At around 4pm, Sky News's David Speers interviewed the Iraqi ambassador to Australia. The arms Australia was providing should be going to the central government, he told Speers, not straight to the Kurdish regional government, comparing the situation to Iraq providing weapons to the Victorian government rather than the federal government. And he hadn't even had a discussion with the government about the issue; he was hoping for one sometime this week, perhaps when Foreign Minister Julie Bishop arrives back from the South Pacific. The fact that no one in the Abbott government had bothered to speak to the ambassador of the country we're about to return military forces to was a staggering revelation.

This, naturally, sat very poorly with Abbott's claim of Iraqi support, leaving the Prime Minister looking as though he had misled Parliament on the very serious matter of putting our defence forces in harm's way.

Fortunately, the Iraqi ambassador's memory was jogged overnight. This morning, at an impromptu media conference as he emerged from the ABC's press gallery offices, he explained that the Iraqi government did indeed support Australia's arming of the Kurds, that Iraq had been consulted via "all the right channels between the two sides" "a couple of days ago" and that his remarks on Sky had been "misquoted" and "taken out of context" (presumably by himself). Baghdad, he explained, was quite happy for the Kurds to be armed. "They're Iraqis," he said, smiling, a statement that might draw a somewhat mixed response in Erbil.

Read more at crikey!: http://www.crikey.com.au/2014/09/02/iraqi-ambassador-rescues-abbott-labor-says-trust-us/

Meanwhile Labor has been swallowing whole again this US set up con-trick delivered by our own Turd-in-Chief, as Labor, led by that "nice" Simon Crean (later on, backstabber of Julia), back then, swallowed the con-trick of hands from Rattus Howard, when that trilogy of liars decided to invade Iraq... Boy!... When will these grand idiots at labor learn that war or sending weapons is not an option... All it will do is increase the stakes of a bigger war and more terrorism...

Anthony Abbott argues that the beheading of someone justifies "his" intervention in Iraq... Bollocks... This year the Saudis have beheaded 41 people, of which more than half were foreigners. Are we going to drop bombs on the Saudis for beheading people? No... We accept for whatever crook reason in our bend-heart that this represents "justice"... It does not. Beheadings in Saudi Arabia are as bad as those of Isil. All of these beheadings are performed under Wahhbist religious fervour... UGLY ON ALL COUNT.

From Bob Ellis

Strange how Abbott thinks wars win votes.

Churchill won one and was voted out by a landslide. Bush I won one, and was voted out by a landslide. Menzies declared one, and was overthrown by his party. Lloyd George won one and, after his subsequent crushing defeat, his party never held office again. Gerald Ford lost one, and was defeated by Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter stuffed up a wartime rescue, and was defeated by Ronald Reagan. John McCain campaigned for a wider war, and was defeated by a black man. Bob Hawke ‘won’ the Gulf War, and was immediately overthrown by Keating.

Abbott is ignorant of all this, and thinks all Australians (of Italian background, Greek, Macedonian, South American, German, Dutch, Yugoslavian, Indian, Irish, Pakistani, Tongan, Ukrainian) will rally behind a war with Russia, winner of World War 2. What will happen, of course, is that mothers will fear their sons will be killed, and curse, at the family table, him and his wild ideas.

Very few wars win votes. Vietnam did in 1966 but left, after the Birthday Ballot, the Liberal Party accurst. Menzies joined the Korean War and, at the next election, got fewer votes than Labor, after landsliding to power two years before.

And Abbott is now proposing we wage war on those Iraqis we ‘trained’ to defend democracy and are now attacking it ‒ with beheadings and crucifixions and forced conversions ‒ and an imperial vision so barbarous al-Qaeda wants no part of it.

Clearly, our ‘training’ did not work. Nor will our ‘retraining’, if we slaughter this lot, of their surviving Sunni cousins and Shi-ite serial murderers.

Many Australians ‘get’ this and think we should never have gone there in the first place, and are appalled we are going back.

And into a war with Russia to boot — wow.

‘Never march on Moscow’ has been a commonplace of war theory since Napoleon’s time. Hitler did, and it destroyed him. Abbott is now proposing we do this as winter approaches and run up the Australian flag on the onion domes by Christmas Day.

And he thinks the women whose schoolkids’ money he wanted to take away will come back to him because of it.

