" Sooner Tony Abbott sets a committee on un-Aust activities the better".Sounds like you a peddling facism to me.Perhaps you need to look at the real facists like Bush,Cheney,Kissenger, Zbigniew Brezezinski etc.

see http://ae911truth.org/ http://patriotsquestion911.com/

"Close quarters contact is like nightmares except you have to see it through to the end and whether a professional soldier or an Afghan kid with a Kalashnikov you can bet neither of them started the conflict."

The ethical solution is also the most practical. The Australian soldier should leave, and should never have volunteered for such "service" in the first place. The Afghan kid is defending his home. What would you expect an Australian to do in similar circumstances? On the other hand, what is the Australian solider defending? An aggressive nation-state's prerogative to crawl even further up the arse of an even more aggressive state in its prerogative to perpetual war for no good reason?

Formersnag:>> "Peace Protesters" were throwing buckets of red paint or animal blood on diggers coming back, Disgusting.<<

Fs, I recall coming home from school and finding the old lady happier than I had ever seen her in my life, I am not kidding when I say the euphoria had me thinking we had won the Opera House lottery, then she told me that my eldest brother had been conscripted. The jubilation rekindled and continued when the old man got home, and right up until the brother was inducted. You see the brother was a handful and destined to violent crimes and jail if his youth was a marker to his future.

One month later I arrive home from school to find a kit bag in the back hallway, on entering the kitchen I found my brother in uniform making a cup of tea for the old lady who was head down sobbing into the kitchen table. They kicked him out in a little less than three weeks, the reason they gave was "undisciplinary" and his papers were marked "on call to active duty". A few years further down the track and he would have spent his two years sitting in Long Bay goal with the consciencious objectors. Many many years later over a few drinks I asked him what he had done to be booted out; he said "I did nothing, literally". From the time they told him to put on the uniform he did not comply, they told him to get up in the morning and he did not comply, he did nothing that they asked. The NCO'S sent him to the brass and the doc's and then the MP's locked him up and beat him regularly for a week, mum always blamed his kidney problems on those beatings. He since moved onto to fulfill his destiny with surprisingly little jail time.

As for me I was called I went I seen and I do not recommend it, it changes you, and I still say if you were not there you know jack, so shut up.

Modestly Formersnag says: I am politically, a moderate, middle of the road, centrist, like 90% of the population. Religiously i am a mild mannered, agnostic, who is just trying to protect children..."

Listen, Formersnag, why don't you apply to the Catholic Church for Sainthood? They are looking for perfect male beings who know everything and you'd be a shoe-in!

Look, don't stop at Sainthood. Why not apply to be Pope?

http://www.dangerouscreation.com

Peter Hume>>The ethical solution is also the most practical. The Australian soldier should leave, and should never have volunteered for such "service" in the first place.<<

Peter I agree with your sentiments, but do remember that there is no such thing as a volunteer when you’re in the services. If they ask for volunteers they are asking you to comply. If you don't volunteer and you’re the one they want, you go anyway. Keep away from bagging the rifleman, the politicians and the brass are the bastards, not those at the front prepared to die.

Three empires have lost face to Afghanistan’s tribes in the past 150 years. The British, the Russians and the Americans all failed, they can beat the tripe out of the elephant but are powerless against the ant, and the ant is not the bad guy, as I said I agree with your sentiments but leave the pawns out of it.

Formersnag, while I agree with your comment on the US helping us, in the event we are threatened, I seriously doubt, with the costs the US has had to bear on the war, plus the ongoings costs, that they would have sufficient funding to even protect themselves, let alone us.

Sadly, I am beginning to suspect that those days of having the US as our greatest Alie, are all but over.

In the mean time, with every cent we waste on fighting that unwinnable war, that much needed 'tax payers' dollars would sure be a welcome boost to our economy right now.

Now, if and when this war is over, just what do our combined polies expect to achieve.