Month: September 2006

BEAZLEY PUTS UP THE WHITE FLAG

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Just in from Defence Media. I’ll quote it in full just to do my small part in alerting the public to the ALP’s lack of considered policy.

Interviewer: “…on day one of a Beazley led government you’d order all of the Australian troops out of Iraq, would you?”

Mr Beazley: “The only exception I’d make to that is those guarding Australian diplomats.” (Lateline, 27/9/2006)

Kim Beazley’s latest commitment, to cut and run from Iraq, is inconsistent and weak. It would represent a setback for the War on Terror and would put Australian troops at greater risk.

For example, Mr Beazley fails to understand that withdrawing all elements other than the Security Detachment in Baghdad, would leave these Security Detachment personnel without the logistics and air support they rely on and, therefore, dangerously exposed.

To take another example, he now wants to remove our frigate from the North Arabian Gulf. In January, Mr Beazley acknowledged the critical role played by our frigate when he said: “We support the continued protection of Australian diplomats in Baghdad, and our naval presence in the Gulf fulfils the dual purpose of protecting Iraqi oil terminals and inhibiting the movement of terrorists around the Gulf.” (Sydney Morning Herald, 12/1/2006)

His latest irresponsible policy would play directly into the hands of terrorists.

Mr Beazley doesn’t appreciate the significant role played by our soldiers based in Tallil. In June this year, the southern province of Al Muthanna became the first of Iraq’s eighteen provinces to transfer to full control by Iraqi Provincial Government, with security presided over by Iraqi security forces. This was in large part attributable to Australia’s efforts in providing security and in training the 2nd Brigade of the Iraqi Army’s 10th Division, who are now taking a key role in providing security.

Australia is now playing an overwatch role, including training and mentoring and being on hand to provide security backup, if required, for Al Muthanna and Dhi Qar (the second province to transfer to full Iraqi control).
Having come so far, it is important to bed this progress down. Mr Beazley disregards this imperative.

In a statement reported by Al-Jazeera on 28 December 2004, bin Laden said that Iraq is where the “third world war…is raging”. On 26 July 2006, in a speech to a joint meeting of Congress, democratically elected Prime Minister of Iraq, al Maliki pledged that “Iraq will be the graveyard of terrorism and terrorists for the good of all humanity.”

The stakes in Iraq are high. In the words of Mr Beazley’s former Chief of Staff and former Foreign Affairs Secretary Michael Costello: “to disengage from Iraq now would be the biggest single encouragement the terrorists could get”. (The Australian, 13/1/2006).

The Government is determined to ensure the terrorists lose. Mr Beazley proposes walking away and letting them win.

Keep pandering to your left wing Beasley…it just guarantees more conservative government.

Defence, Politics

‘Whatshisname’ Garrett says something

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Somebody called Garrett has slammed the Prime Minister and his two right-hand men for being “philistines”, whose obsession with sport comes at the expense of the nation’s art and culture.

Mr Garrett said the country lacked national debate about the health of its creative arts industries where key areas including dance, film and medium-sized theatre were struggling.

Ask yourself why. If dance, film and theatre are struggling then it’s because the public aren’t interested in the offerings. Every time I flick past the ABC or SBS I only stay long enough to witness another ‘struggling’ artist rediculing Howard, religion, America, the military, patriotism, married couples with children or couples wanting to own a house.

Small theatre seldom has a kind word to say about our society. Still fuming at the ignorance of the Australia voter for re-electing Howard they rush to tell us, potential seat warmers at theatres, just how ignorant we are.

MELBOURNE Theatre Company director Simon Phillips finds these disturbing times. “You have to question how far we have come and how low can we go,” he says.

He is too diplomatic to be specific, but the war on terror has seen civil liberties crumble and David Hicks remains detained without rights in Guantanamo Bay.

I see your civil liberties and raise you civil responsibilty…..a winning hand but Garrett, Phillips and that doyen of ‘Putting down Australians, David Williamson just don’t see it.

Up yours, Garrett. Produce something that dwells on the good points of our society and the public will flock to the theatres, maybe even Howard and his ministers might venture forth as well.

