Monday, February 12, 2007

Smackdown of the Week

John Howard, prime minister of Australia and professional asshat: "If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for [Illinois Sen. Barack] Obama, but also for the Democrats."

Obama: "We have close to 140,000 troops in Iraq and my understanding is Mr. Howard has deployed 1,400. So if he is ... to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and send them to Iraq, otherwise it’s just a bunch of empty rhetoric."

Score one for the gentleman from Illinois. Wonkette article here.

(For the math geek: for the Aussie contribution to be proportional to ours, they would need roughly 10,000 troops, or an increase of 8,600. Which is less than Obama's number, but still involves a fivefold increase of the Australian troop contribution. Include our imminent surge, and 10,000 additional Aussies would be appropriate. So Obama's exaggerating a bit, but his point is still valid.)

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