Get Incensed

Who is Australia’s Prime Minister? Yeah, not a whole lot of people do. Well, his name is John Howard, and he is a huge Bush fan (President Bush that is.)

Howard was in the U.S. news on Monday for commenting that our terrorist enemies should hope for the election of Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Ouch! Those are fightin’ words! So why did he say it?

Prime Minister Howard has supported the war in Iraq and President Bush’s policies and decisions in regard to the war. In contrast, Sen. Barack Obama has been very open about the fact that he only supports ending the war in Iraq. Howard not only disagrees with Obama on this issue, he also apparently feels so strongly that he has publically declared to have no remorse for his harsh words toward Obama.

Here are a couple of Howard’s statements, taken from an article on CNN.com:

“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.”

“What I have done is to criticize Sen. Obama’s views on a particular issue, and I don’t retreat in any way from that criticism,” Howard said. “I think if America is defeated in Iraq that will be catastrophic for the West and it will have tremendously adverse consequences for Australia.”

(Not that this fits, but can I just ask, since when has the war in Iraq been about Americans and Australians? I know we are stakeholders, but what about the Iraqi people? What about the Middle East? Hello!? I’ll have to check out how the Australian people feel about this Bush stunt double!)

Sen. Barack Obama shot back saying that unless the Australian PM was ready to send another 20,000 Australian troops to Iraq, they were just empty words. Good for Obama! He kept his cool and held his ground!

Let me just say that I still really do not know where I stand on Iraq. I have no idea what route we should take now, but I do know that any suggestion President Bush gives is not it! You would have to be living under a rock (a really big, heavy one) to not know that!

Click on the links below to find out more about Howard and Obama.

Prime Minister John Howard
U.S. Senator Barack Obama