we have heard little from the immature government.
Bruce Haigh,
Isn't the situation now the legacy of your time in the diplomatic Superannuation circus ? What can you point at as a positive in our society that came from your taxpayer funded years ? Is what we have now all you people could produce ? If you were so good at your job why is it we have so many problems now ? Ah I see, it's Abbott's fault.

Individual, as usual you go in for negative, personal insults rather than discussing the issue at hand.

Typical righties.
Are you and Runner bosom pals?

This approach to dealing with terrorists didn't work last time we went to war with Afghanistan, leading to the West allies pulling out after several years there, with nothing but dead and mentally ill soldiers to show for it.

I am disgusted our defence forces are forced into this again.

Suse,
They're not "our" soldiers, the ADF is now a politicised organisation, like the Police.
I was appalled by the sight of Commissioner Ken Lay holding a press conference with senior Imams this morning, surely the premier should have been the one leading the appeal for calm and cross cultural solidarity? I guess he was off at the grand final parade.
This is a serious problem, a young man is dead by the hand of the political Police and we're left with the suspicions that he was being pressured to become an informant, or being blackmailed and bullied by the security services until he finally snapped and attacked them.

'In all from 1962 – 1972, 60,000 Australians served in Vietnam, 521 died and 3,000 were injured. Nothing was achieved.'

I beg to differ. A great deal was achieved.

Combined with the 1950s Malayan Emergency and the 1966 Indonesian massacre of 1-3 million left-wingers (which destroyed the world's third largest socialist entity), the American War (which the Vietnamese call what we call the 'Vietnam War') effectively destroyed any possibility of any form of socialist government from forming anywhere in South-east Asia.

It's comforting to know that our lads (including the older brother of my primary-school best friend, killed in the American War) kept the world safe from the threat of a political system that put national independence before colonial exploitation and people before profit.

Apologies to Lord Laurence Olivier and all those ardent youngbloods who go into ideological meltdown at Shakespeare's rousing Band of Brothers speech.

I'm sorry to have to break it to you, but Henry V was a meglomaniacal mass murderer.

He invaded France purely and simply to consolidate his rule over England, because his friendly family heritage consultant told him he was entitled to much of northern France (which included the medieval equivalent of oil - wine production).

Agincourt propaganda dictates that HV defeated the French against overwhelming odds - 5,000 French against a few hundred English. However, his victory at Agincourt was entirely due to the superior technology of the newly invented long-bow, which he obsessively perfected before his French campaign.

That same propaganda dictates that at least 3,000 French died at Agincourt, but fails to include the fact that most of them died AFTER the surrender - not before. Yes, Lawrence Olivier was astonishingly handsome and looked cute with his funny medieval haircut, but Henry V was a total asshole and a narcissistic mass murderer.

No wonder the West loves him so much!

Bruce the lefty goose, provides another rallying point at which the anti-Abbot group can contribute their baseless vilification of an effective and successful PM. Abbot has his deficiencies, and he is only about a thousand times better than any PM provided by Labor, so he has not reached the standard of an ideal PM.

However, the rabid comments give us a reminder of the vacuous shallowness of the Abbot haters, like DavidG, for example:” Australia is aiding and abetting America, the duplicitous enemy of the free world”. He sounds like a terrorist promotion.

Disgraceful, but typical of the pathetic mentality of Bruce's toxic group.