first off, congratulations to australia are in order for finally voting john howard out of office.
the new australian prime minister has vowed to remove australian troops from iraq, which begs the question, ‘who’s left in gw bush’s “coalition of the willing” in iraq?’
the coalition used to be: usa, australia, spain, italy, poland, latvia, japan, denmark, britain, south korea, nicaragua, dominican republic, honduras, phillipines, thailand, new zealand, tonga, hungary, portugal, singapore, norway, ukraine, netherlands, slovakia, iceland, romania, bulgaria, armenia(and a few others or questionable significance).
the coalition is now: usa(125,000 troops), britain(5,000 troops), romania(250 troops), bulgaria(250 troops), armenia(2 troops).
so, from 49 members of the coalition to, roughly, 4.
man, we need a new president desperately.
at this point i’m not even too concerned who the next president is as long as they’re even moderately competent.
my biggest complaint against the bush administration isn’t their conservativism(well, insofar as huge federal debt and corporate welfare and starting and bungling a needless war are part of a conservative agenda), but rather their utter ineptitude.
the bush administration might be remembered for their criminal activity. they might be remembered for their comfort with lying and deceit. but they will certainly be remembered as the most utterly inept administration to have ever presided over the united states.
you can almost forgive an ideologically driven administration, but there’s really no forgiveness for the level of ineptitude displayed by the bush administration over the last 7 years.
i hope that somehow americans employ slightly more developed criteria in picking the next president than, ‘he seems like a nice guy to have a barbecue with.’
again, congratulations australia for finally kicking john howard out of office.
moby