By: Larry Williams | Monday, August 20, 2012 6:32 PM

Three more soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

The PM says NZ will not cut and run. John Key says "to leave early wouldn't be sensible, it wouldn't be practical and it wouldn't be right."

Labour wants the troops brought home early which is what the government is doing anyway.

The issue is that it’s logistically impossible to withdraw overnight. It will take months. The timeframe looks like early 2013.

The fact is, as sad as it may be, if you’re in a war zone there will be casualties.

Afghanistan is a dangerous place.

The troops that are there have to be protected as much as is possible and in that there is likely to be an increase in SAS troops but we will never know about that.

We can just hope that there are no further casualties before they eventually get out of there.

I think though, this is further evidence that Afghanistan will never recover. It’s a basket case. Always was. Once all the countries leave, it will be sheer hell.

 

ASSANGE

 

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has berated the United States from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy where he has sought refuge from arrest, challenging President Barack Obama to end what he called a witch-hunt against his whistle-blowing website.

There were your usual bunch of fringe loopy looking supporters there waving their silly placards.

Assange didn't say anything about the rape accusations he was facing in Sweden. That wasn't part of his speech.

Funny that.

 

GANG PATCHES

 

A nasty piece of work from Hone Harawira.

National MP Todd McClay has a bill that would ban gang patches in government agencies.

The bill is yet to pass its first reading.

Harawira said this about the proposal and McLay

- A "foolish dickhead" promoting a "deeply racist" bill.

- Harawira has threatened to wear a gang patch into Parliament if the bill becomes law.

- "The guy is such an idiot," Harawira said. "I'm not going to stand by and watch a blonde, blue-eyed redneck kick around poor people who, out of desperation, bond together because they see nothing in the blonde, blue-eyed society to give them a sense of hope for their own or their children's futures."

- Harawira said he understood why some people from lower socio-economic backgrounds joined gangs, adding that 90 per cent of those targeted by the bill would be Maori, making it a "deeply racist piece of legislation".

This is just another Harawira victim hood rant.

The jury has been out on Harawira for a while. He is a man filled with hatred. He cannot have a conversation on anything without being abusive. His defence mechanism is always bring out the 'racist' tag.

I think the folks can pick who the real racist is though.

He's a sad case and is surely not representative of Maori.

 

CLOSE UP

 

An interesting poll on Close Up the other night.

As Helen Kelly from the CTU was arguing her case against testing beneficiaries for drugs 17,100 voted for the governments drug testing policy and 1900 against.

Just another example of how out of touch she and the unions are with ordinary Kiwi's.

 

RUGBY

 

The test was hard to watch. Patchy. Lack of continuity. Pedantic refereeing.

The All Black deserved to win the game but the fact that what can only be described as a mediocre Wallaby team could have stolen it.

I'd expect the All Blacks to really put the Aussies away at Eden Park.