Iraq war news to be “boring.” That made me feel somewhat guilty. After all, there are soldiers out there getting killed and civilians dying in even higher numbers, and here I am thousands of miles away ‘bored’ with that news, almost uninterested in the fate of those involved in any significant way.

The American media isn’t allowed to show the coffins of fallen soldiers returning to the States. Such images would weigh heavy on the collective conscience of the nation, and therefore perhaps lessen the Presidents resolve to “finish the job.” However, the reason for the “job” turned out to be at best misguided, and at worst just a downright lie. And today the reason for war now seems to be a mixture of political double-talk and an obligation to stay there and at least fix what is very clearly broken.

How dare I consider the Iraq war “boring.” How dare I sit there and pay no attention to the fact that somewhere in America today a family will get a visit from military personnel to tell them their son/daughter/mother/father has been killed in Iraq. They’ll get a funeral, a flag, and “thanks from a grateful nation,” but their loved one will never return, and for what? Really, for what?

The war isn’t sexy anymore. The media grew tired of reporting the seemingly endless bad news from Iraq some time ago. That was never more evident than when Anna Nicole Smith accidentally offed herself in a hotel room last year. The whirlwind of coverage that followed eclipsed all coverage of the boring ol’ Iraq war, and for days pictures of Anna Nicole and her ample chestage lead the news cycle as if breathing a sign of relief from having to peddle out the same old boring and depressing news about how many people died that day in the far away war.

Now, of course, there are the Presidential Primaries, so once again the oh-so tediously repetitive news from Iraq can be set aside for poll numbers with whizzy graphics, lofty speeches, and lengthy debates. Heck, you might even be forgiven for forgetting that there are thousands of troops out there fighting for… something.

But what if the media started to show us something other than the militarily endorsed imagery from Iraq (and for that matter Afghanistan too)? Lets imagine that for just one week the news delivered us uncensored images. When a car bomb rips through a crowd of shoppers tearing their bodies apart, instead of just showing us men standing around the charred remains of a burned out car, we see the immediate aftermath. Horror, death, pain and misery, beamed live and uncensored into our living rooms as we sit there eating our dinner.

After a week of seeing the awful truth, would we be demanding explanations as to what we are actually doing there and how it is we came to be there in the first place? Would we be pounding on the doors of those in Washington and London demanding answers to tough questions they would really rather we didn’t ask? Or would we simply complain to the news networks for showing us ‘that’ while ate our dinner? Would advertisers threaten to pull the plug on their money if the networks didn’t stop showing images that had the masses reaching for the remote control to escape the horror?

I’m not suggesting that the media should bombard us with horrific images from Iraq, but for the war to be seen as “boring” is surely not putting the issue in its rightful place. Perhaps even the blind flag waving that was evident at the beginning of this war might have been tempered a lot faster had we seen a little more of the fact and a little less of the fiction.

Even now as I write this I find myself torn over what image I might use in this piece. I could easily choose a generic shot of soldiers with guns, or even one of the many images of planes full of coffins draped in the American flag. But I’m somewhat reluctant to pick one of the more graphic images showing the death and misery that is actually commonplace in war torn Iraq right now. I find myself considering the reaction of you, the reader, to a picture showing something you didn’t want to see.

But then that’s my point. None of us want to see these pictures do we? The media can’t and won’t show them to us, and on the whole we’re fine with that. But the flip-side of this is that I’ll sit there watching TV then change the channel from the news to something else, not because it is awful (which it often is), but because it’s boring. Boring that is, until a pop star goes mad or a heavily chested blonde celebrity dies.

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Iraq war news from the BBC
Iraq: Five years on by NPR
What President Bush said five years ago
I will be home (A soldiers wife’s story)
Beyond words
Hearts and minds
War re-branded
Will it ever end
Who’s winning the unwinnable
2000 Dead
Children of the ruins
David Leeson’s photographs from Iraq

I imagine that Hillary Clinton thought she was destined to be the first woman President of the United States, but it’s beginning to look like the role she’s been limbering up to for the last few years might very well slipping from her grasp.

When chatting to American friends about Hillary Clinton, I’ve noticed a significant number of negative reactions, be them facial expressions or actual groans at the merest mention of her name. Hillary, it would seem, has the power to really piss people off.

So what is it about Hillary that people seem to dislike so much? Is there some kind of character flaw in the former first lady? Or is it just the popular de-facto position to dislike her for reasons undefined?

