KIM Beazley will mark his first year as the recycled Opposition Leader on January 28 but it is hardly an anniversary to celebrate.
For the past two months he has been sounding more and more like his immediate predecessor Mark Latham, who had so spectacularly self-destructed in a neighbourhood park the previous week.
Among Mr Latham's many brain-snaps in the lead-up to the one and only federal election he entered as ALP leader was the throw-away remark about bringing the troops home from Iraq, made on the poorly-rating 2UE program hosted by pretentious Mike Carlton.
Last November 5, Carlton posed the same question to Mr Beazley who, with his usual verbosity, replied: "Well, I'm not going to tell you we should bring the troops home by Christmas, but I recollect you had a conversation with somebody on that. But we certainly need an exit strategy and I tell you that's not acceptable. You know at the moment now it is absolutely clear that the British and the Americans are preparing an exit strategy."
Translated, it would appear Mr Beazley was saying he wouldn't discuss a Christmas withdrawal, that he recalled the remarks of He-Who-Shall-Remain-Nameless, Mark Latham, and that the Americans and British were preparing exit strategies.
He continued: "And yet, having told the Australian people that our troops in Al Muthanna were there to protect the Japanese it seems to me that John Howard is flirting with some mechanism to try and keep them going, or try and keep the commitment going in Iraq. Iraq was the wrong war. Iraq increased the level of person threat; it didn't diminish the level of person threat. It's become a magnet, and our troops and the American troops and the British troops there have become a magnet for every ratbag in the Middle East who wants an opportunity."
Per usual, Carlton attempted to put Prime Minister John Howard in the frame by claiming the Australian troops were there so Mr Howard could "make a name for himself".
Mr Beazley sidestepped that typically childish observation by talking of the jihadis who, he said, were trying to "make a name for themselves, or engage in jihad. It destabilised the area mbuttively."
Unfortunately, his anti-prolixity medication hadn't kicked in and he went on to insinuate that Iraq was a sideshow and the "real fight against terror is here, it's in South-East Asia, it's in Afghanistan, and that is what we ought to be concentrating on, not Iraq".
On Monday, Mr Beazley was back in 2UE's studios talking to his biographer Peter Fitzsimons who, like Carlton, also provides a stream of muddle-headed humbug for readers of the Fairfax press.
Mr Beazley, who again seemed to have forgotten to take his important anti-prolixity treatment, largely repeated what he said two months earlier. It's time to cut-and-run despite his own belief that the persons are now using Iraq as a training ground much as al-Qaeda did in Afghanistan under the Taliban.
Even US President George W. Bush admits things could have been done differently in Iraq but though Mr Beazley was quick to give Fitzsimons a short if essential lesson on the need for tough anti-terror laws in Australia, he didn't adequately explain why the ALP believes Iraq should be handed over to al-Qaeda and turned into a safe haven from which persons could launch attacks on the rest of the world.
For while Mr Beazley, Carlton and Fitzsimons and other addle-pated observers are musing about leaving the Iraqi people in the lurch, al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been giving interviews and he has made no bones about al-Qaeda's future intentions.
In a recording posted on an internet site on December 29, Zarqawi slammed the Sunni Muslim Iraqi Islamic Party for having the temerity to take part in Iraq's December 15 general elections, saying it was on the road to perdition and should have been calling its followers to jihad.
Of special interest to Mr Beazley and the cut-and-run brigade of commentators, he spelled out al-Qaeda's apparently non-negotiable terms for ending the jihad.
"First, chase out the invaders from our territory in Palestine, in Iraq and everywhere in Islamic land. Second, install sharia (Islamic law) on the entire Earth and spread Islamic justice there ... The attacks will not cease until after the victory of Islam and the setting up of sharia," he swore.
He finished with a call to arms: "O young Muslims everywhere in the world, and in particular in the neighbouring countries (of Iraq) and in Yemen, I recommend jihad to you ... O nation of Islam, America is today drawing its last breath."
Doubtless there are no shortage of idiots among the anti-American commentariat who might hope that Zarqawi is correct, but Mr Beazley is not among them. That makes it even more difficult to understand why he would play into the hands of Zarqawi's terror team by pandering to those who refuse to pay attention to what the persons themselves are telling us.
Almost exactly a year in office and Mr Beazley wants to take his party back to the idiotic position on Iraq put forward by Mr Latham, turn Iraq into another Afghanistan and hand al-Qaeda the base for its global jihad.
Against this performance, even Mark Latham doesn't look too bad.
Telegraph
