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Welcoming Our Navy back into their ports will sit very comfortably indeed with most New Zealanders who remember their debt to Our Nation's WW2 dead.

Er....hmmmmm, personally I don't think we have any debt to the USA out of WWII. Am sure you already know Brian, New Zealand suffered most dead and wounded per head of population in WWII aside from Russia, even though no conflict took place within its borders. NZ also entered the war the same day as Great Britain, (September 3rd, 1939) while the USA sat on its hands on the sidelines, until it was attacked more than two years later.

<< .... I don't think we have any debt to the USA out of WWII ... NZ ... entered the war the same day as Great Britain, [Pretty bloody stupid, eh?] ... the United States of America [Although it meanwhile poured Hundreds of Billions of Dollars of the confiscated wealth of its -- and therefore of the world's -- most creative, innovative, productive and industrious citizens into arming once great Britain and to carrying that sorry socialist state on its strong and broad and courageous back -- and to arming and equipping the Soviet Union] had more sense (And a Constitution and Rule of Law!) and waited until it] was attacked more than two years later. >>

No one doubts New Zealand's bravery [Or, least we forget, Australia's!] and no one [Outside of a couple of Mad pommy UEnicks who also failed to note once great Britain's 20th century plunge into squalid irrellevence] has missed that New Zealand suffered more 20th century per capita war casualties than any other Civilized Western Nation.

But I was in New Zealand during World War Two and know as simple fact that the only reason there is a bloody New Zealand any more is the United States Marine Corps, whose 5th and 6th Divisions were billeted around my home and who, along with many of their buddies, suffered more than 90% casualties in places like Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima where they turned the Pacific War around and beat and thrashed and arse kicked Hirohito's mass-murdering Jap monsters back to the nuclear proving grounds [Of around forty-eight too few devices!] also known as the land of the rising sun.