He doesn’t understand that bringing bodies home is one thing ‒ a good thing, probably ‒ and rescuing, and taking in as refugees, people trapped on a scorching desert mountainside is a good thing too. But going to war with crucifying maniacs, and going to war with the Russians, is another.

And it will destroy him, soon or late, as it did so many before him.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/abbotts-wars,6870

In most cases, the decision to deploy Australian troops overseas has been bipartisan.

No parliament has ever been given the opportunity to debate Australia's active role in a foreign conflict before the Prime Minister of the day has made a decision about committing to military engagement.

Since Federation in 1901, and for all conflicts since World War I, the Prime Minister and Cabinet have made all decisions about deploying troops.

Ms Bishop is correct.

Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-08/julie-bishop-correct-on-australia-history-at-war/5710696

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Ms Bishop may be correct about who decides on the country going to war but this does not mean that the decision to go to war is correct. It is lunacy for this country to go into yet more conflicts under the cover of whatever excuses. We know that John Howard LIED TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ. That he decided to do so was his decision, not mine and not that of many Australians who knew he was lying, and the "bipartisanship" was abused in his case. The "bipartisanship" is being abused now over again. 

It's time for parliament to debate the 'reasons' for war and expose them for the crock they are.

See toon at top.

The Federal Government is sending 600 Australian troops to the Middle East in preparation for military action against Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the United States had specifically requested Australia contribute to an international strike against the militants, who have captured large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.

Mr Abbott said around 200 troops would be sent to the United Arab Emirates within days, including a Special Forces contingent "that could act as military advisers to the Iraqi armed forces or to the Peshmerga".

They would be followed by around 400 Air Force personnel, up to eight super hornet aircraft, an early warning and control aircraft and an aerial refuelling aircraft.

Mr Abbott said Australia was "not deploying combat troops but contributing to international efforts to prevent the humanitarian crisis from deepening".

blah blah blah...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-14/australia-to-deploy-military-force-to-uae/5742498

It's uncanny that every time we elect a rattus or a turdy (Liberal —CONservative) government in this country, it's always up to war we go... And on this one we lead up the front, ahead of the Americans... Yippee!!! The pattern started with Menzies (then he got booted out) with regular repeats as if war was de-rigour for little shits like Abbott... I know, our Silver Budgie, the Nuclear industry friend, Mr Hawke, was involved in one as well, but to say the least, he was a bit on the right-hand side of politics despite being "Labor"... Since 2007 when Rudd was elected to the last election in 2013, there was no new wars on the horizon, only the downsizing (towards the end of) of the one started by Rattus-the-First in Afghanistan with his mate Bush-the-idiot... Then they lied about to launch the next one in Iraq. Idiots. 

Stop this lying turd hunger for war and glory! He is trying to look like Napoleon, considering that he now carefully brushes his hair as not to look like Hitler anymore...

Defence Minister David Johnston has warned he would not trust the Government-owned defence builder, the Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC), to build a canoe.

Senator Johnston launched the scathing attack on the ASC in the Senate during a debate about where Australia's next submarine fleet should be built.

The Government is under pressure to build Australia's next fleet of submarines locally, rather than opt for an overseas design.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has since released a statement saying the ASC plays a vital role in supporting the Royal Australian Navy.

But the ASC does not have the confidence of Senator Johnston.

"You wonder why I'm worried about ASC and what they're delivering to the Australian taxpayer, you wonder why I wouldn't trust them to build a canoe?" he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-25/johnston-wouldnt-trust-submarine-corporation-to-build-a-canoe/5917502

IDIOT !... Defence Minister David Johnston could not paddle up the creek...

South Australian senator and resident stuntmeister Nick Xenophon has been out early defending his state and the Australian Submarine Corporation from the defence minister David Johnston.

He baldly stated: “The government is up shit creek without a paddle”. So he brought one in. Apparently he is no paddler, so he had to source the paddle from a Canberra club.

Already Johnston and other government members have been out defending his comments as:

rhetorical flourish.

But the feeling in parliament is that when Tony Abbott said he had to scrape a few barnacles off the ship, he was thinking of his defence minister. And though Johnston’s self inflicted wound came after Abbott’s barnacle comment, if he did not have the minister in mind at the party room speech, he most certainly will now.

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2014/nov/26/tony-abbott-under-pressure-to-dump-defence-minister-politics-live

Meanwhile, Abbott is defending his crazy stupid minister because Abbott himself is paddling up a creek without a paddle... Please note: there is no wit on craziness in word-playing with the life of Australian workers wherever they are...

