"Denmark will stay in Iraq"

Recent opinion polls have shown increasing opposition in the Danish public to continued Danish military presence in Iraq. More than 60 per cent of the Danish electorate want Danish soldiers out.
But the Danish government does not waiver. According to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen Denmark will remain as long as the Iraqui government wants it to, as long as it is under UN mandate and as long as it contributes to developing democracy in Iraq.

And one might add: As long as the US government wants Denmark to remain as part of a weakening "coalition of the willing". It is necessary to prop up the puppet regime in Baghdad which would not take long to fall if the coalition troops were withdrawn.

According to resolution 1637 of the Security Council:

Determining that the situation in Iraq continues to constitute a threat to
international peace and security,
Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations,
1. Notes that the presence of the multinational force in Iraq is at the request
of the Government of Iraq and, having regard to the letters annexed to this
resolution, reaffirms the authorization for the multinational force as set forth in
resolution 1546 (2004) and decides to extend the mandate of the multinational force
as set forth in that resolution until 31 December 2006;

Anders Fogh Rasmussen discussed the matter with Nordic colleagues at Nordic Council meeting in Copenhagen on Monday 30th. The Iraqui government wants the foreign troops to remain after expiry at end of the year. Fogh Rasmussen thinks that Denmark contributes positively to building up democracy in Iraq. It is the white man's burden to build democracy among the savages in the desert! For the Americans - and the Danes - the oil interests are of paramount importance. Leaving Iraq to itself may endanger the whole situation in all of the Mid East area.

On October 28th Bush said in an address to military personel in Charleston South Carolina:

We face an enemy that knows no bounds and no conscience. They're ideologues. But their ideology is the exact opposite of ours. They kill innocent people to achieve their evil objectives. But make no mistake about it, they have objectives. They have clearly stated that they want to drive the United States from the world so they can establish a caliphate, a governing organization from Indonesia to Spain, that would allow them to spread their ideology of hate, allow them to dominate a society in which people could not worship freely, or speak freely, in which people who did not adhere to their point of view would be punished. They seek safe haven from which to launch further attacks to achieve their objective. And their attacks would aim right here at the United States of America.
I want you to think about a world in which rival forms of radicals competed for power in the Middle East, to deny the hopes and aspirations of millions of people who simply want to live in peace. They would topple moderate governments. They would use oil as an economic weapon to bring the West to her knees, and to mix all that in with a country with a nuclear weapon. And 20 or 30 years from now, if that were to happen, people would look back and say, what happened to them in 2006? How come they couldn't see the challenge? How come they couldn't see the threats to a generation of Americans?

The enemy is "evil". The Danes and the Americans are God's own children, who fight for the good. Bush and Fogh Rasmussen do not understand that they themselves have produced the terrorists that keep coming out of the dungeons in increasing numbers. The "war on terror" is an ill-conceived idea. It is use of the word "war" in the wrong way. It produces more terrorists than it does away with.

It is quite typical that the only support Fogh Rasmussen got at the Nordic summit meeting was from Lithuanian prime minister Gediminas Kirkilas. This is the Europe that Rumsfeld dubbed "New Europe". In "Old Europe", for instance Sweden, an opinion poll has shown that a majority of Swedes consider the US a bigger threat to international peace than North Corea. - Who hoodwinked the Swedes? - Who hoodwinked the Danes?