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ONE DOWN, THREE UP
Didn’t really turn out that way, did it? Still, The Age remains defiant:
In the early hours of last Monday, 24-year-old Coldstream Guardsman Anthony Wakefield died as a result of wounds sustained that night during a routine patrol in al-Amarah, Iraq. Guardsman Wakefield was the 88th Briton killed while serving in Iraq since March 2003. Coming just days before the British general election, his death focused attention on what became the defining issue of the poll - and the one that more than any other turned electors against Prime Minister Tony Blair.
They turned against him by re-electing him. Let’s review some comments made prior to the Bush/Howard/Blair triple play:
“The Spain election may prove a watershed. It appears to have upended the conventional wisdoms which say that the security issue favours incumbents in general and the right side of politics in particular.”—Chris Sheil
“Bush, Blair and Howard have lost control of the story. It’s fallen apart, and so have they.”—Margo Kingston
“Blair is deeply damaged. It’s far from over here, there’s a lot that is going to happen and much of it could wash onto Howard. And it’s unravelling in America and Bush could lose the election next year.”—John Pilger
“Why are Bush and Blair in such trouble ...?”—Alison Broinowski
“Any use of WMD will see Howard, Bush and Blair out of their jobs. If they retaliate with WMD’s the revulsion of the voting public will see them gone within days. If they don’t use WMD’s then coalition forces will be routed. A war with only one side using WMD’s is not really a war. It’s a massacre. Retreat will be the only option.”—Stewart Kelly
“Unless the morally bankrupt administrations of Bush, Blair and Howard are removed, we will all have become terrorists.”—John Richardson
”[Iraq] could cost Bush (and Blair) office.”—Phillip Adams
“Let us reassure Howard, Bush, Blair and their hangers-on that they have every reason to be afraid, for they, not the Iraqi people, are the enemy and we are the majority.”—John Pilger
“Hopefully foreshadowing Bush’s own future, Blair support is down to 35 percent. That’s a 14-point drop in a single month ... Bush’s other hard-line ally, PM Howard of Australia, is getting similarly pounded in the polls.”—Daily Kos
I think Pilger really personifies the issue when he reiterates that the Iraqi people are not the enemy.
Uh, no shit, Sherlock. Had you actually paid attention to ANYTHING Bush, Blair or Howard said, uh, EVER, you would have known that evil people such as those represented by Saddam, bin Laden & the Taliban were the enemy, your 60s hatred of Nixon (the man elected because he promised a PULLOUT of Viet Nam, not the “liberals” *cough* Johnson and *cough* Kennedy who “escalated” the conflict) notwithstanding.
These a**holes who assume that because they hated Viet Name therefore every conflict that involves a Western power must automatically be:
a) The FAULT of the Western power
&
b) Evil
So that supporting the enemy of the Western power is Moral & Right (even though their post-modern mindset makes it impossible for them to believe in Morality & Rightness
Really piss me off.
We (being the US, the UK, and very importantly Australia) did NOT randomly target Iraqi civilians. There was no carpet bombing of Iraq. “Shock & Awe” (which never f*cking happened, thanks to the treasonist asshats in the MSM) was supposed to be shocking and awesome through the ability of the Coalition to destroy military targets overwhelmingly without needlessly endangering civilians.
I’d give like a whole damn dollar if these asshats would read their own damn newspapers.
Posted by dnewlander on 2005 05 07 at 03:21 AM • permalink“Any use of WMD will see Howard, Bush and Blair out of their jobs. If they retaliate with WMD’s the revulsion of the voting public will see them gone within days. If they don’t use WMD’s then coalition forces will be routed. A war with only one side using WMD’s is not really a war. It’s a massacre. Retreat will be the only option.”
My favorite, not only is he completely wrong but utterly deluded as well.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 05 07 at 03:22 AM • permalinkWell, if you want to get your 150,000 dead (according to moonbats) we’d have to be carpet bombing them.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 05 07 at 03:25 AM • permalinkre the 150,000 dead, one point the loons forget is that the combined bomber offensive against Germany in WW2 only managed to kill 500,000 Germans over the course of the war and that offensive was directed largely at civilians, using weapons (up to 12,000 pound bombs) designed for the role and doctrine developed to maximise the damage, raids involving 1000 a/c on many occaisions.
Given the paucity of US bombers over Iraq and the accuracy of the weapons, plus their smaller size and careful targeting it strikes me as being pretty unlikely that the figure was anywhere close to 150,000.
