Way to go, Obama!

John Howard is...er...pusillanimous. In the refreshingly straight-from-the-hip Australian political scene, that's a given.

His remarks about Barack Obama seem out of order, but what the heck, Obama gave as good as he got.

By the way - both of them have elections coming up (Obama's being a little way off, well....er...nearly two years actually).

As a reminder, Howard said, amongst other invective:

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

"al-Queda in Iraq"...subtle, one John. Was there any al-Queda in Iraq before Bush invaded? - I disgress.

A jaunty tie-less Obama strolled nonchalantly into a press conference with a "Hi everyone" and fired back brilliantly:

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 in Iraq, and my understanding is Mr. Howard has deployed 1400, so if he is...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.

Excellent stuff.

Apologies to the Granny in New Smyrna. I changed my mind on this once I had read the texts of what each of these bruisers said.