Tuesday, May 27, 2008

I'm ashamed

That we have allowed our infantry to degenerate to this shameful embarrassment is a disgrace. It means they are not receiving the proper training and experience to make them combat ready. If they were need to do the tough stuff to defend Australia they would be almost useless . If we have become so risk averse that we dare not allow our army to engage in combat whats the use of having them?

The exclusion of Australia's infantry troops from frontline conflicts, including in Iraq, has left many feeling "ashamed of wearing their Australian uniform", Army Major Jim Hammett has written.

The infantry, which makes up about a third of the army's combat forces, had not been assigned offensive actions since the Vietnam War and the special forces were seeing all the combat, he wrote.

In a separate article cited by Fairfax newspapers, Captain Greg Colton, second in command of the Sydney-based 3rd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, said infantry morale had deteriorated in the past 10 years as regular infantry units were given only "second-rate operational tasks"....

Lt Gen Leahy said he understood some soldiers wanted "a bit more of a go", but they had to understand war had changed.

"I know that the infantry have real basic skills, that they can do that traditional role of seek ... and kill and destroy.

"But we're not asking for that at the moment, that's not the environment we're in."

Leahy's comments are a nonsense, its exactly the same environment American, British etc troops are in.

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