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Forget about those words "war on terror!"

This morning's news of some 200 killed in Baghdad in yet another suicide bombing and nearly the same number injured, led to Lord Downer of Baghdad [aka Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer] being interviewed on ABC Radio National's Breakfast program on that topic, as also the comments of the UK High Commissioner to Australia [a former UK cabinet Minister] that Britain had not gone into the Iraq War as part of a "war on terror".

Needless to say Downer said the High Commissioner wasn't correct - why would she know anything even if she did sit around the British cabinet table? - and he, Downer, relied on a statement by PM Blair some time that the Iraq War was a war on terror.

So, how does this fit into the scheme of things? - as the NY Times reports:

"A senior politician in the Labor Party of Prime Minister Tony Blair said Monday that the Bush administration’s commonly used phrase “war on terror” strengthens extremists.

“In the U.K. we do not use the phrase ‘war on terror’ because we can’t win by military means alone and because this isn’t one organized enemy with a clear identity and a coherent set of objectives,” the politician, Hilary Benn, said at Center on International Cooperation of New York University. The speech was released in London by Mr. Benn’s parliamentary office."

The Australian reports on the same topic, in what it describes as a "split" between Washington and London, here.

Just watch Downer and PM Howard turn this and that way to explain their constant [over] use of the catch-cry "war on terror" nothwithstanding the position of their UK partner in the Coalition of the Willing.


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