"He was going off to a pointless war in a far off country I didn't know existed, and while I was dodging actual service in the Texas National Guard for a month he decided to give me the watch for safe keeping. All the cocaine I'd been taking had really clogged up my poop shoot, so I did the one thing any man would do, I put the watch, up my ass. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, my family had and intervention and I found God. And now, little man, I give the watch to you."

I’m not even going to dignify the story with a link, you all know it but I bet you wished you didn’t. It isn’t news, the media is finally starting to eat itself and resembling every single political satire of the past thirty years.

Brasseye has nothing on seeing a segment on cake eating contest brides trying to win money finishing with the talking head saying “at the top of the hour chemically castrated paedophiles”. Following chemical castration was Victoria Beckham throwing a ball, badly, in a barely filled Baseball stadium in LA.

It is things like this that make the mind recoil and stop, lost in a purgatory of “was that real or am I still sleeping”.

Meanwhile real news, such as America arming Sunni insurgents to fight old Al-Qaeda allies, an accusation levelled at the Iranians in April. Who have also been accused of arming the Taliban, without any real evidence is summarily ignored.

Tony is finally off, and I will be making a more regular return.

Stranger things have happened.

Anyone who has been following the whole Israel-Hezbollah affair will have noticed a new sense of ineptitude and indifference from the Bush administration. From that conversation with his very own grovelling servant, 'yesh mashter, anything for you mashter', to his somewhat tick the boxes, 'do I have to say this?' radio address on Saturday. Bush levelled in with some conspiracy theories that "Syria is trying to get back into Lebanon, it looks like to me".

Then of course there is the Texas drive-by massage, Laura must be a happy woman.

After Kim Howell's criticised the Israeli tactics the silence of a lack of denunciation from anybody higher was deafening. Condoleezza Rice has described the violence, somewhat bizarrely as "birth pangs of a new Middle East", after delaying her visit until today the most accurate headline reads "oil prices fall as Rice visits Mideast." Won't somebody think of the oil?

Elsewhere - U.N.: 14,000 Iraqis killed in 2006, Fears of war as Somalis clash, Geldof cancels live concert after only 45 fans buy tickets.

While business leaders find their appreciation for human rights in the case of the Natwest three, the proposed extradition of terror suspects continues relatively unabated.

The latest deal to be suggested is with Algeria, for reasons that Bair says is for "greater co-operation between our countries can facilitate our ability to send people back to Algeria who are in this country and who for reasons for example of involvement in extremism we wish to deport."

In conjunction with the arrival of the Algerian president to the UK Amnesty International have released a report detailing the use of torture by "Military Security", known as the Department for Information and Security (Département du renseignement et de la sécurité, DRS).

As with other frontlines in the 'war on terror', and with a back drop of the governments energy review "Algeria was forecast to provide 12% of our gas and be Europe's second largest source of gas after Russia and BP had an investment of $4billion there".

How many torturing nations does it take to switch on a light bulb?

More and more it is getting to the point where withdrawal is the only option for ending America's involvement in the Iraq situation.

Despite their consistent decrying of the Democratic Party plans for phased withdrawal , and accusations of 'cutting and running', or as House Majority Leader John Boehner put it "Retreat is not an option in Iraq... We have no choice but to confront these terrorists, win the war on terror and spread freedom and democracy around the world".

Yet Gen. George W. Casey Jr is implementing a proposed reduction of troop numbers of around 28,000 by December 2007. Britain has also been gradually scaling down its presence in the country, we'll stand down as they stand up has nothing to do with it. It is a face saving exercise, nothing more, nothing less, Blair wants his place in history and Bush, is well, Bush.

Parts of the insurgency have also been trying to strike a deal with the new Iraqi leadership, the proposal to lay down their arms on condition that the foreign troops leave within two years. Despite obvious accusations of being American puppets the 'reconciliation plan' is being meddled with by Washington, essentially watering down the proposal to make it worthless, removed of any minor political clout it ever had.

An Iraqi Withdrawal From Iraq

Forever will he be an upstanding member of the vile spew that is the mainstay of Fox News. Despite his support for the war, the Reverend of the church of hate, Bill O'Reilly has said that what Iraq needs, for the short term at least, is some Saddam style justice.

"See, if I'm president, I've got probably another 50-60,000 with orders to shoot on sight anybody violating curfews. Shoot 'em on sight. That's me. President O'Reilly, curfew in Ramadi, 7 o'clock at night. You're on the street, you're dead. I shoot you right between the eyes. OK?

That's how I'd run that country -- just like Saddam ran it. Saddam didn't have explosions. He didn't have bombers, did he? Because if you got out of line, you're dead.

Now, is that the kind of country I want for Iraq? No. But you have to have that for a few months to stabilize the situation so the Iraqi government can get organized, can get security in place and get the structure going."

A few days later he said:

"At this point, the new Iraqi government should declare martial law in areas controlled by insurgents. That means anyone can be arrested and shoot-on-sight curfews.

Saddam was able to control Iraq, as you know, and defeat insurgencies against him. The new Iraqi government can do the same, but it needs to get much tougher."

He also attacks the ACLU and, bizarrely the BBC because it 'helps the enemy'.

O'Reilly obviously hasn't been paying enough attention, for a while there has been news about Iraq's interior ministry and its use of death squads, one of which is lovingly named the Wolf Brigade. Victims of this group usually end up floating in the Tigris with the likely cause of death being a drill hole to the skull.

Elsewhere: Can anyone else smell a set-up? The American backed militia looses Mogadishu to the Islamists, and now we hear that they have "said in a statement it had appointed Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys as its new leader. The Bush administration has said Aweys was an associate of Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s."

Oxfam international recently released a report into how the global arms trade is fuelling conflicts around the world. It isn't necessarily the weapons that do the damage, but the ammunition.

Director of Oxfam Barbara Stocking puts it "if you're not convinced about the devastating power a shipment of ammunition can have, think of Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, during the civil war in 2003... In late June 2003, forces ran out of bullets and had to retreat. But once a new shipment arrived, they attacked again, ferociously, killing many innocent people."

With 33 million bullets produced every day, which equates to around 14 billion a year. Conflict regions around the world are awash with cheap ammo, a bullet in Somalia will cost you $1.50, a bullet in Baghdad will only cost you $0.30. As the report states:

"The average cost of an AK-47 bullet on the black market is US 30 cents. As most gun violence victims are killed by between four and 12 bullets, on average the price of taking away a human life in Baghdad is currently US $2.40."

If you want to put that into context the average cow in the European Union receives around $2.20 in subsidies every day, and there are 3 billion people around the world who live on less than $2 a day.

This is the cost of a human life.