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I think I must have won all the philosophical, political arguments that I was having on various blogs, because nobody's been doing any commenting about them :-). So, it is time to come up with my conclusions.

1) Australia would have done a lot better job in Iraq without the interfering Yanks. Imagine what a success East Timor would have been if America got involved. OK first of all we Shock and Awe the evil Indonesians that are there, then we send in massive amounts of troops, and then we declare victory, and then we set an election date. I don't think so.

2) Politicians would have to be crazy to flirt with the idea of banning abortions, or for that matter, any meaningful reform of both legislation on first tri-mester pregnancies and of euthanasia. There's few votes in it and on the edge of the bathtub curve I was demonstrating the slopes are steep, and that makes for a very slippery slope with regards to making clear-cut legal lines, necessary for laws to be workable. However, I do believe that people that decide to have an abortion do deserve to go to hell. I would let a higher judge than the supreme court make that call, however.

3) How is it that we can solve the policing problems in East Timor, Bougainville, Solomon Islands, etc. but somehow we bungle Palm Island policing? The truth is that the behaviour of the police gets all the blame from the Palm Islanders and other indigenous groups; The aboriginals involved get the blame from almost everybody else, and the real culprits, the politicians who make very dubious decisions with regards to the administration of these Aboriginal communities get away scott free! Ideally, Palm Island should just have a handful of police officers, but should have a plentitude of Aboriginal Liason officers. And if there aren't enough around, do what we do in foreign shores as diverse as Iraq and Solomon Islands - We train some more, until there is!

4) In a way, I have to eat humble pie with regards to Lexifab. Before the war in Iraq started, he correctly predicted that Iraq had no WMD. This leads me to believe he correctly viewed all the talk about there being plenty as complete spin. It is very likely that the espionage agencies had told the governments that on balance of probabilities there was no WMD at all to be found, and the fact that those agencies were secretive, means that the governments can interpret any information any way they like. However, I did state at the time, that even if that were so, the strategic etc. basis for war was still strong.

5) I'm going home for the weekend, and so until Monday I won't answer any comments on these posts :)