"Have further terrorist attacks been prevented? No they have not been. Has any evidence of a link between WMD and the former Iraqi regime and terrorists been found? No.Have the actions of rogue states like Iran been moderated? No. After five years, has the humanitarian crisis in Iraq been removed? No it has not."
Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia.
"Can't you rise above this? You're supposed to be the Prime Minister of Australia, not the Labor spokesman."
Alexander Downer, former Australian Foreign Affairs Minister.
"I firmly believe it was the right thing to have done...If I had been returned at the last election we would not have been bringing (troops) home."
John Howard, former Australian Prime Minister.
Of all the contemptuous decisions inflicted upon the Australian people, the decision to drag them into the Iraq War on the coat tails of the US was by far one of the worst. It was never a popular war. Support peaked at around 50 per cent and that was it. We shouldn't have been there. Toadying to George Bush was more important than finding weapons of mass destruction. George Bush patted Howard on the head and he wagged his tail, thrilled. He was duchessed like a provincial Governor, invited to the ranch, got the 41 gun salute, basked in the praise of the world's most powerful man. After the 41 gun salute his heart must have been ready to burst with pride, puffed up, all his conformity, all his toadying to the ones in power, it had all paid off, massively.
Unless you wanted to walk away from your prime ministership with a shred of integrity intact. Canada, right next to the US, wisely didn't see fit to embroil themselves in the Middle East. New Zealand, perhaps the closest analogy to Australia, didn't see fit. But we had to go, strengthening the alliance they said. I got into trouble once for saying on radio the debate would change once the body bags started coming back, but that, of course, was true. The only way that was avoided was by keeping the soldiers out of the main action, in remote parts of the desert, in the stifling heat, hated by all around them.
There could be no worse things to be these days than an American GI on the streets of Baghdad. How evil were these people? How utterly dishonest the decision. Blair, the other lead character in the coalition of the willing, has gone now. Howard, Blair, only Bush to go. And more than 4,000 American soldiers dead. And hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as the country descended into chaos. Nothing could have been more irresponsible. Howard defending the indefensible, still trying to say the invasion was not the wrong thing to do, is a sickening sight indeed. The war was never popular in Australia, but our leaders knew best, or thought they did.
$2.3 billion dollars of taxpayers money later, and the decision to go to war doesn't look heroic, it looks tacky, greedy, obsequious and pathetic. It looks like you lied to us and you lied to the world. You know no shame; nothing gets through. Insulated by their millions, the travails of ordinary people never get through. We were crucified. We found our own suffering. While Minnesota farm boys chew gum in the desert. And bury their friends. And cry in pain as they get blown to bits. And know true fear as they enter the most dangerous places on earth.
While the politicians who sent them there congratulate themselves in grand Washington balls. And Howard, sickeningly, maintains to this day it was the right thing to do. You've got to be joking. Armed to the teeth, the tanks roll into town, bristling with weapons. It was the wrong thing to do, why can't they just admit it? Almost over now, George Bush's reign is coming to an end. And not before time. In one Iraq office, perhaps more than one, a calendar marks the days until he's gone. A sign not just of disrespect, but of contempt for the idiots who sent them there. Would they send their own children there? Not in a million years.
There was only one moment when it all seemed plausible, that I thought maybe my opposition had been wrong. We were warned off. The sand whipped across their skin. The images of the giant statue of Saddam Hussein in the centre of Baghdad being pulled down were beamed around the world. There are days when you know you're watching history, I said, but almost instantly regretted it. This wasn't history; this was farce. We had lived through Vietnam, been opposed. I was almost drafted; but Gough Whitlam was elected just in time, and got us out of that fiasco. That 30 years later we could go to war by the side of the US in yet another misadventure just seemed impossible.
But it is all for others to pay "the ultimate price". There was only one justification for Australia being there, the "alliance" with the US and John Howard's so-called "friendship" with President George Bush. How these people can be such good friends when they've only ever spent a few days of their lives together I will never know, but that's the way of it. Amply rewarded for your conservatism dear chap. Amply rewarded. We'll pat you on the head and give you the military parade and the grand ball and the access to leading American figures, we'll flatter you and dismiss you; because in the end we're Australian, we're from the provinces. There's now power here. It was a stupid decision to go to war, against all common sense, and now the perpetrators of this crime look like the grimy little idiots they always were. Breaks your heart, not.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/war-based-on-a-lie-says-rudd/2008/06/02/1212258741705.html
THE withdrawal of Australian combat troops from Iraq reopened old wounds yesterday, when Kevin Rudd accused the Coalition of taking the nation to war based on a lie.
In a terse statement to Parliament, the Prime Minister said the Howard government had embarked on the mission using abused intelligence and "without a full and proper assessment" of the consequences.
Supporting the war without approval of the United Nations had set a dangerous precedent and undermined the international system, Mr Rudd said.
The Minister for Defence, Joel Fitzgibbon, said the military was overstretched with its commitments in East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq.
"Roughly half of our infantry and cavalry is somehow tied to those deployments," he said. "This is an unsustainable position." The Iraqis had not asked the Australian troops for help in 20 months, he said, and they were needed elsewhere.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hlXAnA1C36Mo_bZ4_nRwmeGreimQD9121F382
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Prime Minister Kevin Rudd accused his predecessor of abusing intelligence information to justify entering the Iraq war, saying Monday that the Australian people were misled.
In remarks to parliament on the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, which began Sunday, Rudd said the nation must learn from the errors of former Prime Minister John Howard, who sent 2,000 troops to support U.S. and British forces in the 2003 invasion.
"We must learn from Australia's experience in the lead-up to going to war with Iraq and not repeat the same mistakes in the future," Rudd said.
He criticized Howard's government for going to war without accurate information or a full assessment of the consequences.
"Of most concern to this government was the manner in which the decision to go to war was made: the abuse of intelligence information, a failure to disclose to the Australian people the qualified nature of that intelligence," Rudd said.
Before the invasion, Howard argued that Saddam Hussein had to be toppled to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. The weapons were not discovered and no definite links were established between Saddam and al-Qaida or other terror networks.
Rudd said Howard wrongly believed that Australia's close alliance with the United States left him with no choice but to join the campaign in Iraq.
"This government does not believe that our alliance with the United States mandates automatic compliance with every element of the United States' foreign policy," Rudd told Parliament.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jgmq1XAfrDpfeFyTbsiAeW7UmofgD9121FA00
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush on Monday presented the nation's highest military award to a 19-year-old soldier who died saving the lives of four comrades in Iraq by jumping on a grenade tossed into their military vehicle.
The honored soldier, Army Pfc. Ross McGinnis, "gave all for his country," the president said somberly.
"No one outside this man's family can know the true weight of their loss. But in words spoken long ago, we are told how to measure the kind of devotion that Ross McGinnis showed on his last day: 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'"...
McGinnis grew up in the rural town of Knox, Pa., about 60 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.
He enlisted in the Army after some struggles in school. Friends and family say they were watching him transform into a man.
Bush called him a regular guy, a dependable friend with a big heart and a carefree spirit. He also had a robust sense of humor, as was known as the only one in boot camp who could make his drill sergeant laugh, the president said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/01/AR2008060101919.html
- As of Sunday, June 1, 2008, at least 4,087 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The figure includes eight military civilians killed in action. At least 3,330 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
The AP count is one more than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Friday at 10 a.m. EDT.
The British military has reported 176 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia, three; Estonia, Georgia, Netherlands, Thailand, Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, South Korea, one death each.
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