A man remembers getting broken: that’s why Senator McCain fought the use of torture by the Bush administration. His condoning of Gov. Palin’s mocking of legal rights is appalling. Foreign policy be damned if you can score a God-fearing macho-versus-liberal constitutionalist point.

Labor’s policy on Afghanistan has consistently been that Australia’s presence there, rather than Iraq, represents our commitment to fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban at “the coalface”. But the promises Labor made while in Opposition are forcing our troops into a long fight that will test even the might of the United States.

There is a disturbing hollowness to much of our force. This reflects particularly badly on the Hawke and Keating governments, which left our defence forces bedraggled and grossly under-equipped, underfunded and undermanned, while proclaiming, wholly fatuously, that they had produced the defence of Australia.