Serving NATO: Most Australian Combat Deaths Since Vietnam
Agence France-Presse
August 30, 2012
Australian military suffers worst day since Vietnam
Five Australian troops were killed in two separate incidents in Afghanistan in what Prime Minister Julia Gillard Thursday described as the nation’s deadliest day in combat since the Vietnam War.
The deaths, which included three killings in an “insider attack” by an Afghan solider, brought to 38 the number of Australian lives lost in the conflict.
“This is a very big toll…this is our single worst day in Afghanistan,” said Gillard, who cut short a trip to the Pacific Islands Forum to return home and deal with the fallout.
“Indeed this is the most lost in combat since the days of the Vietnam War.”
Australia’s acting defence chief Air Marshal Mark Binskin said the first incident occurred inside a patrol base near Tirin Kot in the restive southern Uruzgan province where about 1,500 Australian troops are deployed.
In the second, two Australian special forces soldiers were killed when their helicopter crashed in Helmand province.
“Three Australian soldiers from the 3RAR task group were shot and killed when an individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform opened fire with an automatic weapon from close range,” he told reporters.
The dead soldiers were aged 40, 23, and 21 and were relaxing at the end of the day when the Afghan opened fire, he added.
For peace, against war: literary selections 
Of course the Aussies should not be there, as they should never have joined the yanks in destroying Vietnam. Independent in 1901? I don’t think so.
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There were several predictable inclusions and omissions in Ms Gillard and Air Marshal Binskin’s reflexive, bathos-laden, spin and claptrap.
1. Neither mentioned the soldier’s duty to die for whatever fashionable lie he/she has been fed.
2. Neither mentioned the number of Afghan civilians killed by “our” brutal, destructive and unsolicited invasion and occupation.
3. Whilst both referred to “the (latest) job” we’re there to do (training the Afghan National Army), neither was able to define or quantify it in a way that made sense.
3a. Each of them carefully avoided explaining why they, or anyone else, should believe that the people who are losing a war can teach the people who are winning how to fight.
4. Both of them claimed to be puzzled and outraged by the ingratitude of the shooter – apparently incapable of grasping the concepts of blowback and payback.
5. Anyone stupid enough to blunder into a tribal culture to indiscriminately kill tribesmen (without studying the implications of the payback tradition) has no right to whine indignantly when the tribe becomes indiscriminately hostile.
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Ms Gillard’s latest contribution to War on Terror inanity, on tonight’s news, was to assert that we have to stay in Afghanistan to bring the people killing our (invading, uninvited) troops to justice.
If she can prove she hasn’t got a Swiss Bank Account full of Yankee Dollars, and/or Shekels, I’ll bare my bum in Bourke Street.
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