The Liberals Drop a Plagiarism Bombshell on Harper

Unbelievable. Or not.

I knew he was a puppet of the imperial empire but this shows that he was, more correctly, the ventriloquist's dummy.

In one segment, both leaders are heard saying:

"It is inherently dangerous to allow a country, such as Iraq, to retain weapons of mass destruction, particularly in light of its past aggressive behaviour. If the world community fails to disarm Iraq we fear that other rogue states will be encouraged to believe that they too can have these most deadly of weapons to systematically defy international resolutions and that the world will do nothing to stop them."

The clips then jump to Howard saying:

"As the possession of weapons of mass destruction spreads, so the danger of such weapons coming into the hands of terrorist groups will multiply. That is the ultimate nightmare which the world must take decisive and effective steps to prevent. Possession of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons by terrorists would constitute a direct, undeniable and lethal threat to Australia and its people."

According to the Hansard transcripts, Harper said:

"As the possession of weapons of mass destruction spreads, the danger of such weapons coming into the hands of terrorist groups will multiply, particularly given in this case the shameless association of Iraq with rogue non-state organizations. That is the ultimate nightmare which the world must take decisive and effective steps to prevent. Possession of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons by terrorists would constitute a direct, undeniable and lethal threat to the world, including to Canada and its people."

Someone had better be proofreading that book he's writing about hockey very carefully.

And the Tory reaction?

Reached by CBC News following Rae's appearance, Harper's spokesman Kory Teneycke dismissed the issue as irrelevant, saying the release of the video was an "act of desperation" from the Liberal campaign a day ahead of the first of the leaders' debates.

"I'm not going to get into a debate about a five-year-old speech that was delivered three Parliaments ago, two elections ago, when the prime minister was the leader of a party that no longer exists," Teneycke said.

"We're going to focus on the economy, which is the No. 1 issue Canadians want to talk about. We're not going to be distracted by attacks from the Liberal war room."

Run away! Run away!

Related:

Just how much does Steve like John Howard's style? Check out this September article from The Australian: Howardism lives on

You can read the Jeffrey Simpson editorial mentioned in that piece here.

Mea culpa resignation update:

Tory strategist resigns for plagiarism in Harper's speech

A Conservative war room strategist apologized and resigned from the election campaign Tuesday after he admitted to plagiarizing parts of a speech delivered by Stephen Harper on the Iraq war in 2003.

"In 2003, I worked in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition," Owen Lippert said in a statement released by the Conservative campaign Tuesday afternoon.

"I was tasked with - and wrote - a speech for the then leader of the Opposition. Pressed for time, I was overzealous in copying segments of another world leader's speech. Neither my superiors in the office of the leader of the Opposition nor the leader of the Opposition was aware that I had done so."

Sure. Right. Uh huh. Buh bye.

A man with this type of academic and political background was really that sloppy? And has he also resigned as a senior policy advisor for CIDA or will that job be waiting for him if the Tories win?

Just an FYI for you book shoppers out there: you might want to think twice about buying this particular title authored by Lippert - Competitive Strategies for the Protection of Intellectual Properties. Perhaps the premise of that book was to see how much you could (competitively) plagiarize while getting away with it?
 

Aussie Defence Minister Admits Iraq War is About the Oil

And then promptly gets his fingers slapped for saying it.

Via the BBC:

Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has admitted that securing oil supplies is a key factor behind the presence of Australian troops in Iraq.

He said maintaining "resource security" in the Middle East was a priority.

But PM John Howard has played down the comments, saying it was "stretching it a bit" to conclude that Australia's Iraq involvement was motivated by oil.

Right - "stretching it a bit".

This is thought to be the first time the Australian government has admitted any link between troop deployment in Iraq and securing energy resources.

But Prime Minister John Howard was quick to play down the significance of his defence minister's comments.

"We didn't go there because of oil and we don't remain there because of oil," he told a local radio station.

"A lot of oil comes from the Middle East - we all know that - but the reason we remain there is that we want to give the people of Iraq a possibility of embracing democracy," he added.

Flowers. Candy. Purple thumbs.

But even "untold riches" don't tell the whole story. Depending on how Iraq's petroleum law shakes out, the country's enormous reserves could break the back of OPEC, a wet dream in Western capitals for three decades. James Paul predicted that "even before Iraq had reached its full production potential of 8 million barrels or more per day, the companies would gain huge leverage over the international oil system. OPEC would be weakened by the withdrawal of one of its key producers from the OPEC quota system." Depending on how things shape up in the next few months, Western oil companies could end up controlling the country's output levels, or the government, heavily influenced by the United States, could even pull out of the cartel entirely.

Both independent analysts and officials within Iraq's Oil Ministry anticipate that when all is said and done, the big winners in Iraq will be the Big Four -- the American firms Exxon Mobile and Chevron, the British BP Amoco and Royal Dutch Shell -- that dominate the world oil market.

Meanwhile, the status of Iraq's proposed oil law which has been approved by the Iraq government's cabinet now - and which has been pushed so hard by Washington - is still up in the air with Moqtada al Sadr decrying the foreign ownership provisions again on Thursday as a threat to Iraq's sovereignty.

But fear not al Sadr, this is all about democracy, not oil.

Related: Stop the Iraq Oil Law