Revising History

That OTHER great Australian, Peter Cosgrove, admits I was wrong on Iraq. But he still thinks the man who led us into Iraq is a visionary leader.

Oh, and Cosgrove also thinks Australia should have stayed in Vietnam till we won. Says what, Pete? How does that thinking work?

Here's one possible interpretation, from comments at Surfdom:

... by the early 1970s, the Australian troops in South Vietnam had managed to secure their areas of operation, they had rebuilding and development programs in place with the locals, they had successfully managed to keep the North Vietnamese from infiltrating. The Australians in Vietnam had won their war. Then the Americans decided to pull out, so Australia had to as well.

That might not be 100% correct, but that’s what I heard from some Vietnam veterans.

It's the same nuts running the asylum, just like Washington. And if we don't havge a proper cleanup when all this Iraq War mess comes to a head, these same ignorant bastards will be sending another half a million people to their deaths next generation, just to prove that they were right all along. Bastards.

Bush's rationales for Iraq keep shifting:

When no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, Bush shifted his war justification to one of liberating Iraqis from a brutal ruler.

After Saddam's capture in December 2003, the rationale became helping to spread democracy through the Middle East. Then it was confronting terrorists in Iraq "so we do not have to face them here at home," and "making America safer," themes Bush pounds today.

"We're in the ideological struggle of the 21st century," he told a California audience this month. "It's a struggle between good and evil."

Vice President Dick Cheney takes it even further: "The hopes of the civilized world ride with us," Cheney tells audiences...

Bush at first sought to explain increasing insurgent and sectarian violence as a lead-up to Iraqi elections. But elections came and went, and a democratically elected government took over, and the sectarian violence increased.

Bush has insisted U.S. soldiers will stand down as Iraqis stand up. He has likened the war to the 20th century struggles against fascism, Nazism and communism. He has called Iraq the "central front" in a global fight against radical jihadists.

Having jettisoned most of the earlier, upbeat claims of progress, Bush these days emphasizes consequences of setting even a limited withdrawal timetable: abandonment of the Iraqi people, destabilizing the Middle East and emboldening terrorists around the world.

And the immediate future of Israel's ambassador to Canberra hangs in the balance after he reportedly told a newspaper that Australians and Israelis stood out in Asia because "we don't have yellow skin and slanted eyes".

If Naftali Tamir is found to have made "this grave and unacceptable remark", the Israeli Foreign Ministry said, there would be no return to "business as usual"...

The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz carried an interview on Friday with the visiting Mr Tamir, who allegedly said Australia and Israel were "like sisters in Asia".

"We are in Asia without the characteristics of Asians," he reportedly said. "We don't have the yellow skin and slanted eyes. Asia is basically the yellow race. Australia and Israel are … basically the white race."