"I think about it a lot because I'm the person in the end who sends men and women into battle," Mr Howard told Sky News.Obviously, it's only Australian casualties that matter. Let's not even bother counting the untermenschen.
"I feel a very direct responsibility for any death or injury that occurs on the field of battle and it's the greatest burden that anybody has to carry and discharge."
Meanwhile, buried inside Bush's latest request for many more billions of dollars in war funding was a little US Department of Defence request for special bomb racks:
The new Big Blu bomb is 20ft long, weighs 30,000lb and carries 6000lb of high explosives. It is designed to go deeper than even existing nuclear bunker-busting weapons.Airplane hangars on the CIA prison gulag island of Diego Garcia are already being renovated to accommodate the new bombs.
The bomb is designed to be dropped from as great a height as possible to achieve maximum velocity and penetrating power, guided on to target by satellite and accurate to within a few feet.
Each B2 bomber would be able to carry only one weapon because of its weight. The B2s, normally based at Barksdale, Missouri, flew round-trip strikes against Baghdad in 2003, but would ideally be positioned closer to its targets for missions against Iran.
And don't get me started about Diego Garcia... I was up at 3:30 am today reading a chapter on the Chagos islanders' long struggle, in John Pilger's book, Tell Me No Lies. If you are in the mood, check out these satellite images, showing tennis courts and swimming pools for US soldiers on an island the Blair government once tried to pretend was uninhabitable.