It is a bit rich that Tony Abbott now lectures us on the mess created by the US in Iraq post Iraq war... No Tony, the mess was created by the illegal war itself. An illegal war of which you were an accomplice of your then master, John W Howard. Anyone with a brain should have known that pressing this button — the Iraq war mark II — to get "rid of Saddam" was going to open the hornet nest. Saddam, don't like him or not, was like a cushion between the Shia and the Sunnis. But as we all know, then in 2002 and still now, this war was about the oil, not the people.

So Turdy Tony, still in search of glory in the sands of Baghdad, spare us the lecture to show that "you understand". You don't. Your brain is still fogged up by the illusions of Winston's war and the smell of stink bombs you might have made while you were polishing the benches of St Aloysius' College...

Can someone please explain to his short-fused little brain that what he is doing in Iraq is continuing the mess he is condemning. It ain't going to solve anything and it will make the situation worse for Australia and the middle east. War (beyond the wire — what a military euphemism for field action!) is NOT AN OPTION.

Read the trilogy and see toon at top.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott found himself more welcome in Baghdad than the Adelaide Hills on the weekend, writes Bob Ellis.

ABBOTT FOUND HIMSELF more welcome in Baghdad than the Adelaide Hills last weekend, and nervously promised them money he was taking away from soldiers’ orphans, the disabled and the old in his adopted country, Australia — a stupid thing to do.

Is there a pattern to his incompetence, or is he merely splashing around in a whirlpool of 2010 hyperbole that is slowly sucking him down?

‘Trawling for corpses’ is one of his themes. In the Indian Ocean, in the Ukraine, in the waters off Tasmania, he is spending a billion dollars in quests for the dead that might have been spent on the living, much like the relics of the saints his Church paid big money for in the Middle Ages — sacred objects in body-bags, coming home, coming home.

‘Punishing the sick’ is another. His refusal to send in willing doctors to battle Ebola in Africa; his redefinition of ‘disabled’; his insistence on old women paying seven, or 21, dollars a week to see a doctor their taxes funded for the last 30 years; his lifting of the pension age, and his cuts to hospital funding in tens of billions, indicate a healthy, muscular, sadistic male, who jogs every morning and rides most days, does push-ups, works barbells, disdaining those with less healthy lifestyles and putting the boot into them.

‘Last Post politics’ seems to be another. If there’s a war on anywhere, he wants to be in it. If there’s an anniversary of some tragedy, he wants to speak at it. If there’s a Cathedral sermon for crash victims, he wants to be its compere. Walking behind coffins, proclaiming that death brings us together and God knows what he’s doing, and it all has a purpose, suits his mindset, formed as it was in a crucifictive death cult, Christianity, whose slaughtered Messiah brings comfort, somehow, to the relatives of the recently dead; he no longer alleges they will see them again, but merely that we will remember them.

read more https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/abbott-in-iraq,7234

See toon at top...

You have to give an A+ to Tony Abbott for hypocrisy. He is a master of the attitude. Say for example, while Keating and especially Fraser resent the idea of glorifying war as the defining moment of this nation (watch out for the Gallipoli glory coming through Tony Abbot nostrils soon — I am polite) Tony and his "daddy" Howard "feel real dilemma sending troops to war". BULLSHIT. Both Howard and Abbott have lied to send soldiers to war.

Presently being the idiot in charge, you have Abbott reading with great passion (that would bring tears to a crocodile) a letter from a soldier about to die on the front during World War I... then a few days later he slashes the benefits of war veterans... Hypocrisiy plus. He could not care as long as "he looks good" for a few moments on tele. The rest is politics and fiddles. Howard sent soldiers to war on a GIGANTIC LIE... Abbott approved and is doing the same now... Hypocrite, incompetent lying idiot.

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However, we have seen cuts made in the budget, by the Abbott Government which have unfairly targeted the veterans community by:

Despite the platitudes made by the Abbott Government, their actions and budget show the truth.

The current indexation system, previously brought in by the Labor Government helps veterans to keep up with the cost of living by linking their pensions to whichever method delivers the higher pension.

Announcements were made earlier this year as part of the budget that the pensions of 280,000 veterans, war widows, war orphans and disabled veterans would be cut by slashing the rate of indexation.