Here we go again... America set to ask us to jump

**TODAYS MAIL POST MANUALLY COPIED INTO BLOGGER BECAUSE THE DAMN EMAIL CONTINUES NOT TO WORK!!!!**

Apologies… my access to Blogger appears to have gone on the blink. I am typing this message with no real idea if it will get through or not. In addition the Blog posting feature in Picasa2 doesn’t seem to work and the pictures I have taken of the QM2 haven’t come up… I will try to fix that!

But tech issues aside, what I want to talk about today is the British decision to withdraw 1,400 or so of its troops from Iraq. This is a major slap in the face from Blair to Bush as he is basically saying that they are concluding their required missions (training Iraq to be self sufficient in security et al) and they are looking to withdraw. To his credit, Blair said that they are not cutting and running, but this is more of an acknowledgment of what they set out to achieve is slowly being completed.

Bush on the other hand wants to ramp up with another 10,000 troops and I am sure that Dick Cheney in his Sydney visit this week will basically ask Australia to add more troops to the mix. This could be the first time that John Howard has to say NO to George Bush. He is in a tenuous political position… if he says No, he backflips on his mandate of fully supporting the US in this preposterous war and whilst I don’t agree with Iraq, a back flip now only damages his credibility. If he says yes, then he can kiss the next election good bye. With the background of a British withdrawal, and the fact that we shouldn’t have been there in the first place, Howard will be seen as a lap dog to the US and unnecessarily further implicating us in a messy war that we have no right in being in.

But watch for the double cross… already I have seen a number of media reports about Afghanistan in the last 24-48 hours. We haven’t even heard of Afghanistan for ages and yet Defence Minister Brendan Nelson was on Sunrise this morning describing the situation in Afghanistan as “hot” and that our troops are in the “thick of it”.

You can bet your bottom dollar that more Australian troops will head to Afghanistan which will enable the Americans to transfer more Afghan based troops into Iraq. Nelson this morning linked the Iraq and Afghanistan areas by stating that al-Qaeda is in both areas and yet there has been not one shred of evidence that Iraq had any al-Qaeda activities. In fact, the Sunnis which ran Iraq are polar opposites to al-Qaeda as they are not hardline Islamic followers. They were corrupt and evil and Saddam was a vicious dictator, but he was actually at war with the Islamic extremists in Iran and by proxy the Taliban / al-Qaeda.

Don’t be fooled Australia… Howard & co are getting us further in bed with the US and are using the Afghanistan card to dupe you!