Proud to Be Danish

And no talk from the incumbent, either, of withdrawing the Iraq contingent, even partly, in the future…

Like the Spanish, the Australian, and the American governments before it, the Danish government is heading for elections with — barring terrorist attacks such as those in Madrid (and even in spite of them, one would hope, should such occur) — high chances that the electorate has no intention of censoring its government (far from it) for being the ally of the George W Bush White House in Iraq and ("peace camp" members' wishful thinking notwithstanding) for not pulling the troops out of Iraq.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen called for early elections on Feb. 8, nine months ahead of the end of his four-year term in a bid to capitalize on favorable opinion polls.

Mindful of Denmark's support of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, Danish antiterror officials said they would increase their vigilance during the campaign and on election day.

…Rasmussen, who politically and militarily backed the U.S.-led war to oust Saddam Hussein, is favored to remain in office.

Denmark presently has 501 troops in southern Iraq, and a majority in the Parliament, including the opposition Social Democrats, has backed the deployment.

Note that it is totally misleading (not to call it a lie, as members of the "peace camp" are so prompt to do) to say that in the wake of the March 14 election bombshell (due to the politicking in the wake of the train bombings that killed 191 people three days earlier), Spain's "new prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, kept his election promise and quickly withdrew the 1,300 troops that Aznar had sent to Iraq."

This puts the patina of honour and dignity (keeping promises, being honest) on an event that, if anything, actually betrayed a promise, the one that consisted of consulting with the United Nations before any such withdrawal.