SYDNEY
The “highly volatile” situation in Pakistan is increasing the likelihood of a US invasion there, Australian parliamentarian Bob Katter said on Tuesday.
Independent MP Bob Katter told parliament that the US would invade Pakistan to deal with the instability and Australia must also send troops there, The Australian reported.
Speaking during a debate on Afghanistan, he said the security situation in Pakistan was “highly volatile”, and with the government under increasing threat from armed fundamentalists, a US military invasion was inevitable.
“Having said all those things, there has never been any doubt in my mind that if the Americans go in and they request us to go in, we absolutely must go in,” he added. However, Greens leader Bob Brown gave a very different view, calling the Afghanistan war a “strategic stuff-up”, with former Australia prime minister John Howard to blame, along with George W Bush and Tony Blair.
The Bush administration bungled its war aims by invading Iraq straight after gaining control of Afghanistan in 2002, he said. “John Howard’s role as a deputy sheriff, or as George Bush put it in this parliament in 2003, a man of steel, cannot be forgotten or disregarded,” said Brown, adding that “our troops are fighting in 2010 because Bush, Howard and others, like Tony Blair, bungled their international ascendancy in 2001-03”.
The total number of Australian soldiers wounded in action in Afghanistan since 2001 has risen to 156, while 21 have been killed, 10 this year.
US will invade volatile Pakistan, says Australian MP
