Bush's BFF John Howard of Australia is about as proficient at security as Bush is

Yesterday while driving to work I heard about the extraordinary security measures taken at the APEC conference in Australia:

Potential troublemakers have been blacklisted. Police were given extraordinary powers to stop and search people in the street. High school students were warned that their parents would be told if they skipped school to protest.

Officials in Australia — which prides itself on a long history of liberal democracy and respect for human rights — have gone to unusual lengths to make sure world leaders at a summit in Sydney this week are not bothered by unruly protests.

The measures which Prime Minister John Howard defended as necessary to head off potential violence have drawn harsh criticism from civil rights groups and touched off a wide debate in the media about the balance between security and a free society.

"We are out there saying 'we are a modern democracy, we're a free nation, we respect people's rights,'" said Cameron Murphy, president of the Australia Council for Civil Liberties.

"But they're putting up fences, stopping people from protesting, and it's not about security. It's about hiding people away so that leaders don't see that there is diversity of opinion."

[snip]

Most outrageous to Sydneysiders, as locals call themselves, is the 5-kilometer (3-mile) -long, 3-meter (10-foot) -high metal fence that bisects the city, sealing off the toniest hotels and the Sydney Opera House meeting venue from the rest of downtown

Yup, that 10-foot high metal fence is foolproof, all right:

I love Australians -- funny, crazy -- and gorgeous.

I want The Chaser to broadcast here. These guys are seriously funny. And crazy. And gorgeous:

On the other hand, when you have a president who does this:

The US president thanked Australian premier John Howard for visiting 'Austrian troops' in Iraq.

There are no Austrian troops there, although Australia has 1,500 military personnel in the region.

He continued his blunders by then confusing the organisations of APEC and OPEC.

Talking at a business forum on the eve of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney, Mr Bush also told Mr Howard: "Mr Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction. Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit."

As the audience laughed, the US president corrected himself and joked: "He invited me to the OPEC summit next year."

Australia has never been a member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

...who needs satire?