This from Defence Minister Dr. Brendan Nelson.
The defence update we’re releasing today sets out many priorities for Australia’s defence and security – and resource security is one of them.
And this.
Obviously the Middle East itself, not only Iraq, but the entire region is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world
Over the past few years we’ve had just about every government minister from the PM on down deny any such policy link existed. So those who claimed that this was a war for oil were right. We now have an explicit policy linking our national energy security to possible foreign excursions.
So why don’t I feel vindicated about this admission?
Because it leads us to assume that the natural resources of any nation are not theirs to exploit in the way they see fit, including ours. In fact they do so only at the discretion of the big capitalist powers and their interests. Gone too is their right to sell or not sell to who they please.
Nothing must interrupt the right of the great powers to live the lifestyles of the rich and famous. A lifestyle that is wholly due to previously cheap and abundant supplies of energy.
This of course can only mean more war if any oil producing nation refuses to sell to these capitalist powers. In a future that looks to be energy poor and with increasing re-nationalisation of energy resources around the world this looks like an inevitable outcome as those nations look to satisfy local demand over exports.
Memo to all oil producing nations. All your oil are belong to us and so much for your self determination and sovereignty.
Elsewhere: A far left populist has his say.
Gee, it’s not looking good for a country full of uranium then, is it.
If you’re looking for a money quote, this isn’t perfect but it’s pretty close:
I’d imagine that this will be a long thread with all the Howard Huggers queueing up to apologise for his blindness on this point for so long.
I suspect the good doctor Nelson will receive a memo from his comrades, politely requesting that he cease putting his foot in it when being interviewed on ABC. Ditto Abbott.
Next we’ll have Howard saying ‘I can’t believe you all fell for that children overboard thing’…
all we are sayyyyyyyying….is give exxon a chaaaaance
ALL TOGETHER NOW…
It ain’t just the uranium, PC. (Link is to a PDF file)
Hey but, Halliburton built us a railway line from Darwin to Alice, right alongside all those uranium deposits, and all that muckety land good for burying waste, just have to get those dirty irresponsible third worlders out of the way under the cover of a national emergency, and then she’ll be right, we are only in the Middle East to keep our hand in the oil bucket until we move to a nuclear economy sometime after the next election, when our soldiers can come home…
I’m sorry, but this is less a SHOCKING ADMISSION!!!!1! than just another example of Nelson not knowing what he’s talking about.
I’ve never heard a convincing argument to somehow show the 2003 invasion helping at all to secure flows of oil from Iraq. The Oil for Food programme, you might all remember, was quite efficient at allowing lots of oil to get sold, though it wasn’t much chop for anything else. We also bought oil from a large number of other countries, and continue to do so. If oil was the main concern, even amongst others, and given that in 2003 the US was perfectly willing to antagonise the UN, invasion should have been the least attractive option: the Coalition of the Willing countries should simply have grouped together to break the sanctions.
I certainly can’t think of a good argument to link Australian forces in Iraq to energy security.
That seems to be (alas) true for future expeditionism, but it means nothing in the historical argument about What The Invasion Was About.
Guys, invading Australia for its uranium reserves is an even worse deal, economically, than invading Iraq for its oil.
If we stopped mining the stuff, there’s plenty of other places you can get it. It doesn’t really matter if you have to pay a higher price, because it’s such a small component of the cost of nuclear power.
Just wondering whether anyone see a possible backlash to this speech given that the war and the environment are two points where people seem to be irritated by government policy?
If you’re fed up with the war and the government’s reasoning for it, then this might sound like another in a long line of excuses, in which case it’s unlikely to persuade you.
If you’re fed up with the government’s inaction on environmental issues, saying that we need to secure oil probably isn’t an out and out winner.
Does anyone think that there are people on the margin who could be swung against the government after hearing this speech?
Do we think that the kinds of people mentioned above all belong to the same group, or not? If not, is this likely to present a possible united front for public opposition?
FdG’s right: it’s not about securing the flow of oil, it’s the price; all those bribes we had to pay.
Absolutely right PC. It’s about time we rid the world of the dictatorial Canadian scourge.
I seem to remember weapons of mass destruction and liberal humanitarian concern being involved in the casus belli. I don’t know, maybe my memory’s defective or something.
Phil
Just about every war since WW1 has been about oil. The horrible human irony is that the world realised that WW1 was won with oil, and that henceforth wars could only be won with oil. Therefore wars had to be fought to guarantee control of oil in case a war broke out which would require oil.
Yep, a whole lot of reasons given FdG, but this has always been central to the equation stated or otherwise. But lets for the sake of argument assume this is a new after the fact reason that still raises a lot of questions not the least of which is this one.
Are Australians prepared to support wars in far off lands in exchange for energy security?
I’m guessing yes.
