Delusional Down Under

Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his party have launched a pathetic and desperate attack on Sen. Barack Obama's policy on Iraq which would withdraw US troops from Iraq by early next year.

Howard, a close ally of Pres. Bush, used the same smears that has become so predictable from the right-wing in this country. "That would just encourage those who want to completely destabilise and destroy Iraq to hang on and hope for an Obama victory," Howard said.

"If I were running Al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and pray as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats," he added.

We've come to expect these despicable smears from the discredited far right in this country. When you have no credibility left, say the terrorists support your opponents. But now Bush has his buddies Down Under doing his dirty work.

The Australian opposition's foreign affairs spokesman blasted Howard's comments.

"That effectively demeans the alliance between Australia and the United States," he said. "It effectively suggests that it's an alliance between two political parties and not the people of both countries."

Sen. Obama cleverly hit back at the Australian leader.

"I think it's flattering that one of George Bush's allies on the other side of the world started attacking me the day after I announced [my candidacy]," Senator Obama said, while noting that the US has 140,000 troops in Iraq and Australia has 1/100 that number (a mere 1,400).

Obama launched a direct challenge to Bush's chum, "So if he [Howard] is...to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq, otherwise it's just a bunch of empty rhetoric."

But Howard's comments were far from the most fanatically delusional. One of Howard's backbenchers who apparently hasn't gotten his rabies shot called Obama's plan 'fundamentally evil' and said that pulling out of Iraq would herald the greatest disaster since the Rwandan genocide.

With hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and millions in exile as a result of Bush, Tony Blair and Howard's immoral war of aggression, Iraq ALREADY resembles genocidal Rwanda. Except there's one big difference. The massacres in Rwanda quickly slowed after some 100 days. The nightmare in Iraq has been going on four years already and violence is only increasing.

Since John Howard is in the business of offering unsolicited advice to Americans, let me offer some to him: you and your coalition should worry about how to get your sorry selves re-elected instead of volunteering someone else's countrymen to die in the counterproductive carnage that you helped create. If this Iraq monstrosity is so critical, why don't you offer more Australian sacrifical lambs? Being generous with the lives of another country's citizens (or other countries' citizens, if you include Iraqis) is not the kind of ally anyone needs.