[paraclete]

Your understanding of our system is imperfect. The executive authority in our systems rests in the Executive Council, the Governor-General(representative of the crown of Australia not Britain) acting upon the advice of Ministers of the Crown. Each of those Ministers of the Crown are elected representatives, not appointed officials, who must answer to the parliament as a whole, and only to select committees on a few specific occasions where the parliament delegates its authority. For practical day to day operations, the Prime Minister oversees the process and the Ministers in caucus agree the course of action

A good example of how it works is that a Royal Commission has just been instigated to examine child abuse in various institutions and will be wide ranging enough to enquire into police handling of cases. No Parliamentary Select Committee could investigate in sufficient detail. Parliament has delegated its authority to a judicial process. This has gotten beyond a state process because bodies have acted across state borders to usurp the course of justice

In 1975 the monarch of Australia sacked the PM and the government of the day because they no longer had the confidence of the people and could not guarantee supply, the equivalent of your fiscal cliff. This forced an immediate election at which the people upheld the action taken. Your ideas of what we might accept or not accept are way off

[TUT317]

Good summary Clete. Tom is at least trying to understand what makes Australians tick. Having said that I also think he is one of the very few that makes the effort.

There is so much misconception over there about Australia.

The Crown of England, The Privy Council of England, The Parliament of Great Britain... whatever. They all have zero ability to influence our parliament. We are a sovereign nation. We make our own laws.

Tut

[paraclete]

And since Britain hug us out to dry in WWII our focus has shifted and our ties are a little looser.

Yes Tom does engage in discussions with us, the others are more local focused, this is why I took some time to correct his impressions

[tomder55]

To sum it up... your Executive Council is accountable to Paliament. For the same reason ;our POTUS/CIC cannot engage in a secret foreign policy without Congressional oversight. The whole Libya adventure was ill-conceived from the beginning ;and one of the big omissions was the President's vagrant violation of the provisions of the 'War Power's Act ' ,which actually allows him some flexibilty for independent action .But the act is very clear that after a short period ,the President has to make a full report .

[speechlesstx]

how many fans do you have over there it seems you spend all your time investigating shlt

If the Obama administration wasn't so full of sh!t there would be no need for investigations. Back in 2006 when Dems took control of the House and the Senate I recall that part of their campaign agenda was they were going to investigate the hell out of everything, even impeach Bush. I'm not moved by your objections to getting to the bottom of this.

People died, Obama lied - time to come clean.

[tomder55]

Besides ;another 4 star is collateral damage. The leadership at DOD and CIA are going down faster than the Stalin purge that began with the Tukhachevsky set up .

[paraclete]

To sum it up .... your Executive Council is accountable to Paliament. For the same reason ;our POTUS/CIC cannot engage in a secret foreign policy without Congressional oversight. The whole Libya adventure was ill-conceived from the beginning ;and one of the big omissions was the President's vagrant violation of the provisions of the 'War Power's Act ' ,which actually allows him some flexibilty for independent action .But the act is very clear that after a short period of time ,the President has to make a full report .

No Tom it is only convention that keeps the tie alive, like your President our Govenor-General is Commander in Chief. The office signs into law the bills the parliament has passed but can refuse and send them back. But you see we rarely get into the situation where there is unilateral action. The office is A-political, it has no alliegences to a party and a prominent person is usually appointed.

I hope you get that report in due course and it clarifies why your embassy was so vunerable. I see there is now more fallout from this Patraeus affair, you may need a clean sweep at the top of the military

[tomder55]

No kidding... starting with all the political appointees like Leon Panetta ;and probably most of the Joint Chiefs . Also I can only think of a small handful of commanding Generals who have served well in the last decade. There are many very qualified Jr Officers who could step up and fill the General ranks .

[talaniman]

No army can beat the US, but a bunch of cat fighting females can strip the stars off the generals.

[tomder55]

It goes deeper than that . Our Generals generally have not been held accountable for their own failures . Tom Ricks writes about it in this month's Atlantic . He's right ;and these idiotic scandals just illustrate the degree of the problem .

General Failure - Thomas E. Ricks - The Atlantic

[paraclete]

That is because every failure you have is a political failure, your army doesn't fail in the field so much as it fails in the fan room. Your generals have support only so long as they have results. You think junior officers could do as well. Guts and glory maybe, but a cool head and keeping themselves out of the mire. Patraeus was successful because he rethunk strategy, now he is crucified for being human. When will you yanks learn to keep it buttoned up?

I love the smell of B/S in the morning, it smells like victory

[tomder55]

Patraeus was successful because he rethunk strategy

That's correct .Early in in Iraq you did not see the insuregency in Petraeus sector near Mosul that you saw in the rest of the Sunni and Shia sections of the country. That wasn't an accident . He thought ahead about what needed to be done when the invasion phase was over . Something that the author points out that Generals like Tommy Franks didn't .

[paraclete]

You missed the point, it was Patraeus experience that counted, something junior officers lack

[tomder55]

Ummm I think the Army is run by the Colonels an LT Colonels . The Generals are supposed to have strategic vision ,a trait I haven't seen often in the current crop .

Meanwhile it's great to see Evita has her priorities straight.
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Hope she has a great time wine tasting Down Under .

[talaniman]

Generals are flawed like all us humans and deserve no higher pedestals than any of us. He screwed up with his tabloid behavior. But we are no better with our tabloid mentality.

We hate it when our heroes are caught with their pants down.

[tomder55]

The sexual angle is a side show .it does the adm a favor by diverting from the bigger stories related to Benghazi .

[paraclete]

Well Tom, conspiracy theories aside, do you think it was staged to divert attention with Patraeus the sacrificial goat or does this just mean the administration in inept in its selection of its various leaders?

[talaniman]

What was an ambassador doing at an unprotected consulate that had security issue before? With no contingent of bodyguard?

[tomder55]

Exactly... except it was not a consulate... and I defy you to find any adm quote using the word . What they continue to call it is a 'mission'.You should ask yourself some more questions . Why did Petraus have secret meetings with Turkish intelligence on Sept 3 ?

AFP: CIA chief visits Turkey for regional talks: official

Why a couple days later did Ambassador Stevens meet a Turkish counterpart on Sept 11 before the attack?
We know that one of Stevens jobs was to oversee the destruction of Qdaffy's cache of weapons. In truth ;some of the inoperable ones were indeed destroyed . But the CIA operation there was to divert the weapons through Turkey ,to arm anti-Assad insurgents . It was also there to recruit insurgents to fight in Syria.

[paraclete]

So Tom as you have all the facts would you care to back it up with some references and why would Al Qaeda object to the rebels in Syria being armed. It all seems a little twisted to me. If what you want to tell us is the CIA is up to its old tricks arming terrorists and overthrowing regimes, this is not news. Are you sure there weren't weapons closer than Libya with which to arm Syrians, after all the conflict has been going on for eigtheen months. Your next theory will no doubt be that Gaddafi had to be overthrown to arm Syrian rebels when no doubt he would have done it for free