"President Bush should pull his head in. This is Australia not Florida"

[the Kelly Gang]

Latham shrugs off Bush attack
16:46 AEST Fri Jun 4 2004

"Opposition Leader Mark Latham has shrugged off an unprecedented attack by United States President George W Bush and is standing by his call to bring Australian troops home from Iraq by Christmas.

Mr Bush launched a blistering attack on Labor's policy after meeting Prime Minister John Howard in Washington, saying the move would be disastrous and encourage more violence.

The president made it clear he was not impressed with Mr Latham's promise to bring Australia's 850 personnel home from Iraq by Christmas if Labor wins the coming federal election.

Asked directly about the implications of Mr Latham's plan, Mr Bush said: "I think that would be disastrous.


EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT


http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=9596

[DaveSZ]

1. "It would dispirit those who love freedom in Iraq."

What a joke.

[Eric J in MN]

2. the corny language from an Administration which drops bombs and

The corny language from an Administration which drops bombs and tortures people.

[Voltaire99]

9. Yep. The Hallmark Greeting Card mind.

They commit mass murder. Even that isn't enough. For these guys, language must be hooded and beaten, too. Our sadists are sentimentalists.

[jdj]

47. Of course they are, because the are incapable of true

sentiment. Sentimentality is the closest thing to feeling these sociopaths can come up with.

[drdtroit]

34. Bushies political mantras

are right out of the 40's ("Loose Lips Sink Ships").

They don't seem to grasp the fact that everyone in every corner of the world has access to the same information almost simultaneously.

You just can't keep laying out the same lies over and over again.

"Why Do They Hate Us?"...They don't hate us, they hate our administration.

:They Hate Our Freedom"...They don't hate our freedom, they hate our administration.

ETC!

[koopie57]

21. I tell you

I cannot take anymore of this blithering idiot and his stupid phrases. Those who love freedom....isn't that just a stupid thing to say. Evildoers....he is so stupid. Especially after listening to President Clinton talking yesterday, and then to have to step down to this POS and his ten pound tongue.

[SammyWinstonJack]

23. Bush is a moran!

F**king simpleton thinks his moronic phrases are so cute and deep!

"I cannot take anymore of this blithering idiot and his stupid phrases." You and me both!

[Just Me]

24. The abusively repeated rhetoric makes my head explode.

I avoid even listening to him these days because it's like subjecting oneself to the repetitive noises of a small child; irritating as all get out except it's coming from "an adult". UGH!

[freeforall]

38. Oh yuck!

:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

[oldshoe]

3. When the US loses Aussie support, you know it's bad

Australia has been about US best freind through thick and thin since it was founded. Only Shrub could screw it up.

[the Kelly Gang]

4. true alliances will weather the manipulation of these 2 opportunistic

politicians..who only want to win office and nothing else.

This will back-fire on Howard in Australia and the people value US friendship too much to allow George Bush to use it for his own ends.

[amber dog democrat]

10. Friends don't let friends

invade foreign countries under false pretenses... Australia should have demanded America's car keys and not have let the US go it alone from the bar.

[jason_au]

36. We bloody well did!

But it's not like our government gives a toss about what the people here think. After all, the people might be deluded and stupid, and not want to invade a defenceless country who poses no threat but was rudely perched on our oil.

It is singularly offensive to see our ridiculous idiot of a Prime Minister goes tongue-in-ass to your fake president for his orders. This is as revolting as Menzies' (Jason pukes on the floor) obsequious deferral to the then British empire. We are not an indepentant nation, we are a client state. Fucking disgusting.

OUT WITH HOWARD
OUT WITH BUSH
WAR CRIME INDICTMENTS AGAINST BOTH.

Cheers,

Jason

[foreigncorrespondent]

44. You know...

...before you go ahead and do something similar to what that thing in the oval office did when they decided to blame Britain for Niger Uranium mess, you should check your facts. The Australian PEOPLE did demand the car key's. Did you not hear about the many thousands who turned out across the country to protest the war? Unfortunately for us though, we have an idiot leading the country, who much prefers to suck up the ass of that thing, thank listen to the people of his own country.

[cyclezealot]

5. Anyone know how the Australian polls are going?

Bushie has his tail feathers out of joint over what Spanish voters did...Hope Australian voters don't let their respect for Americans get in the way of their own best interests.

[truthisfreedom]

6. pull his head in? how about pull his head out?

[0rganism]

14. Remember, this is Australia talking: their up is our down, in is out,

left is right, black is white, football is soccer, rugby is football, vegemite is food, toilets flush clockwise, people drive on the left side of the road. So maybe, when translated, he was proposing W pull his head out.

