@ sarnian
<< If the US had not invaded two sovereign nations… there would be no reason for the population of those nations to take refuge>>

Total nonsense.
1) There has been on going fighting between shia/sunni Moslems for a millennium (long before the US & OZ were formed)
2) They are not fleeing FROM war, they are fleeing TO our affluence and our easy and open welfare system.

@ Arjay
<< Bush ,Blair and Cheney hav already been found guilty in a Kuala Lumpa wars crimes tribunal last year.>>

So now, I guess, we can look forward to the Malaysian judiciary holding similar trails of the Malaysian hierarchy for their (past)massacres & (on going)suppression of non-Bumiputeras!
http://worldpress.org/2298.cf

SPQR,

In the case of Iraq.....the U.S. and it's allies did "cause" the refugee crisis. Notwithstanding Sunni-Shiite animosities, it was the invasion that destabilised the country...which, I might add, was one of the most advanced in the Middle-East prior to having the daylights bombed out of it.

Good old Saddam was just hunky-dory with America while he was belting up Iran.

Warfare has never been pretty, and innocent civilians are often the ones to pay the price. Just ask the relatives of the 911 attack victims. This is exacerbated when combatants use civilians as cover and shields as the Taliban do.

The drones allow strikes on the Taliban leaders and prevent groups from massing. The result is that the type of organised resistance that drove the Russian forces (many times stronger than the coalition forces there) has been largely ineffective.

The real issue that these bleeding hearts are trying to raise is whether it is legal to strike people that are trying to kill you in another country. The answer is that Pakistan has given permission for the US to strike these guerrillas in the areas that they no longer have control, and the Taliban has "declared war" on the coalition. So the issue of illegality and sovereignty is essentially resolved.

Given that any alternative type of strike would inflict far greater casualties, the options are reduced to fight back or do nothing. I wonder what the world would have been like if Hitler's Germany's borders were respected.

Shadow Minister; See my first post.

Poirot,
There was Shia Sunni conflict long before the US arrived –only it wasn’t splashed across the pages/screens of the worlds media.
And Saddam (a Sunni dog) made it clear to one-and-all that he was top dog and brooked no challenges.

US intervention removed the alpha-dog . And that set a whole lot of lesser dogs a jostling in the hope they could usurp the alpha spot
That spot now seems to have been secured by a Shia clique.

However, none of that caused the “asylum seeker” flow to OZ.

Those who felt threatened simply relocated –till the wrangling settled --outside the cities of conflict, or if need be next door to Iran, Jordan or Turkey. [ many/most of whom I might add are now returning home to Iraq!]

The opportunists, however, caught a flight to Malaysia or Indonesia , rote learnt a few sob stories – then boated to OZ.
Where the were met by a immigration policy in disarray, a raft of handouts/entitlements and a warm welcome from the left [And that lot, will never return to Iraq –except on periodic holidays!]

As I said before, I would have much rather us (i.e. the West) not getting involved in Iraq.
We would have been much better served to have directed the money to the space program/NASA, and had left the Middle East to its own *devices*.

But had we done that, I have no doubt that in some alternative/ parallel universe we would now be reading posts from Poirot & Co on that worlds OLO criticizing us for not getting involved.

Sarnian,

With all due respect, drones of the type used by the US require a huge support base of satellites, computers, avionics etc. Let alone the custom ICs, optics etc. Even if they understand them, the chances of replication are close to zero.

The closest they got was to hijack a plane and fly it into a building.