Troops for Iraq: Aussie gov't breaks promise

Opposition Leader almost opposes

First, a potted history of Aussie politics in the past four months. In October, the Howard Liberal Government was returned with an increased majority. Despite its name, the Liberal Party is the major conservative party, and the main progressive party opposing it is the Labor Party.

At the October 9 election, Labor was led by the moderately progressive but rather unimpressive Mark Latham, who got terrible press and failed badly, to be replaced by Kim Beazley, who is right-wing Labor and so fond of military matters he is known as 'Bomber' Beazley. He seems to like nothing more than a photo-op sitting atop a tank, and is probably a childhood war afficionado and military hobbyist who never grew up.

John Howard is very right-wing even for a Lib. One of his core promises to the Australian voters last year was that Australia would not increase by hundreds, though it might by tens, troops in Iraq.

Today, Howard announced that Australia would be sending 450 more troops to Iraq, hugely increasing our role there. Not only that, but these will be combat troops as opposed to the previous main roles of Aussie soldiers in non-combat positions. The Australians will take on the roles previously held by the Dutch, who have sensibly decided to get the hell out. Howard was asked by the PMs of both Japan and the UK if he would send Aussies in -- because neither Tokyo nor London can take much more political flak over Iraq from their own voters. Thanks to the Australian Labor Party's complete stuff-up of recent political events, Howard has such a huge electoral majority in both Reps and Senate, he doesn't care. We look forward to many more such unilateral, reactionary decisions from 'Little Johnny'.

As this report shows, Bomber gave a half-arsed response. If you heard him in the media you would note from his voice that his opposition to Howard's outrageous decision was not at all passionate, in contrast to Sen. Bob Brown of the Greens Party.