Mixed messages

Many of us watching or reading the so called news are getting the message that the personal shortcomings of Slipper and Craig Thompson are being sensationalised and given a lot of space and time in, particularly the national press, the news arena to attract attention away from the management of the Labor Party Federal Government.
Anyone digging a bit deeper than the front page of the Murdoch Press for example would find that since election to the Federal Government the Labor Party has improved the working conditions of most of the workforce of this country, they have also increased pensions, improved medical assistance, and made generous Bonus payments to many groups, many average Australians have benefitted considerably.
Their latest and most welcomed decision was to bring Australian Service People home early from the brutal and completely unnecessary invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan that the Howard LNP committed this Country to .
These Service People like English, Dutch, and U.S Service people have experienced some of the worst features of warfare and have been required to carry out some activities that Australian Forces have never had take part in before and many are, according to reports, suffering from severe mental stress .
We Australians are going to have to understand these people who will eventually come back into our civil society, but we also have to do some serious thinking about the effects that the weapons and sights that we have inflicted on the Iraqi and Afghan people generally are changing their society.
The weapons we used against these people had enormous power, missiles carrying between 500 and 1000 pounds of high explosives were launched into built up areas reducing them to rubble and killing everyone within a kilometer of the point of burst, machine guns from helicopter gun ships fired as many as 1500 rounds per minute and would tear a body to shreds .
If there is ever peace in those two countries we should be doing as much as possible to help these people to have a reasonable lifestyle.
G. H. Gilmour
Stanthorpe