Posted by Harry Buttle on 2005 05 07 at 04:16 AM • permalink“Let us reassure Howard, Bush, Blair and their hangers-on that they have every reason to be afraid, for they, not the Iraqi people, are the enemy and we are the majority.”—John Pilger
Now let’s see. Does this mean that Pilger is now a Bush/Blair/Howard supporter?
If not, he is part of a minority, as well as being a complete waste of resources and an enemy of the people.The loons at Webdiary are no better. Apparantly, Blair winning is a slap in the face to John Howard, yet, Blair losing would also have been trumpteted as a blow to John Howard.
The SMH can’t help themselves. They use Michael Howard’s name as being ‘Howard’ in banner headlines talking about defeat to play their own games of fantasies that they would really like to see. My point? It doesn’t really matter what exactly is happening, the left invent their own reality. The comments above are proof of this.
That’s a good point, Harry.
I’ve seen Japanese civilian casualties estimated at 300,000 from 1941 to 1945, out of a population of 70 million. If that’s correct (and it sounds low to me, but I can’t find anyone with a substantially higher estimate), that works out to a rate of 0.1 % per year.
With a population of 26 million, 100,000 dead in one year is closer to 0.4% per year.
So, the claim is that Iraqis were killed off at a rate about four times greater than the Japanese, who were nuked twice and repeatedly firebombed.
Posted by John Nowak on 2005 05 07 at 04:50 AM • permalink>If Iraq was such a vote-killer for Blair, why did most of the swing against him go to the Conservatives, who supported the invasion of Iraq?
Looked at as a proportion of the overall vote, there was a small swing from Labour to the Liberal Democrats (the only anti-war major party)—that’s what allowed the Tories to take more marginal seats. (The Lib Dems also gained some more seats.) The Tory vote as a proportion of the population increased only slightly.
The point is that, while this anti-war tactical vote did exist, it was small, probably less than 5% of voters (who constitute only 60% of those eligible to vote). So it was a damp squib.
The fact is, for most people in Britain Iraq ceased to be an issue the day the Iraqis held their elections. It’s no longer a current concern. It’s old news. The war is over, we won, Saddam lost, the Iraqi people now have a democracy. It’s only the BBC/Guardian types still going on about it, but even that debate is now mostly over the details of whether Tony Blair misled Parliament and Cabinet.
(I saw some interesting footage on the BBC of a focus group interview. Even though few people in the group said they trusted Blair, they still expressed admiration for the strength of leadership he showed over Iraq).
Posted by Blithering Bunny on 2005 05 07 at 06:20 AM • permalinkNever mind Labour, how did Corky Bucek go in the British election?
Posted by Jim Geones on 2005 05 07 at 07:57 AM • permalinkBlair and the pro-war faction in the Labour party have been very weakened by this result. Don’t expect Britain to join in any new military expeditions in this government.
There was a 3% swing from Labour to the Conservatives, but that was all due to a 6% fall in the Labour vote, and much of it was picked up by the LibDims who were stridently anti-war.
Incidentally in English constituencies, the Conservatives outpolled Labour but ended up with nearly a hundred fewer seats.
This is principally due to the fact that constituencies are smaller in urban areas, so you get more natural labour seats for the same number of voters.
If Mugabe pulled off this trick we would be shouting “foul”.
In the rush to blame the 100 odd seat loss on Iraq, many MSM commentators are overlooking an obvious factor. After the 1997 Tory annihilation there was bound to be a correction. This can sometimes take two elections. The Tories only made a net gain of 1 seat in 2001 so it was bound to happen this time. You simply cannot maintain a 160 seat majority once the novelty factor of a new government wears off.
Anyway, after hearing the “not in our name� crowd drone on for most of 2004 that Iraq would end the careers of Bush, Blair and Howard, I think we are entitled to display a little hubris today.
I think these wishfull thinkers focus too much on polls. Polls are fleeting and common sense tend’s to reign—to small degree, but often it’s enough. Polls also don’t say as much as people like to believe they do. Respondents intereperate questions differently, people unhappy with ineffectiveness get lumped in with policy dissenters, what people say consiously isn’t always what they really feel, etc.
How much of the people “unhappy with President Bush’s Social Security policy” actually are pissed at his lack of clarity and that he isn’t getting a simple message across. Changing SS security is an easy case and the president isn’t getting it done.
