Written something!!!

I've written a short short piece of fiction for a competition and entered it. Maybe it's no good but it's better than nuffin. It's over on 'Whatever Comes' if anyone cares to look at it.
Strange ? But I do perform if there's a deadline. Maybe I should go on a creative writing course, I was always able to turn essays in on time.

If you made it up they'd never believe it.

An article from this morning's Guardian newspaper almost beggars belief. Even quoting it I find it hard to accept , but her'es an extract that refers to a memorandum prepared for the House committee on oversight and government reform which is examining Iraqi reconstruction...........

"They also found that $774,300 in cash had been stolen from one division's vault. Cash payments were made from the back of a pickup truck, and cash was stored in unguarded sacks in Iraqi ministry offices. One official was given $6.75m in cash, and was ordered to spend it in one week before the interim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds."

The minutes from a May 2004 CPA meeting reveal "a single disbursement of $500m in security funding labelled merely 'TBD', meaning 'to be determined'."

The memorandum concludes: "Many of the funds appear to have been lost to corruption and waste ... thousands of 'ghost employees' were receiving pay cheques from Iraqi ministries under the CPA's control. Some of the funds could have enriched both criminals and insurgents fighting the United States."

So now the US government is the banker for Al Quaida?

Blue and Orange

The video I referred to yesterday has emerged. It seems to confirm that the A10s fired on british troops with orange badged vehicles.
The only comment from the US government is that they 'would view whoever leaked the video as "criminally responsible". Can we be assured that the pilots will be held responsible too?

Blue on Blue

'Blue on Blue' is a new anodyne term used for conflict situations when ally fires on ally.
This is an obvious improvement to the previous phrase 'Friendly Fire', which had the unfortunate connotation of possible harm resulting from shooting up your own side.

I came across 'blue on blue' in a news report on the stalled inquest into the death of Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull, aged 25, who died in March 2003. He was travelling in a column of light armoured vehicles near Basra, in southern Iraq, when it was reportedly attacked by a US A-10 "tankbuster" aircraft.

American video evidence of the incident hasn't been released to the court.
My personal opinion is that this footage might well show that american forces were not at fault, but the delays so far make it more likely that the evidence doesn't support that view.It certainly seems suspicious.

The worst aspect of this case in my view is the awful slowness. It's almost FOUR years since this man died and his widow still has no peace. What reasonable excuse can there be for such delay?

I'm also intrigued to ask how many american service widows have to wait so long for closure when their husbands are killed by fellow americans ?

The inquest resumes on February 16th