obama comes out stabbing

So a couple of days ago I quoted John Rogers quite accurate assessment that the 2008 presidential election will be a “fucking knife fight.” Now, Barak Obama, fresh out of the gate, is already wiping the first blood from his blade.

In his announcement speech, Obama stated he had a plan to have all of the troops home by March of 2008. The next day the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, messing around with the voodoo, channeled Dick Cheney and said:

If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats.

Obama grabbed Howard’s throat and thrust a knife into his gut:

I think it’s flattering that one of George Bush’s allies on the other side of the world started attacking me the day after I announced.

I would also note that we have close to 140,000 troops on the ground now, and my understanding is Mr Howard has deployed 1,400, so if he is (ready) to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq.

Otherwise it’s just a bunch of empty rhetoric

Howard then managed to choke out a feeble rejoinder that the size of the Australian force was “very significant and appropriate” considering the size of Australia’s population. (Of course a little quick number crunching shows that the U.S. deployment equals .04% of our population while theirs is a mere .007% of the total population.)

A fucking knife fight indeed.