I made a mistake in response to this statement:

PaulL.> the idea that you should’nt be doing something which is in your strategic interest is infantile.

I never claimed this, though if you are starting aggressive wars for strategic interests then you are destroying international law. My next answer covers the response a little better anyway.

Isn’t that an interesting comment;

“We win every battle but we're losing the war.”

How does this sit with Rudd’s policies?

A Qld State Labor Minister at stark odds with the Labor PM!

This is indeed interesting stuff.

I can’t wait to hear more about this.

BTW, you have my full support Judy.

Iraq and Afghanistan were hell holes. Much of the middle east is. Unfortunately it also controls our oil resources which we make so much use of.

Much of the ME area is also the centre of an awful movement which wishes to force a narrow view of Islam on the whole world. They kill to push their case - Bali, London, New York, Madrid Mumbei etc etc.

They enslave their women and have shown that they are prepared to kill woman adulterers by throwing rocks at them. They bring up children to be suicide murderers in their cause. They prey on poor people, the selfish ME despots have created a hot house to spread their evil views.

They want you Judy Spence in a burkha and be a slave to a husband, do you want that?

The Iraq war was a bungled attempt to introduce an improvement in this area. However much has been learnt from initial mistakes should we not carry it through? Give up now and the Islamist/Taliban evil will be encouraged.

Steel,

>> "I made a mistake in response to this statement"

I’m glad you can recognize that as I was just about to pull you up on it. I was going to ask you which countries knowingly act against their strategic interests?

I notice the absence of any quote to support your ridiculous contention that “ [I] do not care about sovereign rights of nations that have a different way of life and political philosophy from me”.

There is a very good reason for this. It’s because I never said it. This is your particularly inept spin at work.

BTW, whose judgment is it that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are illegal??

I was ROFLMAO at your suggestion that my views are socialist. I don’t think you actually understand what socialism means. I try to be pragmatic in my approach and can take a good idea wherever it originates. Socialism has very few good ones.

Judy Spence,

You're demonstrating your overwhelming ignorance here. We're far more advanced on the road to victory in Iraq than in Afghanistan. So your post makes no sense in that context.

I too read the article by Sally Neighbor whose words you've appropriated as your own. It's a particularly pessimistic view from “a senior ISAF officer”(who?)

It does however raise the legitimate point about Pakistani inaction over the regrouping of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal regions. Without a solution to this safe-haven problem it will be immensely difficult to win in Afghanistan.

Anyway, Sunni insurgents are now overwhelmingly being routed away from Iraq to Afghanistan, where they believe they have a chance of winning; Iraq seemingly no longer offering them that possibility.

>> “The Russians would have told us the outcome in advance.”

This is the kind of nonsense that typifies the ignorant left. No knowledge or understanding of military conflict required just an ability to make simplistic comparisons. You forget that during the Soviet occupation the mujahideen were supported by the US, Saudi and Pakistan in the most expensive covert war ever.

Ludwig see here for Spence original thoughts on this issue http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23996698-25837,00.html

Well, you are what you hate Paul. I don't envy that paradox, but you seem to rationalise it away so i guess you are unaffected by your hypocrisy in constantly "admonishing" the left.

I gave you a link to Law of war from wikipedia. In it the Geneva conventions do not make allowances for torture, which is exactly what the us has inflicted on the Iraqi people. That is just one point of many.

Also, regardless of whether your opinion on it was illegal, the setting of precedant was extremely stupid. Now if we are invaded, a country may torture us and suspend habeus corpus and mimic the circumstances in which the USA exacted it's hate onto the Iraqi people. And no one will go to trial for it. Isn't that stupid? The USA even suspended such legal and humanitarian principles for it's own ally...in it's criminal treatment of several Australian citizens. That right there shows you how much respect it has for allies and how quickly it will turn against them if it's strategic interests change.

I loved this little throwaway line of yours, Paul.L

>>What are you suggesting Rache? That Iraq would have been better off under Saddam?<<

I couldn't answer for Rache of course, but that would be a pretty fair summary of my own thoughts on the topic.

After all, the options weren't exclusively i) a US invasion or ii) permanent Saddam rule. That would be silly.

The UN may have been dragging their feet a little, but they would have eventually reached the conclusion that a concerted effort by a broader "coalition of the willing", including such foot-draggers as the cheese-eating surrender-monkeys, was necessary to force Saddam's hand.

Who knows, faced with such unanimity Saddam may actually have backed down, and negotiated instead for a level of personal immunity for himself and his sons.

At any rate, far fewer deaths, and far less animosity towards the West in general and Christianity in particular. Lower oil prices too, I would imagine.

We'll never know, of course, thanks to trigger-happy Bush and his two lapdogs, Blair and Howard.

(Howard I can understand, of course. It was a self-image thing with him. "You see, I'm not just a clapped-out suburban solicitor doing conveyancing for middle-aged women - I'm a big man on the world stage." But Blair, I have never figured out. Show pony, yes. But a desperately venal and mendacious show pony... Full of surprises)

Your definition of "winning", has a lot to recommend it:

>>I would consider winning to be attaining the point where Iraq has a democratically elected gov’t with the strength to defend itself from external and internal threats and the ability to provide the basic services (electricity, clean water etc) its citizens need.<<

I'm just puzzled why, if you indeed believe the US is "winning", you think that their troops are needed to stick around:

>>I find it almost incomprehensible that Obama supporters are upset that he is backing away from his earlier statements regarding troop withdrawals from Iraq.<<

Obviously, Obama supporters believe the same as you: "Job Done".

You can't have it both ways.