Tim Dunlop takes a quantum leap in faith. He agrees with Bush for not hosting Gerry Adams but can’t help himself. Any positive comment about Bush must be put into perspective and balanced with a ‘torture’ comment.

Come on guys – if you get that the IRA’s summary justice is to be condemned, it shouldn’t be such a leap to figure out that torture deserves the same unreserved condemnation, should it?

Well yes, torture does deserve condemnation but Tim isn’t talking about torture, he’s talking about interrogation and will never know the difference.

Most of the right of the blogosphere is singing the president’s praises, which is more than fair enough under the circumstances. Still, it’d be nice if they applied the same moral clarity to their attitude towards the Bush administration’s licensing of torture and the introduction of extraordinary renditions and the like.

How anyone can compare garroting, kneecapping, dismemberment in front of family, blowing up innocents – woman, children, horses, Mountbatten and his granddaughter and other niceties of the IRA with Private English posing for a S&M shot or a terrorist being forced to listen to Michael Jackson music is totally beyond me. But then I could never understand why supposedly educated and intelligent people thought communism was a winner either. I figure they’re the same people.

Student Stuart McMillen feels assaulted. And he was, by an ABC news team who couldn’t get to him quickly enough to beat up his 30 seconds of fame into an international incident. Stuart, trying to up his 30 seconds of fame to a minute shows his lack of understanding of world events when he ‘realized’;

“… that that was an Australian Army soldier pointing their gun at an Australian citizen in Australia, where there’s currently no wars happening, so I thought that was a bit inappropriate.”

Poor bloody diggers. Training for war, risking life and limb to ensure the ABC and other loosers can be free to put shit on them and an undergrad says there’s currently no wars happening The Army are on the move in the streets of Brisbane training for a very dangerous deployment to Iraq and a part of that training involves moving their vehicles through urban territory. Another part of the training involves carrying their personal weapons and soldiers are trained to carry their rifles in both hands and move the rifle with their vision. If the soldier is looking at you, so is his rifle. He isn’t targeting civilians. If he were to carry his rifle in any other manner then he is training for defeat. Civilians can be scared when and if the soldier suddenly adopts an agressive stance, lowers his profile, raises the rifle to his shoulder and aims it at you. That is aiming a rifle. That is when you phone up the ABC. And that will never happen in Australia. Anything else is carrying it in training Stuart, enjoy your 30 – 60 seconds of fame. You even have an old soldier’s permission to tell war stories about how you were targeted. Throw in a couple of AASLAVs with .50 cal MGs. Impresses the girls – does nothing for the rest of society. Right. You’ve had your 30 seconds – get back to study and try and read a newspaper every now and then. Look up Iraq, War, Australia’s involvement. Dropkick! UPDATE: Stuart, it’s not a gun, it’s a rifle Try this little poem to help you remember This is my rifle (brandish rifle) This is my gun (point to groin) This is for shooting (brandish rifle) This is for fun (point to groin) Courtesy Sgt Vic Edwards, 1st Recruit Training Battalion, 1963 (and all other Sergeants and corporals over the years).

The IRA/Sinn Fein Terror Inc are under the spotlight lately with the brave actions of five sisters of murdered Robert McCartney. In the latest it has emerged one of the Sinn Fein’s candidates for election, Cora Groogan, was present in the pub at the time of the murder.

BELFAST: Sinn Fein’s fitness for government has been challenged by the family of Robert McCartney, said to have been murdered by IRA men in a pub brawl, after it emerged that one of the party’s election candidates was in the Belfast bar on the night he was killed.

But it’s alright your Honour, I was in the toilet at the time – along with every other pub patron who in an amazing set of coincidental circumstances all felt a need to relieve themselves of the build up of Guiness at the same time. 70 of them have claimed to have been in the toilet together. What manner of pub is this Magennis’s. On first hearing of the murder I thought of a typical Irish pub, but no, what we’re obviously talking about is a full city-block monolith with sufficient rest room space to handle 70 punters at once. Lying hounds but terrified to bear witness to the murder. Over in the US the Sinn Fein have been disinvited to the White House for Wednesdays St Paddy’s day celebrations by none other than Senator Ted Kennedy. As Mark Stein says; (heads up from Tim Blair)

There’s a lesson there in the reformability of terrorists. The IRA’s first instinct is to kill. If you complain about the killing, they offer to kill the killers. If you complain about the manner of the killing, they offer to kill more tastefully — “compassionate terrorism,” as it were. But it’s like Monty Python’s spam sketch: There’s no menu item that doesn’t involve killing. You can get it in any color as long as it’s blood-red.

Some years ago the Irish Association of Queensland invited Adams to a lunch at the Brisbane Irish Club premises. Maintaining my ‘never support a terrorist under any circumstances’ policy, I phoned the club management and told them they could do so without the benefit of my membership fees and to this day I have been a non-member. I claim Irish anscestory but not the associated baggage of hatred of all things British. What Lord Lucan and others did to the Irish in the 1820’s is unspeakable, arrogant and so lacking in compassion that it was the base of the Irish being everywhere in the world, except in Ireland. But that was then and the IRA/Sinn Fein Terror Inc is now – and equally unnaceptable. Terrorism is terrorism under any form and the Sinn Fein group is as bad as it’s Middle East counterparts.