Quickhits - Still the holiday, but it's getting better
(NYTimes) Dirty, dirty Bernie Kerik. The NYTimes has a piece on a highly suspicious $250,000 "loan" Bernie Kerik received from a guy who has contracts with the Defense Department. ("He said that in handing the money over, he had not discussed any interest with Mr. Kerik nor set any timetable for repayment.")
(AP) The US is blaming yesterday's pet market bombing in Baghdad on a Mahdi splinter group allegedly backed by Iran. (Proof?)
(AP) John Howard's party got trounced in Australia's election. The Labor party winners took a clean majority and intend to join Kyoto and withdraw from Iraq immediately.
(CNN) Former Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif will try to return to Pakistan Sunday.
(WaPo) Two blasts kill 35 at military bases in Rawalpindi.
(AP) The US is blaming yesterday's pet market bombing in Baghdad on a Mahdi splinter group allegedly backed by Iran. (Proof?)
(AP) John Howard's party got trounced in Australia's election. The Labor party winners took a clean majority and intend to join Kyoto and withdraw from Iraq immediately.
(CNN) Former Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif will try to return to Pakistan Sunday.
(WaPo) Two blasts kill 35 at military bases in Rawalpindi.
posted by mikevotes at
8:35 AM
6 Comments:
Australia:
Labor party plans to remove the whopping 500 combat troops it has in Iraq, but I'm not sure how immediate that will be. The sentence was a ambiguous and later in the article we learn that Labor plans to leave 1,000 service men in Iraq for security details. So there's a distinction between combat (offensive) and security (defensive) troops.
By
-epm, at 9:40 AM
Okay. But really, it's about the politics of it. The Australian troops weren't really active.
By
mikevotes, at 9:47 AM
Reports I hear (NPR) say that Iraq was not a major issue in the Australian elections. I mention this just for perspective. That is, at this point in time, the Iraq debacle is almost solely an American obsession. The rest of the world has moved on... even Bush's allies.
By
-epm, at 1:57 PM
I don't know. The NYTimes versio on this implied that a good part of it was a repudiation of the Bush relationship.
By
mikevotes, at 2:21 PM
The Australian papers I've seen today almost entirely lay the blame on Howard's highly unpopular Work Choices labour "reforms", essentially similar to American anti-union right-to-work laws.
Regardless of the motivation, we've seen time and time again that the leaders who allied with Bush uniformly ignored public sentiment, exhibited high degrees of arrogance, had militaristic foreign policies, and favoured the privileged. Aznar, Berlusconi, Blair, Abe, Kaczynski, and of course, Blair all fit this mold. They also all felt that close association with the Leader of the Free World would offset their unpopular domestic policies in the public's mind.
Instead, Bush took advantage of them and demanded obedience. In turn, Bush's "endorsement" was seen as his support for these leaders' unpopular domestic programmes, thus diminishing the "shine" of having Bush as a "close friend".
Polls I have seen show about the same level of world support for Bush's policies in Iraq as we have here at home: 30% or so. It is the Guantanamo issue, rather, that is the festering sore in the Bush public image. Virtually everyone in the world at large can agree on condemnation of the "gulag". Thus, a foreign leader positively identifying with Bush creates a negative public association with Guantanamo.
Of the 30% or so in the global community that do support Bush, that support is quite soft and conditional.
The point is that, rather than people hating their leader's close ties to Bush, the case is that friendship with Bush brings no benefit and large obligations.
By
Todd Dugdale , at 3:35 PM
Thanks, Todd. Again, I'm definitely no Australia expert.
By
mikevotes, at 9:14 PM
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