Col Rouge the Australian government is commiting outrages on Australian soil. To me it is not a matter of supporting my government right or wrong.
You seem to be overlooking children in detention,children overboard,Tampa,the incursion into the NT, the IR laws and now the penalties on employers and employees if the former do not disseminate
information on Workplaces and the latter do not read it or request that it be read to them by their employer within 7 days of a change of employment.
Under this piece of legislation all working Australians have the potential to be classified as criminals.
Look around you Col.
Bruce Haigh

Marilyn Shepherd States "they were not doing it before we invaded the place were they.", referring to Iraqis killing their countrymen in Iraq.

Saddam Hussein and his Sunni mates were guilty of Genocide against Kurds, Shia and Marsh Arabs, not to mention an estimated one million dead in the futile war with Iran.

Worth remembering in these emotional arguments.

Marilyn Shepherd wrote:

"Paul I am very tired of the claim that it is only Iraqis killing Iraqis so it doesn't matter. They were not doing it before we invaded the place were they."

Well yes they were actually Marilyn, chief executioner one S. Hussein. I suppose that if you prefer your murder to be state sanctioned and behind closed doors, then your comment makes sense.

It is off topic but it seems blatantly obvious to me that the invasion has merely lifted the lid off the fact that "Iraq" is not in any sense (and never has been) a NATION.. ie, a group of people bound together by common values, shared heritage etc. There are three ethnoreligious groups (Kurds/Shiite/Sunni) forced to live as one and when the place isn't held together by a megalomaniac dictator.. well you see what happens every night on the news...

Why don't we admit the fact that it cannot work, in the same way that Yugoslavia didn't work, and come up with a way to partition the place before every last person has been obliterated at the hands of the good ol' God-fearing suicide bomber?

Runawake,
Haneef will be deported just as soon as the courts have finished with him. The only reason he is not on a flight now is because the federal police believe that it is possible he has a case to answer. I am not a Howard fan at all, and I can accept the possibility that this is more than a little political, if you can accept that it’s possible that Haneef really is a terrorist enabler. I just can’t see why the benefit of the doubt should go to a non citizen whose family doesn’t even live here.

Marilyn
You have deliberately misquoted me. I never said that it doesn’t matter that it is Iraqis killing Iraqis. I said we did not control it. Before we “invaded the place” it was Saddam who was doing all the killing. Check out amnesty to see how many of his own citizens he killed.

I don’t think you have any idea how Britain reacted during the IRA years. Just look up internment, shoot to kill, Diplock courts etc.

We survived the cold war because the west was committed enough to fight the spread of international communism. Even the rabid left no longer denies the horrors of Soviet and Asian communism, nor their expansionist intentions. They didn’t go away by themselves that’s for sure.

I would say I am defending the status quo with regards Haneef and it is people like you who don’t like the current situation who are the whiners and snivelers. As for those of us Men you refer to. Mostly we want to keep our families safe and we actually have some experience with bullies and violence. Women like you rely on people with guns and badges to keep you safe and yet you paint the police and army as liars and murderers. I bet if you were ever assaulted or in fear of your safety the first people you would call are our ‘supposedly untrustworthy’ police.

By the way, were 7/7, Madrid train bombings, 9/11, Bali and recent attacks in London/Glasgow shadows?

Col Rouge, I was wrong about the source of the leak. And I've acknowledged it. Although let's be clear it was not Haneef's solicitor but his barrister. And the barrister had some pretty pertinent things to say about why he leaked - principally to match the government's leaks.

I also said: “Given the state of the polls three months out from an election, experience suggests we ought to look closer at the dirt units set up in at least two Ministerial offices as a source of the leak.” There's no need for me to resile from asserting that there have been plenty of Ministerial leaks in the last ten years. Why even today, Peter Costello was complaining about John Howard leaking a document detrimental to Costello.

More to the point, you say: "There is only one way to deal with terrorists and their supporters; that is swiftly and finally, giving them no second chances to plant another bomb or commit murder and mayhem on an unsuspecting public."

Who would disagree? But let's make sure that the evidence is right - that we've got the real terrorist and not some convenient innocent who happens to be nearby three months short of an election.

Hello? Defenders of Ruddock and the AFP? Are you there? Hello? Is anyone home? Hello?