GUMBY FOR PRESIDENT:

Kerry: Bush should bend on Iraq (THOMAS BEAUMONT, 03/09/2003, Des Moines Register)

U.S. Sen. John Kerry on Saturday accused the Bush administration of being unwilling to compromise with key allies to win their support for a potential war with Iraq.

But the Democratic presidential candidate from Massachusetts stopped short of saying he had changed his position since last fall when he supported a resolution giving Bush broad authority to order an attack if diplomacy failed.

"What I do regret is that this administration has not lived up to the standards of diplomacy set forth in the resolution," Kerry told the Des Moines Sunday Register. "The president's diplomacy has been completely lacking." [...]

"The greatest position of strength is by exercising the best judgement in the pursuit of diplomacy," he said, "not in some trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted, but in a genuine coalition."

We don't mind him criticizing the President, that's just partisan politics, rare during wartime, but not unprecedented. However, referring to folks like the British and the Aussies as "the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted" is outrageous.

UPDATE ON "THE BOUGHT":
As dry as their their desert camp ... Aussies bring larrikin spirit: Tom Allard in Doha reports on the calm before the storm as experienced by our latest warriors. (Sydney Morning Herald, March 10 2003)

The officer patrolling the living quarters is the "spankmaster". The social club is the Qatar Mountaineering Club. Australian humour, along with its troops, has been transported to Camp As Sayliyah, the massive US military base outside Qatar's capital Doha.

The site of central command and the main media centre should war break out against Iraq, the base also acts as a transit centre for US, British and Australian forces in between exercises at various locations around the Middle East.

Thousands of troops are housed in tents inside massive climate-controlled warehouses that rise out of the relentlessly flat Qatari desert, most of them built in the last six months and indistinguishable from those that contain sensitive communications and headquarters for the top brass.

Spread over more than 100 hectares, it's a logistical marvel of sorts. Most of the facilities were constructed in the past six months as the US prepared for an Iraqi invasion. Accommodation is spartan but, in its way, homely. Australians and Americans bunk together, 200 to a tent.

About 20 per cent of the Australian contingent are women and fraternisation between the women and men, of course, is strictly prohibited. The old joke about keeping sexual frustrations "well in hand" gets a workout.

Personnel are restricted from leaving the base - the local government doesn't want troops tramping around the souqs or taking in the sea air along the Doha waterfront - and there's also an issue of force protection. Qatar may practise a more moderate brand of Islam and be a strong Western ally but terrorist attacks are an enduring concern.

The food is good and there's plenty of fresh fruit. There's a bar but, at $US3 ($5) for a can of beer, it's an occasional pleasure. Movies, a gym and pool are other diversions but down time usually involves corresponding with family, using the gym or pool, keeping up with news back in Australia or jogging around the base. There is, as Liz, an Australian Navy leading seaman, puts it: "Not much to do".

"We do bugger all, mate," was how another Australian soldier described his down time. "We've got Foxtel so we can watch the cricket and the footy. We give the Poms plenty of stick over their sporting success."

The good-natured fire is returned. The Australians, with their yellow-tinged desert uniforms with brown and purple splotches, have been dubbed the "bruised bananas".

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 9, 2003 12:45 PM