General Musings, Politics

The Whitlams

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After Margaret’s attack on Janette Howard yesterday the Age carries a piece headed Margaret Whitlam refuses to apologise while the Australian carries a piece headed Janette maintains silence as Margaret retracts claws. Believe what you will, it matters little. The woman is mere just trying to sell her biography.

Gough gets in the spirit of book selling and makes an equally contoversial statement as he denounces “politically contrived racism” against Australian Muslims and warned it could harm relations with Indonesia.

This politically contrived racism must be different from the contrived racism in his 1975 statement to Cabinet along the lines of [his] not having hundreds of f*****g Vietnamese Balts coming into this country.

Hang on, I get the difference.  The current contrived racism is politically based whereas Gough’s ’75 statement was ideologically based.  The thousands (hundreds of thousands actually) of Vietnamese were flooding the seas in an attempt to escape Gough’s mates in Communist Vietnam so I can almost understand where he’s coming from.

Almost.

As I said, this is just about selling Margaret’s biography but I do think they both should have chosen quotes that stood close scrutiny.

I have categorised this post under ‘Humour’…what else?

Uncategorized

4RAR in action

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I just love the way the Australians are conducting the Afghanistan chapter of the War on Terror. Not for them some ABC/SBS/The Age type anti-military embedded journalist evere eager to put his bid in for a Purlitzer by reporting Pte X shot at some poor ‘Freedom Fighter” and killed him without even trying to understand his motivation; no not at all. The only reason we know 4RAR Cdo were in action recently was courtesy General Mike Hindmarsh, a mate from my previous life, who told the press and the people what they needed to know.

IN a rugged mountain valley in Afghanistan, the Australian commandos were fighting for their lives under an afternoon rain of rocket-propelled grenades.

The small band of 4RAR fighters were on their way across the Chora valley, trying to help another coalition unit under attack when they were caught up in the heaviest battle fought by Australians since the Vietnam War.

The Australians were hit by a sustained barrage from RPGs, mortars and machineguns fired by Taliban guerillas who wounded six of their platoon.

Well done, guys

Further reading; The Australian , News.com and here for a report on medals to be awarded to some of the diggers.

Defence

NIE beat-up

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PRIME Minister John Howard has welcomed the declassifying of a United States intelligence report that says Iraq has become a gathering point for global Islamic extremists.

The Banshees have welcomed the report as well, as buried within, there are paragraphs that can be spun as anti Bush/Howard etc and can be used to poor scorn on the entire idea of the war in Iraq.

And one wonders at the motivation for leaking the selective pages and why weren’t other pages leaked. In fact, why wasn’t the entire report leaked? It couldn’t be because the rest of the report wasn’t as negative…could it?….no way.
In my time, when serving under The Official Secrets Act it was worth seven years in goal to do what these guys have done. I presume the US have something similar and they are being pursued with the full force of the law and will eventually face dismissal and goal time…hope so anyway.

In Australia, ‘Tricky’ Rudd says;

……the report showed the Howard government’s arguments for taking Australia to war in Iraq were flawed.

“The release of this document fundamentally torpedoes John Howard’s credibility and the argument he gave Australia for going to war in Iraq,” Mr Rudd told reporters.

It does? How?

The bottom line is that it is an extract from an intelligence summary and during the course of a war all such documents have both negative and positive aspects otherwise they’re not true summaries of the situation. Of course the Terrorists are more active since we attacked them. That’s what happens and they will try and maintain their momentum as we do ours. During WW2 these type of assessments would have been negative as well. Just think North Africa before Rommel lost it, or the Pacific for three years from 1942 to ’45.

A beat-up.

UPDATE:  From this morning’s Opinion Journal;
The New York Sun has some good news:

On a day when much of the capital’s attention was focused on leaked excerpts of an intelligence estimate report that suggested the Iraq war was creating more jihadists, the military quietly released an intercepted letter from Al Qaeda complaining that the terrorist organization was losing ground in Iraq.

