Grovelled to Jakarta! Howard must have ripped whole chapters out of the Hawke/Keating playbook. It was Paul Keating who called Soeharto ‘father’. Gary must also remember that Mr Hawke and Mr Keating had to have their names emblazoned on the souls of their shoes because they were so far up Soeharto’s anus we had no other way of identifying them.

Yeah...you're right.... Howard should ignore the international and Australian intelligence community when it tells him there is something dangerous that needs to be dealt with.

What a great idea.....

Brilliant....

Of course, then if something bad happens, the author can bash Howard for ignoring the expert advice.

Heads you win, tails I lose.

Damn John Howard for not being omniscient!

"Howard should ignore the international and Australian intelligence community when it tells him there is something dangerous that needs to be dealt with."

What incredible revisionism. Contrary to what is claimed here, it was only the politicised intelligence of the Cheney-Feith kabal running the Office of Special Plans which added an imprimatur to the threats alleged by Bush and Howard. The threat didn't consist of decaying and largely inert stockpiles from the 80s either, (which there was consensus about), but rather the hundreds of tonnes of chemical weapons, mobile labs, aluminium tubes for centrifuge, and acquisition of uranium from Niger. Those were the specific allegations made before the Security Council and the world at large, to claim a Casus Belli to invade. Those were the capabilities against which Rice and Cheney hysterically claimed we could not afford to wait for the "mushroom cloud" smoking gun.

But none of those claims had consensus in the intelligence community. Indeed, the whole reason the OSP was invented to filter intelligence is because of the severe misgivings so many officers had about the basis for the war in the CIA...

To turn around now and say that the specific WMD used as the basis for the invasion had unequivocal support in the intelligence community is the therefore complete nonsense.

The pulverisation of Iraq. One million souls "shock and awed". Two million are refugees. The awful contamination of depleted uranium ordnance. The theft of Iraq's oil revenues by the CPA and chums. The ongoing theft of Iraq's still unmetered oil. The deliberate fomenting, arming and juxtaposing of rival insurgencies. The looting of the US Treasury. The Rovian theft of two US elections. The shredding of the US Constitution. A main course of Afghan heroin, with a side-salad of state-sponsored torture.

And on, and on -

Yes indeed My Government - don't get in their way. They are the new rulers of the world. You have to go along to get along.

No jet fuel fire ever melted a stick of the Trade Towers, but it withered your obsequious backbones. It was also YOU who collapsed in free-fall on 9-11. Grovelling, lying, servile - demolished. Spinning your own country, in order to yield to the myth that Bush and Cheney are of sound mind.

Deputy Sheriffs in the Great War on Truth, I salute you!

- and never use that word "intelligence" in polite company again. It's been forever corrupted.

Ah, SEDITION. Drink some today. It's a tonic.

An excellent article Gary.

You provide praise where its warranted. Hopefully Labor will genuinely extract Australia from Howard’s Iraq mess.

Note that the Air Warfare Destroyers (AWD) that you refer to as being “US-designed” were actually designed in Spain – being of the Álvaro de Bazán class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81lvaro_de_Baz%C3%A1n_class_frigate. But I agree that their key trait – the Aegis combat system – is US designed.

BBOY - my Australian and American contacts in the area you refer agree that the intelligence push on Iraq was used to justify oil and other strategic objectives of Rumsfeld and Cheney. These objectives were developed long before 9/11 and terrorism were highlighted – and long before President Bush could point to the Middle East on a map.

Pete
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com

It seems that Rudd is being condemned for not favouring Bush like a bosom friend, as Howard has gone close to making a fool of himself over. In fact, going by global opinion at the time regarding the unlawful attack on Iraq, and right now an action becoming even more unpopular, Howard and Blair backing Bush is proving not only even more irrational, but Rudd’s recent comments about the Iraqi campaign having proven another Vietnam, has proven very rational with most academic historians.

Furthermore, while Rudd has been condemned after Apec for keeping shy of joining in discussions with world leaders about global warming and such, the fact that he was not there as a world leader, his role there should have been only one of guided politeness, using his fluency of Mandarin as part of it, and not as some suggest as a show-off.

It could be said that Rudd’s showing of Curtin’s role in WW2, was not a show-off either, but an effort to show how Curtin and Macarthur talked together as equal tacticians, Curtin at times offering advice, not like Howard with Bush, Howard seemingly overdoing the role of a yes-man, not fitting between two national leaders.