http://homepage.ntlworld.com/steveseymour/wecontrolamerica/hornet.html
6 February 2003
US Ambassador Orders Australians To Stop Insulting George Bush!
Early today, the US Ambassador to Australia, Tom Schieffer, went on Australian nationwide television to tell Australians to stop insulting George Bush. By any yardstick, this was a gross breach of diplomatic protocol that will only serve to inflame an already furious Australian population. In a poll released yesterday, nearly eighty-percent of Australians remain opposed to an attack on Iraq.
Debate in Australia is always heated, but where Iraq is concerned it has exceeded boiling point, with Labor politician Mark Latham stating. “Bush himself is the most incompetent and dangerous President in living memory.” But Mark Latham reserved his most cutting remarks for the right-wing Australian government, which still continues to ignore the wishes of eighty-percent of the Australian people:
“There they are, a Conga line of suckholes on the conservative side of politics,” Latham said amid roars of laughter in the background, “The backbenchers suck up to the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister sucks up to George W Bush.”
Schieffer may not have liked the remarks, but they were made by an elected Australian politician within the Australian Parliament, and thus were none of his damn business. Most Aussies are generally aware that their politicians do exactly what they are told to do by the American or Israeli ambassadors, but do not like having this unpalatable reality rammed down their throats on nationwide television by a middle-ranking American bureaucrat.
If Schieffer feels he cannot do his job in Australia within proper diplomatic constraints, he should ask the State Department to send him somewhere more compliant – Texas for example. If his problems are merely emotional in origin, or if he thinks his name is really Douglas MacArthur, Schieffer should probably consult a qualified psychiatrist.
The stress on the US Ambassador probably increased dramatically on Wednesday, when the Australian Senate passed a full motion of “no confidence” in Prime Minister John Winston Howard regarding his actions on Iraq, and his obsequiousness towards George Bush. It was the first full no-confidence motion ever suffered by a serving Prime Minister since Australian Federation back in 1900. Things really are that bad down here.
Clearly the enormous implications of this no-confidence motion were not lost on the mainstream media, members of whom quickly had the entire matter censored by late afternoon. The stakes are getting higher every day, and Australia will still “appear” to be backing George W. Bush internationally, no matter what the Australian people and Senate may think, say or do, now or at any time in the future.
