The White House has declared open season on Mark Latham. One by one, from George Bush to Richard Armitage (that's the no-neck bloke built like a brick dunny) and now to Armitage's boss, Colin Powell (or semi-colon, as John Button calls him), the Bush Administration made it obvious this week it does not want Latham as prime minister if he will not adopt John Howard's - i.e., George Bush's - Iraq policies. We know this because the "Reverend" Paul Kelly, at his ecumenical, thundering best, has told us very frankly so in his master's national newspaper, the Murdoch daily, The Australian. Hallelujah, the word cometh!
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/11/1086749896060.html

What that word was appeared in last weekend's edition after Kelly's junior colleague, Steve Lewis, asked, with Howard's help, the question that incited Bush to declare as "disastrous" Latham's pledge to bring home by Christmas Australia's handful of 250 military people actually in Iraq, plus another 210 based outside Iraq's borders, thus leaving US forces of "about 140,000" (according to Howard) to struggle on without them. Intoned Kelly in his analysis: "George W. Bush has put it on the line - Australia's alliance with the US will be compromised with Mark Latham in the Lodge. Bush's declaration was predictable ... but still dramatic. It confirms not just that Bush and Latham cannot co-operate on Iraq but that Latham's policy is viewed with hostility in Washington..."

Two days later, The Australian editorialised: "Those bleating about President George W. Bush's 'interference' in Australian domestic policies should get over it. When asked what he thought of Mark Latham's policy [of troop withdrawal], Mr Bush eschewed the usual diplomatic fiddle-faddle and gave a direct and true answer, to a straight question from The Australian's Steve Lewis. Good on him. Mr Latham started that fight. When he called Mr Bush dangerous and incompetent, was that not interference in US politics? But Mr Latham now has a golden opportunity to back out of his ill-considered policy and salvage some dignity..."

The newspaper headed its gratuitous advice: "Latham has chance to rethink on Iraq." And lo, the very next morning, there on The Australian's front page was the headline: "US calls on Latham to rethink Iraq." Underneath was another epistle from Father Kelly, this time an interview with Armitage, US Deputy Secretary of State, "appealing" to Latham to "rethink" withdrawal, as Armitage "elaborated on President George W. Bush's criticism of the ALP leader, but says the US is dedicated to trying to work with any new Labor government".

Really? How jolly decent.

For good measure, readers got another dose of Kelly on the paper's opinion page the same day. This one carried the headline, "Iraq: The job's only half done", thus echoing John Howard's Iraq mantra. And while the article repeated a slab of Armitage's front-page comments, Kelly this time argued that Bush's comments "are driven not by Australian politics but by Bush's need to save his Iraq policy". And there you have it.

Armitage interviews seemed to sprout everywhere once the Kelly model appeared on Wednesday. ABC television's Lateline had Armitage on Thursday night, interviewed by Maxine McKew. This newspaper published a Peter Hartcher interview yesterday. All the interviews were mutually reinforcing: big, bad Latham is bad news for the alliance. What they really meant, of course, is that Latham is bad news for Bush, just as he's bad news for Howard.