In which the pond nominates the dog botherer as the reptile treat of the day ...

 

For a minute the pond thought it would be away from the broadband for the weekend, and miss the entire reptile shooting match ... with Barners as the portly target ...

Oh how excited they were and even the oscillating fan, tremulous while intrepid, seemed to hint that it might be okay to point out the fatuous hypocrisy of a politician talking about the joys and community utility of traditional marriage while being an adulterer on the side ... a bit like priests full of cant, while going the fiddle with children ...

Meanwhile, our Gracie had the solution ... go the full vigilante. Not just your Dirty Harry, but the full Charlie Bronson ...

At last count, they'd dragged Death Wish out into six shows - with the immortal Michael Winner helming the first three in his epic attempt to become the worst director in the world - and the pond had a sudden flash of our Gracie in the stalls (no high falutin' lounge for her) shouting "get 'em Charlie, take 'em out, shoot 'em dead ... what we need is a RoboCop, what could go wrong?"

But enough of pleasantries, because today was mainly 'bash a greenie' day, and everybody had lined up for the pleasure ... there was the bromancer and the Oz editorialist ...

Yellow zeros? Is that the best a fully Trumpified columnist could do?

No gutless wonders, no cowardly custards, no yellerbellied dingoes? No yella streak a mile wide?

Sheesh, the schoolyard bullies seem to have dropped their game of late ...

And then there was the dog botherer ...

It was tough competition, but the pond settled on the dog botherer as the outing for the day ...

Actually it was possible to get very agitated about the content as well, since Molan didn't have the first clue whether the appalling videos were true or not, and whether he should have participated in an act for which even the Donald expressed some minor contrition when May and other British folk got a little agitated ...

Setting that aside, the pond can understand why the dog botherer is sensitive whenever Iraq and war criminals are mentioned.

As the pond frequently notes, the dog botherer was senior advisor to Lord Downer when Australia joined in a war which was both criminal and futile, and has helped leave the middle east in even a bigger mess than it was before the imperial powers began to joust over territory and oil ...

Was the dog botherer apologetic? Well no, and to the ABC's great shame an epic interview with him has no disappeared into the ether, along with the corporation's record libraries and sundry other bits of history ...

All the pond was left clutching is a few shards and gobbets ... like this one ...

Luckily, in a moment of madness, the Wayback Machine here, saved the dog botherer for posterity, no thanks to the completely useless ABC ... which at some point might want to revive esoteric music, in the way they mined the left-over Countdown tapes to produce classic Countdowns for Sunday filler, but when they went back to the record library cupboard to do it, the cupboard was bare ...

But the pond digresses, and it's back to the greenie bashing with the dog botherer ...

Indeed, indeed. Speaking of starry eyed idealism, at this point the pond was moved to visit another commentary here scribbled back in February 2010...

"Even those who opposed the Iraq war should recognise that America leaving the country victorious, with a relatively peaceful and functioning democracy in place, is far preferable to the war having been lost."
I nearly coughed up my falafel when I read this because there is so much to contest about it. I won't go into the meaning of 'victorious' because that's an essay in itself. But when you have lost nearly 4,500 dead and over 30,000 wounded, spent untold billions of dollars, but did not achieve the aim of the invasion (finding WMD, I think — it was so long ago), calling it a victory is 'interesting'. 
But leaving aside the notion of a victorious US triumphantly ceasing combat operations seven years later than it thought it had, and only having to leave behind a skeleton force of 50,000, I do take some exception to his view of Iraq as relatively peaceful. Relativity is a funny thing, and if Kenny's intent was to compare Iraq with, say, Afghanistan or Somalia then he may have a point. 
 But to say that a country in which 253 civilians were killed in December, 118 in January and 80 in the first week of this month is relatively peaceful is drawing a (relatively) long bow. And that's not to mention the Iraqi security forces, or the numbers wounded. Space precludes me from arguing the toss about a 'functioning democracy' (or is that a 'relatively' functioning democracy?).

How goes it now?

A total of 115 Iraqi civilians, excluding policemen, were killed and another 250 injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in Iraq in January 2018, according to casualty figures recorded by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). 

Baghdad was the worst affected governorate, with 323 civilian casualties (90 killed, 233 injured). Diyala followed, with 8 killed and 15 injured; and Nineveh, with 13 killed and 7 injured. 

As many as 3,298 civilians were killed and 4,781 others were wounded in 2017, excluding Anbar civilian casualty figures for November and December, which are not available, UNAMI said in a report in December. (here)

It's true that the dog botherer was only a minor functionary in the scheme of things, a kowtower to Lord Downer, but then the world is full of people only following orders ...and way back when, they were called war criminals ...

Around this point, it's another pond tradition to provide a link to this piece at Junkee ...

Kenny is a staunchly neo-conservative, anti-progress, anti-worker defender of the status quo. He is an unrelenting apologist for the Liberal Party. He was one of Alexander Downer’s senior advisers at the time of the Iraq War. He’s been known to argue for stubborn, sightless inaction on climate change. He spits at anyone concerned with such trivialities as gender equality, environmental issues or labour rights from his Twitter account on a daily basis. Recently, he characterised criticism of the lack of women in Tony Abbott’s Cabinet as a continuation of the Left’s “gender wars”. He is a regular and fervent participant in The Australian’s numerous ongoing bully campaigns against those who question its editorial practices and ideological biases. The profoundly irresponsible, dishonest, hate-filled anti-multiculturalist Andrew Bolt has recently referred to Kenny on his blog as “a friend”. 

And it’s a jokey picture of a bestial embrace that I should be afraid of discovering online? 

Hmmm, that's another reason the dog botherer might have it in for the greenies ...

And how having done its best to rain on the reptile parade, the pond is pleased that David Rowe has organised another parade, sure to please the bromancer ... with more reigning Rowe here ...