The letter, found in the headquarters of Al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, after he was killed on June 7, was sent to Zarqawi by a senior Al Qaeda leader who signs his name simply “Atiyah.” He complains that Al Qaeda is weak both in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and in Iraq. . . .

“Know that we, like all the Mujahidin, are still weak,” he wrote in the letter dated December 11, 2005. “We are in the stage of weakness and a state of paucity. We have not yet reached a level of stability. We have no alternative but to not squander any element of the foundations of strength, or any helper or supporter.”

In fact, the NIE summary begins by noting that “United States-led counterterrorism efforts have seriously damaged the leadership of al-Qa’ida and disrupted its operations.”

They conclude;

No one said this was going to be easy, and like any important and challenging undertaking, it requires patience and forbearance.

I’ll give George Bush the last word on the subject;

[He]…was clearly unhappy that findings from the National Intelligence Estimate had made their way into news reports. Noting that evidence-gathering for the assessment had been concluded in February, and that the report itself had been finished two months later, Mr. Bush said: “Here we are, coming down the homestretch of an election campaign and it’s on the front page of your newspapers. Isn’t that interesting?”

War on Terror

Off Axis Sights

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I was all on fire with the possibilities of the Israeli around-corner weapons in last week post, but a service contact has pointed to a much simpler version. Typical of Australia to do it simpler, cheaper and just as effective.
Off Axis

Nothing flash…no video of surpised targets to post on YouTube but it will obviously do the job.

Here for more details.

Defence

Abrams arrives

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Earlier this year when I tried to get my LR Discovery on the Indian Pacific railway from Sydney to Perth I found I had to load it at Adelaide. The reason? The vehicle was too high for the rail link from Sydney to Perth.

So I’m not surprise when I read in the Australian article that the Abrams tank is likewise to high to go on the same line. It is also too wide and too heavy.

Not only am I not surprised but neither are the military, the government nor the railway companies. The only people surprised are the media; at least that’s my interpretation of the tone of article.

THE army’s newest frontline weapon, the Abrams battle tank, arrived in Australia yesterday and immediately encountered problems, with no rail transport available to carry the tank to the Northern Territory.

It didn’t immediately encounter problems at all. The problems were long known and plans already in place to impliment additions to rolling stock to carry them. The fact that they aren’t in-service today reflects on the speed of the Abrams purchase and the subsequent need for logisitc tail to catch up; it doesn’t reflect poor planning.
The article also mentions the weight limitations of the bridge at Katherine, a fact I remember well from my army days, but since then I have travelled extensively in North Queensland and the Territory and have often been forced to the side of the road by alarmingly large low loaders carrying trucks and plant to mines that make the Abrams look like a mere baby.

But still, the tone of the article serves its purpose; to make the military look guilty of poor planning and of having made the wrong decision in the first place to buy the Abrams.

As if the journalist, Mark Dodd knows better. He is of a politiical conviction that damns the Abrams project from day-one. It’s American, it’s defence orientated and the purchase was initiated by a conservative government. Mark’s most recently ran his colours up the flag pole with Martin Chulov; the defender of the indefencable “Israel deliberately attacked an ambulance” hoax. He is tainted with an anti-military/Howard/Bush/US brush and would be better employed at The Age, rather than at the Australian.

I posted previously on the Abrams tank deal and comments were left doubting the wisdom of the the purchase but they were by people who know and make their calls based on experience, knowledge and training; not ideology.

UPDATE: Lt Gen Peter Leahy, Chief of Army agrees with me;

THE article on the Abrams tank by Mark Dodd (“Army’s $500m tanks in the wars”, 23-24/9) is disappointingly negative and ill-informed. With regard to rail transportation, when the next shipment of 41 tanks arrive by sea in Darwin in March 2007, Army will have in process the acquisition of rail carriages to move them on the north-south railway. There is no need to acquire these carriages yet. The tanks that arrived in Melbourne will be stationed in Puckapunyal and used for training at the School of Armour. There is no need for these tanks to move to Darwin.

Defence

ABC on strike

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Even Kerry O’Brien and Tony Jones have joined ABC staff on strike for more pay.

