I have to be the first to admit that my immediate gut-instinct on how to handle the whole ISOL problem is to just “bomb the bastards out of existence”! But gut-instincts rarely provide solutions! The decision by the Australian government to provide air support to the UN/US/UK air forces is a bad one. For starters, there is no end-date to the support. I have already lived through two long term wars in my lifetime, and this was exactly how they protracted out into years of warfare on a devastating  scale, hoth in terms of military and civilian – usually collateral and innocent – lives. Neither war ceased after troops were withdrawn, and I see nothing different with what is going on in Iraq. Whether this war will result in feet-on-the-ground military action remains to be seen, but we ertainly can’t get drawn once again into years of warfare that is not going yo end in a toral defeat if these obscene extremist fundamentalists. Once again, religion rears its ugly head in the world. It seems we never do really learn!