Or maybe he thinks the world is safer if bush keeps his head out of sight, generally.

Either way. :)

[peekaloo]

25. thanks....made me laugh!

:D

[jason_au]

37. What do you Americans know anyway...

Rugby isn't football: Rubgy is our religion!

(And another minor difference: here you have to actually win an election to get elected to our parliament... heehee!)

Cheers,

Jason

[NewEmanuelGoldstein]

41. Reminds me of another George

War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.

George Orwell, 1984

[foreigncorrespondent]

45. Oh you have got a few things wrong, my friend.

Football is Australian Rules, soccer is soccer, rugby is rugby (union and league), and vegemite is a spread.

[JaySherman]

7. How hilarious would it be if President Dipshit's meddling

ended up costing the conservatives the election, resulting in his pal Howard getting the boot? Nationalism is a powerful force. People tend not to take kindly to outsiders meddling in their domestic affairs, especially someone so univerally loathed as *.

[rooboy]

8. Howard's royally screwed anyway...

and an endorsement from George Bush won't help him at all.

[amber dog democrat]

12. its like the Kiss of Death.

I live watching the Chimp run against himself these days....

[saracat]

11. Bush endorsement of Howard

is the kiss of death! Go! Georgie! First Spain, now Austrailia! I thought you were to get more support not less>

[DarkSim]

19. based on this, it seems that regime change really....

is one of shrubs top policies.

[necso]

13. * is the kind of guy,

who would crap in your front yard, wipe his ass on your newspaper and flip you off in the bargain. What a total class operation.

[Seabiscuit]

15. * is the kind of guy

"who would crap in your front yard, wipe his ass on your newspaper and flip you off in the bargain. What a total class operation."

Then he'd ask for your vote!

(then he'd delude himself into thinking he just won you over).

[Tellurian]

16. nesco...I think you're on to something...

The one word that describes rethuglicans..
well, two words..

DeClasse.. "no class"

[necso]

17. It seems to me readily apparent that

These people are all without any class, true depth or real gravitas.

Of course I was a repug myself and saw the party taken over by scary, creepy people --- half-men who were and are a mere shadow of what a man should be, indeed what a man must be.

[necso]

20. And more.

These shadow men offer only darkness. And it is into this darkness that they wish to bring us.

Their darkness is of ignorance, spiritual poverty and fear. Their darkness is of physical deprivation, keeping to one's "place" and having only one's soul to sell... with them as ready buyers. It is a place where when you are no longer needed, you are just left to crawl away and die like a dog in some forgotten corner. It is a place of despair, horror and pain. It is a place without light, reason, dignity or hope. It is the far right's heaven... and everyone's hell.

I have seen this pit, and I for one will not go there.

Lack of class is a feeble weapon to turn against this great evil.

[Tellurian]

22. Lack of class is a feeble weapon to turn against this great evil.

I wasn't proposing lack of class as a weapon.
Lack of Class is merely a symptom which acts as a red flag when making a new acquaintance a universal symptom that runs concurrently through republican lines.(present company excluded)

Darkness is too kind a word to be used as a formal descriptive of the new age Religious zealotry brought in with the Bush Administration.

Negativity and DEATH are apt descriptions of the Republican agenda. They have reinforced the view of their negative end game with fact as evidenced by the premeditated deliberate inhumanities imposed on the Iraqi prisoners.

[Dhalgren]

26. This brand of Republicans,

led by George Bush, practice the Politics of Murder. They are shallow, limp-wristed, panty-waisted simpletons. They can only kill, lie, steal, rape, and burn. But they are not "human" enough to admit it. No, they are wimps, just like their "great" predecessor, GHWB, - wimps. They bluster and use foul language and denigrate anyone perceived to be weaker than they, but they are craven cowards with no honor and no sense of porportion. They are scum - beneath contempt and without merrit.

[Tellurian]

27. yes, Bush camouflages his obsessive racism beneath the mask of Religion

The funny thing is...(after listening to newtie this morning on Today) they think we haven't recognized and identified exactly what their sickness is.

[necso]

32. It was not my intention

to be critical of your reply. Rather, I simply despair of finding words that cast some revealing light onto these men of the shadows, so that all might see. I, like others, struggle for some little facet of perspective that shows these soulless creatures for the monsters that they are. But I fall far short.