Management’s offer in July was for a 3.5 per cent annual wage increase, which unions have said does not keep up with inflation running at 4 per cent.

So the collective has demanded 16 % now plus two additional rises of five per cent.

26%….yep, that sure beats inflation.

ABC Staff are hinting at a long strike (months even) so maybe management might consider sacking a few extreme left wingers to force some balance into the ABCs reporting with new blood.

Just a thought.

P.P.McGuiness supports the strike.

But not many people will miss these programs anyway. If Lateline does not go to air on television, for example, who cares? Certainly not any of the politicians who are its usual targets. After all, Lateline plays the role of a radio program of an earlier era which went out at about the same time, as Humphrey McQueen described it, of providing intelligent conversation to a tiny audience by that time too drunk or too stoned to make their own.

So let the strikes roll on, with – one can only hope – a lockout not far down the line. And if the ABC’s new chief should surrender, does it matter? The Government doesn’t have to give them more tax dollars to pay for any wage increases. The only effect would be a further decline in quality of programs.

Filling in with BBC programming whilst on strike will only help to underline the ABC’s mediocrity as the Beebs is clearly more stylish in their pursuit of the dreams of the dark side. I note their campaign to undermine western efforts to combat terrorism has entered a new phase as they tell the world the Israelis are training the Kurds.

This mornings mail brings this report from Opinion Journal who put the report in perspective.

“The BBC has obtained evidence that Israelis have been giving military training to Kurds in northern Iraq,” according to an online piece by Magdi Abdelhadi, the Beeb’s “Arab affairs analyst”:

A report on the BBC TV programme Newsnight showed Israeli experts in northern Iraq, drilling Kurdish militias in shooting techniques. . . .

The revelation is set to cause enormous problems for the Kurds, not only in Iraq but also in the wider region.

Israel is seen as an enemy of Arabs and Muslims, both inside Iraq and elsewhere in Arab and Muslim countries.

Kurdish politicians will most likely come under pressure to explain what their semi-autonomous government has been up to. . . .

The news will most probably increase tension between the Kurds and Iraq’s Arab population, both Sunnis and Shias, reinforcing fears that the Kurds are pursuing a secessionist agenda.

This would be a serious blow to efforts for national reconciliation at a time when hundreds of Iraqis are killed every month in inter-communal violence.

Iraq’s neighbours, too, will be outraged.

Iran and Syria, which have long accused the Kurds of allowing the Israelis to operate on Iraqi territory, will most likely demand an explanation from the government in Baghdad. . . .

The BBC report will be like the smoking gun the Arab media has spent years looking for.

The New York Sun’s Daniel Freedman, noting that “BBC reports need often to be taken with a block of salt,” says that even if true, he doesn’t “see what the big deal is. The Kurds have been victimized and betrayed by almost everyone. We’d be happy that Israel is teaching them how to protect themselves.”

Here’s the big deal: The BBC is announcing that its reporting “is set to cause serious problems for the Kurds,” will deal “a serious blow to efforts for national reconciliation” in Iraq, and “will be like the smoking gun the Arab media has spent years looking for.”

It certainly sounds to us as though the BBC, far from merely reporting the facts, is pandering to Arab anti-Semitism and making an active effort to promote discord in Iraq and retribution against the long-persecuted Kurds. Such despicable behavior doesn’t deserve the label “journalism.”
As reader and blogger Cav says, Journalists are the new used car salespersons……

Politics

From the left corner only

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Tram Town always make an interesting read so last week when he linked to an article by Jennifer Marohasy and her post titled Déjà Vu on the ABC: Roger Underwood I duly went off and read it…most illuminating.

Just over a month ago, a Four Corners program on forestry in Tasmania was found by the The Australian Communications and Media Authority to be bias and inaccurate. This prompted Roger Underwood* to remember back 16 years when Four Corners, a program which claims to represent investigative TV journalism at its best, did a job on forestry in Western Australia:

Roger goes on to explain why he never watches Four Corners since his exposure to the bias of the ABC .

Go read…it’s worth it.

Politics
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