Poland: Ally in the War on Terror

After Bush corrected Kerry for leaving Poland out of the list of coalition countries, some on the left are gleefully reacting to the Polish President's recent comment that the country may remove troops from Iraq by the end of 2005.

Some perspective is however in order. Poland's president makes it quite clear that there is no firm timeline for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

And it is interesting to note how he reacted to Kerry's omission of Poland in the debate:

It's sad that a Senator with twenty years of experience does not appreciate Polish sacrifice... I don't think it's a question of ignorance. One thing has to be said very clearly: this Coalition is not just the United States, Great Britain and Australia, but there's also contribution of Polish, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Spanish soldiers who died in Iraq. It's immoral to not see this involvement we undertook because we believe that we have to fight terrorism together, that we need to show international solidarity, that Saddam Hussein is a danger to the world.

From such a perspective, you can say we are disappointed that our stance and the sacrifice of our soldiers is so marginalised...

President Bush is behaving like a true Texan gentleman - he's fighting for the recognition of other countries' contribution in the Coalition. [Translated by Chrenkoff.]

Apparently the Polish Prime Minister "also took Kerry to task for forgetting about the other 30 or so countries involved in the Coalition."