Well Japan is back among the coalition of the willing. Our nearly final effort in the GWOT was to provide an oil tanker with a destroyer escort. The tanker was refueling coalition Naval vessels, primarily those of Pakistan.

The ruling LDP has seemed obsessed with passing this law, to exclusion of all else. the law authorizing the use of the tanker had expired on November first of last year, and the opposition party had stopped it’s extension. Since then we have seen intense efforts to send the ship back.

We are missing national pension records for 20 million people.  We have other serious domestic issues.  But apparently these are not important.  But satisfying George Bush is.

What amazes me is the incredible Japanese government optimism in backing Bush’s war. Of course, the government in the US was soon crowing how Japan is back.

Well, we are now 11 months away from the US election, and Iraq will only get worse. Since we took our oiler home in November, we have seen Turkey, a good friend, enter the war against our best friends in Iraq, the Kurds. This can’t be good. US MSM keeps saying that surge has worked wonders, but if you read the daily action reports and casualty figures, that is not so. Things are pretty much back to where they were pre surge.

I think this was a great miscalculation on the part of Japan’s government. There is no way the Bush administration is going to be able to keep papering over the situation in Iraq until November, and there is no way it will get better. Only worse. That puts a real damper on the chances for any Republican party Presidential candidate.