For those of you not up on geography, Australia is that big island down under. In other words, you follow around the equator about half a turn and then allow your finger to drop down there and, as by magic, surrounded entirely by sea. you find Australia. Land of the dingo and the kangaroo, a ferocious dog sometimes accused of carrying off young children and a giant rat that can run at up to 40 mph (hopefully always away from you). Well, until now those were its main claims to fame but the upright rat has been overtaken by the latest set of orders issued by the Australian military.

Now you have to understand that there are times when article writers have to resort to making stuff up. They get desperate for new things to write about. But in this case, everything in this article is absolutely true (even the maximum speed of the kangaroo). The defense surgeon general has control over all the treatment of the troops including their medication. You will recognize that all the drugs given to the troops are paid for by the Australian taxpayers and, like us, they want assurances their tax dollars are being well spent. Well, the surgeon general has decided that erectile dysfunction drugs are being overprescribed to the troops. Just to clarify, these drugs are mostly prescribed to troops while they are on overseas deployment and, to reassure those interested in matters of sexual equality, they are not prescribed to the female troops.

After carefully reviewing their use, the surgeon general has decided that each fighting man should be restricted to just four pills a month. Now this is something of a reversal of policy. Yesterday, the myth was that the officers put bromide into the water supply used by the troops. This was to damp down their sexual desire. When you get a large number of men herded together, whether in a military context, a prison or other restricted environments, there's always a danger of excessive sexual desire. Indeed, you only have to consider the latest reports of rape in our own prisons. Many of our inmates obviously need a little bromide in their java. But putting a group of soldiers on deployment, particularly into a combat zone, and their hormones are likely to run crazy. Except not everyone's testosterone levels do rise to the occasion. Hence the Australian military's routine use of Cialis.

This does, of course, beg the question of why these soldiers use this drug. There they are out on deployment with all the others in their battalion. All the wives and girlfriends have been left at home. So is this use of the medication for self-administered relief, or do the Australians allow camp followers (this is an old way of referring to the practice of allowing large numbers of prostitutes to follow troops around), or do they engage in sexual activity amongst themselves. Australia does permit both women and gays to join up with no questions asked. So we can only be left baffled as to exactly why the senior generals want to give the troops less Cialis. What is it they are afraid of?