The smell of treason

You would have thought Winston Peters would have learned from the last time. Hubris it's called. Pride goeth before a fall, and all that. In that case, it was Tuku Morgan, brought into Parliament with Peters, who took the fall, brought down by a pride and vanity (two of the seven deadly sins, lest you forgot).

In that Bolger-Peters government, Peters also pushed for an inflated ministerial portfolio that was beyond his competence, but as treasurer Peters was so far out of his depth he stuck to parroting what Treasury put before him, so remained fairly safe.

This time he wanted to strut on the world stage in his built up shoes. But Helen's little helper (as he is known in Labour circles) isn't up too it. Too many late nights in Courtenay Place have dulled his tap dancing prowess.

Now he tells us it's treasonous to criticize him, because he is foreign minister. No Winston, trying to sell out your country is treason.

If you want lessons in treason, no one better to ask than that woman you elbowed in next to at Apec, like like a drunken thug gatecrashing a christening. Condi Rice (or the devil's handmaiden, as the Black Commentator dubbed her) and the family which owns her lied their way into a war which has already killed more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians, not to mention 2000+ Americans and blighted the lives of hundreds of thousands more with injuries from conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Yes Winston, the mushroom cloud your new friend said Saddam would have never existed, but the nuclear fallout from America's arsenal of depleted uranium is being distributed shell by shell, bullet by bullet across the Asian landscape.

You want us to treat every Afghani and Iraqi and Iranian and Muslim as a potential terrorist, Winston? Until your friends started this war, they were valuable trading partners, taking our sheep once we had shorn all the wool off. You will reap what you sow.

This clown will continue to embarrass us, and I suppose we will have to put up with it. Just think, he might have chosen a really dangerous portfolio for himself - minister of revenue, say.

Pic: AP/Bullit Marquez