Maybe it’s just the classic rope-a-dope, which Bush is so fond of. Look weak and get the conservative dipshits to over-commit themselves in opposition to common sense policy. We might see a lot of conservative Dems and Repubs voted out of office next year. More likely, I think, both parties engage the public and media in trivial and emotional argument so that they are left alone to power-broker behind the scenes.
rexie:
I don’t think aqnyone is saying that Blair has the same kind of support he once had, but the point still remains that in spite of Iraq he lead the Labor party to a third term and made history in the process.
I think if the public had not be disenchanted by Iraq it might well have been something else because it is highly unusual to maintain majority support this long.
I doubt that any of these nations will be getting into any military operations if they can help it.
No doubt that is what Iran and North Korea are hoping for.
Ah Borat from Kazakastan the mans a legend!!
Incidentally like the greens in Australia the LIBDems appear to have done worse than predicted and just like here the pro war camp is still very strong or is that the anti anti war camp?Posted by Astonished on 2005 05 07 at 10:05 AM • permalinkHarry Buttle said:
Given the paucity of US bombers over Iraq and the accuracy of the weapons, plus their smaller size and careful targeting it strikes me as being pretty unlikely that the figure was anywhere close to 150,000.
Well, yes, Harry, but you are calmly applying logic and reason to solve this problem, unlike the moonbat left who use anything but logic and reason when it comes to Iraq, Blair/Bush/Howard, etc.
Unless, of course, your tinfoil hat slipped off, and Master Rove’s Hubble Telescope Mind Control Ray compelled you to make that post.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 05 07 at 10:11 AM • permalinkNow we’re being told that the loss of Labor seats means voters retaliated against Blair by “turning on his allies.” You know, as though the election was Buffy episode: “Hahahah! Foolish hero! I will kill all your friends first while you can only watch helplessly!”
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 07 at 11:46 AM • permalinkOne commentaor on BBC’s election coverage Will Hutton, said more or less:
“Tony Blair launched a war of choice, and since the cabinet and the parliamentary system didn’t punish Blair, the voters are doing it now; but since Britain is very prosperous—we have full employment for
all practical purposes—it is not surprising that Labour has been returned to government.”So the reduction is because of the war, the third term because of domestic policies.
Yep, that’s it. The data fits my world view. Other data is invalid.
The Labour and Conservative parties both support the Iraq war. Between them, they got 69% of the vote. Labour still has around a 60 seat majority, which would be considered huge had it not been for the even higher majorities in the previous two elections.
In June last year, on the 60th. anniversary of the D-Day invasion, there was an op-ed piece in the local paper which mentioned something I had never heard before. The piece said that in the 6-week period leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted a massive bombing campaign in northwestern France to destroy rail lines, bridges and “soften-up” German defenses. In passing, the author mentioned that an estimated 19,000 French civilians died in these bombings. To avoid all these civilian casualties, maybe they should have waited longer to give sanctions a chance to work.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2005 05 07 at 12:34 PM • permalink“... PM Howard of Australia, is getting similarly pounded in the polls.”—Daily Kos
I love the imagery there. With all that pounding going on, I imagine Howard must have alot of bruises at this point.
Did the election give him a hand-job?
*****
Attention all members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:
The time has come to initiate Operation Iraqi Inflation. You are to begin circulating the number 600,000 as the current Iraqi death toll.
Eat this post.
Posted by zeppenwolf on 2005 05 07 at 01:01 PM • permalinkThey’re just using the “Global Warming” approach. As long as your “theory” predicts all possible outcome, it’s easy to find data confirming it, and it’s impossible to refute it.
Posted by Abe of Lincoln on 2005 05 07 at 02:11 PM • permalinkterryelee — Well, ya gotta remember, Blair won on interest rates. Nobody said the Iraq war was an election issue. {/revisionism}
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 07 at 03:23 PM • permalinkUnderpants at all might be giving them too much credit
Diapers?
Posted by nofixedabode on 2005 05 07 at 04:27 PM • permalinkEr, they also seemed to forget that Jose Aznar was not running for re-election. Dumbasses.
Posted by Kathy from Austin on 2005 05 07 at 04:30 PM • permalinkI love how Kos believed Latham was “pounding” Howard.
Turned out to be a load of hot air.
Just like Kos.
Funny that.
Posted by Quentin George on 2005 05 07 at 06:15 PM • permalinkNote to the Left: Please defeat us some more.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 08 at 02:37 PM • permalink
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I wish these guys would get into picking stocks. I’d be rich in a matter of days.