In the United Stated a continuing media campaign asserts that ‘friends don’t let friends drive drunk.’ The idea of friends holding one another accountable isn’t a bad one, so maybe it was with that in mind when Canada placed their nearest neighbors on a government list of countries that allow or promote terror, in this case through the use of torture.

The Foreign Affairs Department document lists the United States along with Israel, Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Syria, as countries where prisoners are at risk of human rights abuses such as torture. The document, which formed part of a manual on torture awareness given to diplomats, was inadvertently released to Amnesty International lawyers as part of a court case against the Canadian government over the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan.

Responding the the news U.S. Ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, said. “We find it to be offensive for us to be on the same list with countries like Iran and China. Quite frankly it’s absurd, for us to be on a list like that is just ridiculous.” Wilkins went on to say that the United States does not authorise or condone torture and that he had “very forcefully” requested that the U.S. be removed from the list at once. Israel was also unhappy with their inclusion on the Canadian list.

Canads’s foreign minister, Maxime Bernier, has since apologised for including the US and Israel on the list. Insisting the list was in no way part of any policy document and did not convey the official views of his government Bernier explained that the list “wrongly includes some of our closest allies.” He went on to say. “I have directed that the manual be reviewed and rewritten.”

The United States has been repeatedly criticized for its continued detention and treatment of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba where CIA operatives have used questionable interrogation techniques to obtain information and confessions from prisoners.

Interrogation methods employed by the CIA have controversially included simulated drowning, (known as waterboarding), mock executions, stress positions, sleep depravation, forced nudity, and among other things, continued exposure to Eminem’s “Slim Shady” album. However, President Bush himself has repeatedly insisted that the U.S. do not torture prisoners.

While Canada has apologised for including the U.S. and Israel on the list I’m wondering if there wasn’t at least a little bit of deliberate engineering behind its release. Canada is, of course, a friend and ally of the U.S., and as such maybe a decision was made to diplomatically lean on their neighbors in the hope of bringing a little accountability to the relationship. After all, if friends don’t let friends drive drunk, then surely the buck doesn’t just stop there?

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Canada places the US on terror state list
Canada says ‘Oops, sorry about that.’
Canada put the USA on terror nation list
U.S. interrogation techniques (Also see another list)
Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on Waterboarding and Torture

It’s been over 4 years after President Bush stood aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln under a huge “Mission Accomplished” banner a declared victory in the Iraq war. Since that declaration 3659 American troops have been killed along with a far higher number of Iraqi people, and the country has descended into civil war.

So what now?

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President Bush declares victory in Iraq
Whitehouse transcript of Bush victory speech

Prime Minster Tony Blair has finally done the decent thing and resigned! Bloody good job too. He’s leaving number 10 Downing Street, the Prime Ministers official residence, on the 27th of June and probably moving in with Barney, President Bush’s other little lapdog, shortly thereafter.

Tony Blair has been Britain’s Prime Minister for 10 years though it feels like a lot longer. He said he is proud to have led the “greatest nation on earth” but that he feels that 10 years was “long enough” for him and the country.

President Bush said he “will miss” Mr Blair and praised him for his honesty, which he admitted was a trait that was hard to find in his circles.

In the UK however, the Mr Blair is leaving amid continued questions about his honesty and leadership. His popularity is in much the same state as the beleaguered President’s with his decision to follow America into war in the Middle East often cited as his biggest political mistake.

Recently Mr Blair has made the environment his parties top political priority, some might suggest because that is far more palatable to a British public that was dead set against the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. But criticism aside one cannot take away that Blair has managed to make some swift environmental changes putting the UK at the forefront of global efforts to address climate change.

It will be interesting to see how keen the new Prime Minister will be to be photographed with President Bush. Bush is extremely unpopular here in the UK and it would seem a politically unwise move to appear too friendly with a such a controversial and unpopular President given that the close ties between Mr Blair and Mr Bush did the Prime Minister little favor on home turf. There will of course be a meeting, but after that, I would be surprised at any further high visibility hand shakes and joint statements until America elect a new President in 2008.

Mr Blair’s replacement might be well advised to make some swift and radical changes and refocus the Labour party that it’s not unfair to suggest has been suffering from ‘Blaired vision’ for the last few years.

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10 Downing Street
Blair quits
A Blairfaced lie
President Bush’s lapdog