http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/04/1086203626529.html
"It was the most dramatic intervention a US president has made into domestic Australian politics in memory, yet George Bush gave no warning to John Howard that it was coming."

heres the thing - the reason bush didnt mention it to howard is cos it has *nothing to do with howard* - its all about domestic politics. ie vilify latham before the oz terror attack before the oz election.

and we get a feeble attempt to explain it away:
"So why did Mr Bush break with convention and accuse the man who could within months be prime minister of one of America's closest allies of advocating a policy that would "embolden the enemy"?
Insiders say that answer is all about context. Iraq dominated breakfast talk between the two leaders, and resurfaced when talks on other issues were concluded in the Oval Office."
a big shout out to all u insiders!

the funny thing is that theres still all this direct analogy to aznar/zapatero without any mention of the presumably inevitable alq ingredient... curious.

current best guess for the oz attack is the day before (fri) the election at about 8am in either melb or sydney. itll prolly be either a nuke (mini or otherwise) or something similar to the recent 'foiled' zarq plot in jordan - the headcount for that one was sposed to be 80,000.

it might be appropriate when we get the election date to quietly suggest people take the friday off and leave for the country on the thursday night... unless you all think im a total weirdo about this. i wanna be sitting next to tomscheiffer all that week - ill try to keep an eye on his schedule.