More revelations from Douglas Wood, from UPI, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
An Australian freed after 47 days as a hostage in Iraq has spoken on Australian television about the shooting of two fellow detainees in the same room.Douglas Wood, 63, also told Channel Ten of his efforts to retain his sanity during his captivity by replaying his life, the BBC reported Sunday.
Wood, who was bound and gagged by his captors, heard two Iraqi captives being shot on successive nights in the same room where he was being held and thought: "When is my turn?"
He was kept alive because he was worth money to his abductors. His Iraqi colleagues were not. A nice comment on the personal integrity of these religious heroes. (Whom, I seem to remember, that Muslim Sheikh from Australia called "good, honest people!")
I saw the interview. He's holding up pretty good for what he went through. Terrible ordeal, wondering whether he was going to be killed. How devastating for him to have both his colleagues murdered. He feels responsible for that, poor man. And yet his many detractors will have us believe his captors were honest, and that it is coarse and insensitive to call them arseholes. It's his detractors, like that odious little Jaspan snoot at the Melbourne Age, who are arseholes.
The other thing his detractors are harping incessantly about is his fee for the interview. They insist he pay it back to the Australian taxpayer, because apparently it cost $10 million of our tax dollars to try to get Wood released. This immense figure seems to have been pulled out of thin air, probably like that "100,000 dead in Iraq" figure. Yet when that Martinkus was released, none of them complained about how much money we spent on trying to help him. But then, of course, Martinkus said the right things.
How come there was a resounding silence from the left regarding the money Mahmoud Habib earned by selling his story? I don't recall seeing one single letter in the SMH and Age asking why this man was allowed to profit from being a would be terrorist - oh, thats right, he was simply in that jihadi-infested war zone to find a good Islamic school for his children (the son was charged with kidnapping a Muslim girl and threatening her - the reason? She wasnt living the way he thought she should).
Australian taxpayers also supported the family the whole time Habib was in prison - no leftie protests about that fact - and so far as I know, they are still living on welfare. This man will be supported by taxpayers for the rest of his life, whether or not we want our money used to support such a person..
Will they crawl back into their holes now that Doug Wood is losing his sight as a result of his ordeals? My bet is 'no' - too bad he didnt call Bush and Howard arseholes and praise his captors - people like Ackland and Japson would have been all over him like the proverbial rash.
Yeah, Diana, how about Habib. No protests there about his interview payment. The interview where he barely answered the questions, barely told us what we wanted to know. An interview that revealed him to have much to hide, left many doubts. Even many of his supporters thought so but wouldn't voice too stridently. Not nearly as stridently as they are sniping at Douglas Wood.
This episode has told us where the loyalty of some of the country lies. Not with Australia. But with anybody and anything that would murder and bring mayhem to the West. It makes no sense. To have such a degree of self-loathing is insane. I just can't imagine if Labor got into power. It's too scary.