I have long since left the republican party, to make my stand with the party of the people. Even should better men take back control of the party of the powerful, I can never return. The betrayal of principle runs too deep and the wounds will never heal. The repugs used to stand for something (not all of which I ever agreed with), now they stand for nothing --- nothing of worth --- nothing to carry forward on.

Darkness too is a feeble word, but there is a deep darkness at the heart of the republican party, disguise it as they might with false religiosity and the illusion of principle. Left unchecked this darkness will devour the light.

[llmart]

18. ..."Bush should stop interfering in Australian politics"

And hopefully he can stop interferring in ours by November as well.

[progressivebydesign]

28. No, Bush should pull his head OUT..

.. if you get my drift. Bush just has to tell the world what to do.. yet, he has ZERO authority or credibility anywhere but his most scripted hand-picked GOP pep rallies.

[The_Casual_Observer]

29. a blistering attack

Not a very good description of a rather stupid insipid and illogical speech made by the chimp. I guess it was a choice between "whithering" or "blistering". Has anyone ever received blisters as a result of an attack, other that perhaps a mustard gas attack?

[struggle4progress]

30. Bush's comments against troop withdrawal plan ignites storm in Australia

Australian media expressed shock Friday over U.S. President George W. Bush's condemnation of an opposition party's plan to pull Australia's troops out of Iraq if it wins elections.
<snip>

Political analysts said Bush's attack could politically damage Howard, who has made his government's strong security and trade ties with Washington a centrepiece of his foreign policy.

"The pro-American sentiment is not as strong and the behaviour of the United States since the Iraq war started and the catalogue of failures would make it very risky for Howard to make the American alliance an election issue," said Australian National University political scientist John Hart.


Gerard Henderson, a former Howard adviser in the 1980s and now head of the independent Sydney Institute think-tank, said Bush shouldn't have waded into Australia's domestic politics.
<snip>

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2004/06/04/485560-ap.html

[msmcghee]

31. Hi Kelly . .

. . following your thread with interest.

Thought I'd mention that my partner and I rented "Gallipoli" from the video shop yesterday and watched it again last nite. Each time I notice different things. This time I noticed that Rupert Murdoch was listed as the producer. The credits say:

Robert Stigwood ~ Rupert Murdoch for
Associated R&R Films Pty Ltd
present . . .

Interesting to know what Rupert was up to in 1981. Also, how the movie morphed for me from a male bonding/war hero story - to take on a much stronger anti-war tone in today's context.

Sorry, don't mean to sidetrack the thread - but didn't think my comment deserved one of it's own.

[the Kelly Gang]

35. Gallipoli was also about the British High Command using infantrymen

as cannon fodder..and imperialism..ie: The patronising British commanders knew better then their colonial minions and sent thousands to unnessary deaths.

Oddly..now they have Gallipoi ceremonies every year and the Turks have become great friends with their former foe.

That must have been when Murdoch was first getting into films before he decided to take over the world's media !

[Andrushka]

39. Gallipoli

msmcghee: You are not sidetracking the thread at all. That movie was also about how Aussies went to fight in someone else's war (something we do far too often for my liking).

[msmcghee]

43. The actual reason I rented the movie . . . .

. . was because I wanted to hear the song "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda". I mistakenly thought that the movie ended with that tune.

(It should have, don't you think, running over the post-credits? Maybe I thought it did because the fit was so perfect.)

But I enjoyed it, nonetheless. The total stupidity of male egos given enough power and hubris to start killing each other. I believe there is honor in volunteering to defend your nation if it is attacked. But once you're in it, killing is just killing. It is ugly and dehumanizing for those who survive and of course, far worse for those who don't. Exactly what is going on here in our country and in Iraq - and probably the basis for all wars through history. I had forgotten the strength of the anti-war message in the movie.

Out of curiosity, do any of you Aussies know of a movie that ends with that wonderful tune. I have since found some good websites that have the words and even one with an MP3 file - so I don't need the movie to learn it. If anyone's curious and hasn't heard it, here's Eric Bogle singing it: http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/matilda.html

BTW, welcome to DU, Andrushka. We've been getting lot's of new members lately. It's great having so many new ways to look at the world in these dangerous times.

[Moderator]

33. the Kelly Gang

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
paragraphs from the
news source.

Thank you.


DU Moderator

[WilliamPitt]

40. THAT TEXT NO LONGER APPEARS ON THAT LINK

[Violet_Crumble]

42. IT DID WHEN I JUST TRIED IT

[liveoaktx]

46. Yup, looks like they changed the article text-maybe

(heh) *pull his head in*, on second thought, looked more offensive than the quotes they ended up using.
Love that memory hole