Bush's Australian Ally has humiliating defeat

[LaWood]

By ROHAN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer Sat Nov 24, 5:11 PM ET

SYDNEY, Australia - Conservative Prime Minister John Howard, one of the Bush administration's staunchest allies, suffered a humiliating election defeat Saturday at the hands of an opposition leader who has vowed to pull troops out of Iraq.


Labor leader Kevin Rudd, a Chinese-speaking former diplomat, has also promised to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, leaving the U.S. as the only industrialized country not to have joined it.

"Today the Australian people have decided that we as a nation will move forward," Rudd said in a victory speech before hundreds of cheering supporters in his home state of Queensland. "To plan for the future, to prepare for the future, to embrace the future and together as Australians to unite and write a new page in our nation's history."

Australia is the latest country to see elections turn out governments that contributed to the U.S. war in Iraq.

Poland's new prime minister, Donald Tusk, has vowed to take a firmer stand in relations with the United States. He said in his inaugural address Friday that by the end of next year Poland would withdraw its 900 troops from Iraq, where it leads an international contingent of about 2,000 soldiers from 10 nations in the south-central part of the country.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071124/ap_ ... a_election

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

OK - That's GB (Tony Blair) and Australia (John Howard) down. Now if Canada will just get rid of Harper, the next president will have sane allies in the work to undo all that W's administration did - be it war, economy, ecology, education, whatever.