Britain may no longer parrot the US on the "war on terror", but George Bush can still count on his other loyal ally, Australia, following a ruckus over a British diplomat's remarks on the war in Iraq.
The tough-talking Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, today took issue with the British high commissioner to Australia, Helen Liddell, who had told reporters that Iraq was never seen as part of the "war against terror".
In doing so, Ms Liddell, who was in Tony Blair's cabinet when the decision was made to invade Iraq in 2003, has sparked a right row in Australia as opposition politicans gleefully seized upon her remarks to attack John Howard's government over its staunch support for George Bush over Iraq. The government was quick to back the US invasion, providing some 2,000 troops to help topple Saddam Hussein and about 300 Australian troops remain in Iraq.
Today the government hit back. Mr Downer told ABC Radio that the opinion of Ms Liddell was not the opinion held by Mr Blair.
"I don't think anyone would deny Tony Blair's very strongly held views, as the prime minister of Britain, about the importance of defeating the terrorists in Iraq," Mr Downer told ABC Radio.
The semantic battle kicked off this week when the development secretary, Hilary Benn, told an audience in New York that the use of the term "war on terror" was unhelpful. Rather, the term may have strengthened terrorist groups by helping them to forge a shared identity.
But Mr Downer does not seem to be a man for such nuances and, like Mr Bush, takes a more "us versus them" approach to international politics.
Mr Downer denied claims that yesterday's blasts in Baghdad that killed almost 200 people were caused by Sunni insurgents. He called this a "massive simplification" and said most blasts were conducted by al-Qaida or al-Qaida-related organisations.
But to see the war in Iraq as essentially a struggle with al-Qaida seems another big simplification. First, al-Qaida only shipped up in Iraq after the US invaded, and the conflict in Iraq is less a "war on terror" and more a struggle for power between Shia and Sunni Muslims.
