WTF is WRONG with John Howard?

Australia Ex-Army

Chief Urges Iraq

Pullout by 2006


Reuters
Monday 08 August 2005
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Foreign troops must aim to withdraw from Iraq by the end of next year to remove one of the biggest focal points for militant groups, former Australian defense force chief Gen. Peter Cosgrove said.

"I think we've got to train the Iraqis as quickly as we can and to a point where we take one of the focal points of terrorist motivation away, and that is foreign troops," said Cosgrove, who retired from the top military post a month ago.

"When there is an adequate Iraqi security force, foreign troops leave … Iraq," said Cosgrove, according to the transcript of an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp.'s "Enough Rope" program, to be broadcast later on Aug. 8.

Asked how quickly Australian troops should leave, he said: "Well, I figure that if we could get that done by the end of 2006 that would be really good."

Australia's conservative government, among the first to join the U.S.-led war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq two years ago, has said its troops will remain there as long as it is necessary. There are about 1,370 Australian defense personnel in and around Iraq.

President George W. Bush last week rejected an early U.S. pullout from Iraq, saying the best way to honor those who died in the war was to fight the insurgents and train Iraqi troops.

Thousands of people have been killed in suicide and roadside bombings in the insurgency against the Iraqi government - elected in January - and the foreign troop presence.

Prime Minister John Howard, a staunch U.S. ally, said on Aug. 8 he would set no deadline for the withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq.

"I don't and I won't commit myself to a date," Howard told Australian television. "The aim should be to train the Iraqi military forces to the extent necessary for them to be able to secure the country."

Terrorist Group?

An opinion poll published in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper last week found that two-thirds of Australians believed the country's involvement in Iraq had made it more vulnerable to a terrorist attack.

U.S. security consulting firm Stratfor said at the weekend that the growth of Australia's Muslim communities created the potential for a terrorist support network.

"Melbourne and Sydney have growing populations of poor immigrants in urban areas that could provide recruitment and support bases for terrorist operatives," Stratfor said in a terrorism brief.

Australia has steadily strengthened security and anti-terrorism laws since the Sept. 11, 2001, airliner attacks on New York and Washington.

The country has never suffered a major attack on home soil, but 88 Australians were among 202 people killed in the October 2002 nightclub bombings in the Indonesian island of Bali, and the Australian embassy in Jakarta was hit by a suicide bomb in 2004.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said on Aug. 8 that Hizb ut-Tahrir was being examined by the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) spy agency after Britain announced it would ban the Islamist group, which calls itself a non-violent political party.

He said the government would consider whether to list the group as a terrorist organization once ASIO had made its report. Australia has banned 18 groups because it considers them terrorist organizations.

-- WHY is John Howard in on this little FIASCO...? I just DO NOT GET IT...UNLESS, it is about OIL. I must just not be looking in the right places, his stupidity eludes me.--