John Howard.
Photo: Wayne Taylor
Former prime minister John Howard has hotly rejected the claim that
he led Australia into the 2003 Iraq war on the basis of a lie.
Mr Howard said the failure to find weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq after the allied invasion was ''unexpected'' and
that some of the key assessments of Western intelligence agencies
proved wrong.
But he told the Lowy Institute in Sydney, in a speech marking
the 10th anniversary of the conflict, that this was a ''world away from
those [intelligence] assessments being the product of deceit and/or
political manipulation.'' Mr Howard said the belief that Saddam Hussein
possessed WMD's was ''near universal'' at the time.
He said the bloody conflict between Sunni and Shiites which
broke out in Iraq after the war ''did more damage in my judgment to the
credibility of the coalition operation … than the failure to find
stockpiles of WMDs''. The circumstances of the time, he said,
''necessitated a 100 per cent ally, not a 70 or 80 per cent one''.
Mr Howard said it was ''implausible'' to think the overthrow
of Saddam had ''no relationship of any kind'' to the recent Arab
Spring. He acknowledged the close relationship with the US was key to
his government's decision to go into Iraq, saying, ''There was a sense
then that a common way of life was under threat.''
brisbanetimes.com.au 10 April 2013
Australia under a US coalition went to war, invaded another country under false pretenses.
Previous examples of such actions, e.g. Germany, require the invading nation / nations to give compensation to the 'illegally' invaded country.
A current example is that Germany owes Greece approximately 460 billion euro in compensation for World War II.
Australia had a duty of care to investigate the intelligence gathered, before it went to war.
Australia's 'blind' invasion of Iraq shows how much of a 'lap dog' Australia really is for the United States.
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