I bet Hussein is laughing up his sleeve right now -- "Milosevic -- you are expendable, but they 'need' me."

Saddam isn't impressed and neither am I. The best that the best could muster managed to miss another insignificant tyrant -- Gaddafi -- and he was living in a damn tent!!! But there were excuses... always excuses.

At the risk of provoking a storm of outrage -- how many of APJ's news junkies can remember the rail disaster in France last year? Scores of people died. I remember CNN and BBC World broadcasting 'eye-witness' accounts of the tragedy. Hell, the major wire news agencies carried the same story. I even broadcast it in my own radio news bulletins -- believing it to be fact.

Several credible witnesses described how a car had crashed through a barrier on a rail bridge. In emotional terms the eyewitnesses related events: as police and other emergency services tried to move the wrecked car from the track -- along came a high-speed-train. Wham. Lots of dead folks. Well, as it turned out, there was never a crashed car. There were no emergency services trying to move the non-existent wreck from the track. The credible sources, apparently, gave voice to the suspicions of the journalists on the spot.

The point? Figure it out for yourselves.

And what is all this about 'nuclear theft'? Chinese spies managed to get the drop on U.S. spy-busters. Hey, the way one loses says a lot about the sort of person one is. When CIA operators manage to score over the opposition it is considered a victory of good over bad. When the other guys win, well, Americans make a media event of how terrible it is to open other people's mail.

Accept the fact. China got the goods on the U.S. nuclear program. They either achieved their success because they were smart -- or U.S. security wasn't up to the task of keeping it secret. Nah, those human rights abusing slopes can't be smart -- and American security is tighter than an acquatic bird's.... They've gotta be common thieves. Right? Screw you, Beijing, and any attempt to join the World Trade Organisation.

Hey, you'd do the same to them, right? Spy? No, of course not, a decent American would not dream of spying. Obviously the seven alleged 'intelligence' agencies who published a report on the Chinese theft of nuclear secrets are mis-named. They ain't intelligent. If you believe them, none of those agencies have a mandate to try to determine the secrets of a foreign nation -- or mislead the American public on the activities of the U.S. administration. Yeah, right.

Many years ago when several members of the British ex-Oxbridge socialist gay community were flogging secrets to Moscow in exchange for a bit of cash and 'Saturday Night Fever' -- the CIA considered Britain a seriously weak link in the allied security chain. Those were those days. These days, forgive me for considering 'U.S. Intelligence' to be something of an oxymoron. Touche!