...not a pre-emptive push into Tehran.

MICHAEL WARE: Well, there's a 'takeback light' version, under way right now. They're [Coalition of the Willing] actually attempting to take small cities back from the insurgents. We saw it begin in Najaf where they ousted the Shia militants and then immediately supplanted an Iraqi administration.

Well that was a Shia area. Their first foray into the Sunni, the hardline heartland, came with the town of Sumarra which the Americans surrounded, the insurgents left, and an Iraqi administration was put in. It's with mixed results. We've just seen a missile strike in Sumarra in the early hours of this morning. We saw a US convoy or patrol ambushed in Sumarra, this retaken city, yesterday afternoon. It's a very difficult strategy, and listen, there is much talk about a massive offensive that is about to begin.

What we're seeing in these cities is now just a foretaste, a prelude to what we're being told in very private circumstances is to follow the US presidential election...but put that way, if the US forces are going into their town, they'd better be ready to raze them and to bear the enormous political cost of that.

Re-elect John Howard's government - for whatever domestic policy reasons - and whatever a re-elected George W. Bush government does in the Middle East between November 2004 and our next election in 2007 is 'mandated' by The Commonwealth of Australia, too. Food for thought, voters. Once we elect them we don't get to 'pick and choose' which bits of Australian government policy we Australian Citizens then 'own'. And so partly 'bear the enormous political cost of', too.

As a responsible democratic People, I mean.