Bush down under

In one of the series of interviews he did before heading to a locked-down Sydney next week, George Bush's interview with Sky News Australia (also here) shows that his war on terror is rhetoric is a moving target and does seem to respond to criticism of earlier vintages. In particular --

See, here's the interesting thing that I hope the people of Australia understand, there are two forms of extremism that have now converged on Iraq, one Sunni extremism in the likes of Al Qaeda. These people in Iraq swore allegiance to the very same person that ordered the attack on the United States of America.

Significant because he has dropped the "they're the same people who attacked us on 9/11", which of course was not true. But it's always the curate's egg with Bush --

We the free world has got more work to do, and I believe those of us who live in liberty have a responsibility to promote forms of government that deal with what causes 19 kids to get on airplanes to kill 3,000 students.

To state the obvious, none of the 19 were from Iraq, and nothing going on in Iraq now is making political liberalisation in the countries that they were from more likely. His mangled statement at the end is merely symptomatic of a much deeper strategic confusion.