Mr. Howard,

So, you didn't know about the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib (and, of course, throughout the American gulag). You say: "All of this" – this being, Labor's demand that you explain to your electorate these strange coincidences of ignorance – "is about trying to imply some guilt by association because that is the stock and [sic] trade of the Australian Labor Party," as the ABC reports.

Well, John, unfortunately your position is untenable. For starters, you may have overlooked the fact that you ARE associated with the guilty; that is not something the ALP needs to invent.

And:

i) If you did not follow up the Red Cross's first report of concern, you failed in your duty to ensure that we are not aligned with brutal, lawbreaking brutes.

ii) If you did follow it up, and your American masters told you all was well, you now know that they are damned liars, and you can conclude that you shouldn't have hitched Australia's wagon to their deceptions and brutalities; but of course, you've learned this lesson, already, from proof of their earlier mass deceptions about weapons, and their overall intentions and motivations for their illegal war. (Did your government ever seek assurances that the American invaders would set up best-practices prisons in Iraq? Even if you did not – even though you should have – you now have to face the fact that the American masters put renegade prison officials, of known histories of abuse and infamy, in charge of the Iraq prisons; and, it now comes to light, these mongrels have been abusing Australian prisoners, in response to which you limply wring your hands and fret, but do nothing as you have done nothing about this situation in the past, but instead have allowed the American masters to run roughshod over international law.)

iii) If you did know, and have any pride and honour, you will have to resign, won't you?

With appropriate dismay and disgust,