@Yabby, you say " I think it was silly to invade a country, when a single well targeted missile, could have taken out Saddam..." I advise you to check your facts, because I thought that is exactly how Sadam met his demise. I thought I read in the press the yanks had dropped one of their precision bombs on a Baghdad restaurant with only minimal collateral damage...maybe only 100 or 200 iraqis nearby. Lucky for the waiter who was taking Sadams order at the time as he was the only one to survive suffering only from dust inhalation. As always the yanks had reliable intelligence that Sadam was dining there. I haven't been following the news much lately because my mind seems to be playing tricks on me (must be old age creeping up on me ;-)). You see I thought I read that the Americans had taken out Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on a roadway underpass but then sometime later I started reading how they'd dropped a 500lb bomb fair square on his head. They were able to positively identify him after he staggered out of the bomb crater to the spot nearby where he died. I think the military call them surgical strikes. I guess that's because many people require lots of surgery after them.

Talking about precision strikes...do you remember the First Gulf War where Stormin Norman at his press conferences would show the world video of a pilots view looking through the sights in attack aircraft honing in on a target...then puff...bulleye. What good ol' Norm didn't tell the world during his brags, was that occasionally it was allied forces and the treating enemy and those civilians caught up amongst them, in those sights. Oh well what the heck, its only a bit of friendly fire and afterall we're only out like a pack of Tom Cruises to have a bit of fun in life.

“the war is not for conquest or profit, but to stop a tyrannical regime from exporting its own version of misery.”

How convenient to blithely disregard the entire history of Afghanistan in determining construct for bringing war to its people. Shadow Minister, perhaps you meant Caricature?

Yabby wrote:

"Sorry, but I kind of remember what things were like when the Taliban
ran Afghanistan. Handing the place back to them on a plate is
IMHO not a very good idea, especially for Afghanistan's people,
particularly women."

You must be an unusual bloke Yabby, as most Australians knew next to nothing about the Taliban and Afghanistan before the USA started using propaganda like the above along with numerous other ploys to try to justify their invasion. Nor did most Australians care. They still don't if the number of responses to this topic are any indication. Tragic as the circumstances of Afghanistan may be, there are numerous other places that are equally as bad, without attracting our attention other than for an occasional shipment of aid. What goes on in Afghanistan is the Afghanistan people's business, not ours.

It's pathetic that Australia's government so willingly rushes to support the military excesses of the USA. They were wrong in Vietnam, failed to learn a lesson so were wrong again in Iraq, failed to learn a lesson, so are still wrong in Afghanistan. Where next? Iran, which so terrifies the Zionists of Israel? The decisions of Australia's government are so much against the best interests of Australians at times that you might almost conclude that they were being driven to those decisions by some foreign power!

Forkes, what went on in Afghanistan under the Taliban for years,
was well publicised in the international press. But I grant you,
some people don't read much more then New Idea or Auto Trader.

*What goes on in Afghanistan is the Afghanistan people's business, not ours.*

I guess that is why they need to hold elections, so that we can find
out what the Afghan people really want. I doubt if they wanted the
Taliban there, but they had little choice.

The West went into Afghanistan for good reasons. Al Queda has
decided to use the place as a base from which to overthrow the
West and the Taliban had no objections. 911 followed from there.

Turning the other cheek is a dismal failure, Forkes.