US will ‘invade volatile Pak to deal with instability there’: Australian MP

SYDNEY - The ‘highly volatile’ situation in Pakistan is increasing the likelihood of a US invasion there, Australian parliamentarian Bob Katter has said.

Independent MP Bob Katter told parliament that the United States would invade Pakistan to deal with instability, and Australia must also send troops there, The Australian reported.

Speaking during the debate on Afghanistan, he said that the security situation in Pakistan was “highly volatile, ” and with the Pakistan government under increasing threat from armed fundamentalist rebels, 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 Premier 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 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, “Our troops are fighting in 2010 because Bush, Howard and others, like Tony Blair, bungled their international ascendancy in 2001-03.”

It is noteworthy the total number of Australian soldiers wounded in action in Afghanistan since 2001 has risen to 156.

A total of 21 Diggers have been killed over the same period, 10 this year alone. (ANI)