I'm currently writing a new song - yes I'm a songe songwriter and if you want to hear some of my songs, you can hear them at www.musicforte.com/member/bluesbro.

Anyway I'm writing a protest song about the relationship between New Zealand and the USA. back in the late 1970's lots of US ships used to come to New Zealand for R & R. We would have thousands, well hundreds of marines with haircuts like mine, sailors, officers etc coming in and we took pride in hosting them. We had a dial a sailor program and each time a ship came in, we would invite a group of te guys to come stay in our flat, play cards, do some sight seeing and generally make friends. We also got to visit the ships and submarines which was an awesome experience.

Then our anti nuclear movement started, particularly in relation to the French nuclear testing in the Pacific, but that's another story. As a result and in keeping with our philosophy of being clean and green (which is why we have such a great eco-tourism industry) we banned nuclear ships from visiting our ports. We also banned ships that were carrying nuclear weapons. This was not a political protest and had nothing to do wit how we viewed the US, which had always been very friendly going back to the days that we shared the trenches in WWll, Korea, Viet Nam and other places. Because the US would not confirm or deny that there were nuclear weapons on board, they stopped coming and our relationship turned to shit.

The US decided that we were no longer an ally and put a stop to economic and military relationships. We had a local treaty called ANZUS which was between NZ, Australia and the US and the US refused to train and run war games wit us, which we had done for decades prior.

We are a peaceful nation and have always valued our relationships with our US friends, but because we wanted to eliminate the risk of any nuclear accidents, we were penalised and were no longer considered allies or friends of the US. There is a diplomatic term for our relationship, but I can't remember what it is called. The status is lower than the relationship with countries like China and Iraq to put it inperspective. Whether you agree with the policy we decided on doesn't matter, many Kiwi's don't agree with it or believe it is no longer relevant.

We are a small country in the South Pacific with a population of a few people over 4,000,000 in the entire country, the equivalent of a large US city! Despite that, we have sent small peace keeping forces all over the world including Afghanistan, Iraq, Korean Peninsula, Kosovo, Sudan, East Timor, Fiji, New Guinea, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bouganville, Sinai, Solomon Islands, Cambodia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and more. I think that illustrates that we care for world peace and are prepared to shoulder some responsibility, even for a small country.

We have free trade agreements with Australia and many oter countries, but we can't get one with the USA, which forced us to seek and receive free trade agreements with countries like China, where we now have an official friend relationship which we can't get with the USA.

So I ask you, are we bad people? Are we a security risk to the US? We like Americans and many of us visit the US regularly for business or pleasure. I have been over myself probably 10 times and have personal friends all over the US. But te US won't recognise us as friends or allies. Is that appropriate?

So Mr Bush, why can't we be friends?

As to the song, I hope to record it in the next month and it will appear on my website at Music Forte. Maybe Mr President will come and listen? I doubt it, though. Don't you?