The Unnecessary extended detention of ideologues and labelling people marxists has screwed the govt as well.
On the terrorist side, it has excellent rep. Interestingly both ISD and Special Branch gave significant details on the al Qaeda to the US well before the USS Cole bombing. The Americans had their head buried in their arse for so long. The Australians have been reliant on the Americans and have been misled. They even wrongly credited the Americans for intelligence obtained when it came from Singapore which they erroneously reported in their parliament.
Occasionally we get it very wrong as well. Rohan Gunaratna is a case in point. To me this is a Charlatan. On his advice we are training the Pakistanis how to rehabilitate Islamist extremist using the Sri Lankan rehabilitation scheme as an example. One is sectarian in nature involving two difference ethnicities who fought on nationalism. The other is based on level of religious fervour and mis interpretation of the Koran. Our own homegrown methodology is better.