As for our uranium not being ours to exploit? Well in so far as we continue to give free and unfettered access to the big globalised energy companies and their shareholders then it’s not a problem, if however the political climate surrounding energy changes and a future PM decides that it’s not in the best interests to export our limited energy resources and that we should use them to satisify our demand then lets see how far we get with that.
You have to hand it to Brendan he is a… “as we go forward into the future”.. kind of guy.
Just heard him drop that one on the midday ABC news while talking of this tiny change in government motive. Then I did a google of that brilliant expression. Guess who turned up? Our Bren is famous for it.
Just imagine how bad it would be if ‘we were going backward into the past?’
Government election slogan:
Petrol prices will always be lower under a Liberal government
A money quote from a Neil Mitchell interview with the PM on February 7 2003, courtesy Crikey:
Phil: if you really think that the world’s uranium resources that scarce, go buy into uranium miners real quick.
Frankly, I wouldn’t if I were you.
Put yourself in the shoes of an Iraqi insurgent, fighting to rid his country of the foreign military occupation. Imagine what this sort of shit sounds like to them:
“Yes, we are in your country to secure our oil habit, and no, we will never leave until the last drop of black gold has been sucked from your desert sands. And we will keep on bombing you and killing you and imprisoning you and torturing you and sodomising you and your women and children until you stand aside and let us have what we want.
And we will support a puppet government in Baghdad, and prop them up with military support of every kind imaginable, and we will call this a functional democracy, and we will draft an Oil Law and push it under their noses until they sign it, and if they don’t sign it we will force them from government and we will find other leaders who will follow our instructions, and we will command these leaders to do as we say.
Then we will send in our oil companies, surrounded by private mercenary armies, and if you so much as look at them we will call down death from the sky, with thousands of troops storming out of our permanent military bases… etc etc. Resistance is futile. Give up now.”
Then imagine what these same insurgents might think of anti-Western propaganda from Islamic fundamentalists.
If our own words and actions are confirming everything the Islamic fundamentalists say, is it any wonder such hateful theology is on the rise?
The bogus “war” or terrorism was really just another excuse to grab oil, and increased terrorism is just an inevitable by-product of that oil grab, and thus the whole “War” operation becomes a self-fulfilling cycle that never ends till all the oil is gone, or all resistance is terminated (with prejudice).
The truth is that the Iraqi insurgents will never be able to defeat the military might of the USA. As Bush says repeatedly, all the USA has to do in order to “win” is just refuse to ever withdraw. And they only way our corrupt government will ever be forced to withdraw is if we, the people of the invading nations, force them to do so.
A long list of honourable countries refused to partake in this illegal invasion, Many more have quietly withdrawn after recognising the gross violation of human decency to which they were contributing. Australia remains.
What has become of us, my fellow Aussies? How did we come to re-elect John Howard when we knew – we knew! – this horrible truth?
Who are we? Where are we going? What kind of world are we creating for our children and our children’s children?
Robert. If we go nuclear, and you know that’s something I don’t disagree with, and roll out the plants necessary to give us the base that we currently have with coal, our reserves won’t look so long term, it is effectively finite. Like oil.
In fact if the world was to go nuclear in a big way, we’d be talking tens of thousands of plants around the world needed to supply current electricity demand, show me where that means we won’t get to some sort of end point with uranium? And show me where uranium producers don’t end up where oil producing nations are right now?
From the Washington Post in 2002:
Not only were we lied to about the motivation for the war, but the cheap oil never arrived due to problems controlling Iraq after their police and local governments were smashed.
Nelson/Downer/Ruddock/Howard – not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer, but we already knew that. What do we have to do to rid ourselves of these idiots? Concrete suggestions please.
Howard went to war in Iraq so as to keep his shiny gold stars with George Bush which is probably the dearest thing for the Rodent. Not WMD, not human rights (does Howard even understand the concept?), not oil. George Bush went into Iraq for several reasons not WMD, not human rights (does Bush even understand the concept?) but oil was certainly one of them. Not however to ensure that the US is able to keep an oil supply There’s plenty of oil around for that. Plus, Gwynne Dyer says, no matter who’s in charge in Iraq (or other oil producing countries) they’ll keep selling oil. No it was more to ensure control over who else gets access to Iraqi and Middle Eastern oil – in particular China.
That, of course, is a problem for Australia as China is so important for our economy these days, to say the least.
If you say so, Gandhi. Because countries like Afghanistan, Sudan and Yemen have so much of it, presumably.
Well certainly they were in the last most significant War For Oil And Energy Security—the war in the Pacific, 1941-45. They probably remain keen for a bit of a hydrocarbonic touch-up (Venezuela: ten cuidado de los Australianos!). I imagine they would have backed an invasion of Iraq in 2003 on energy grounds too, if that really had a great deal to do with it.
Rob Merkel said of uranium:
Goes for oil too. In 2003, oil security for Australia, the UK and the US would have been best served by non-invasion. If nothing else, Saddam Hussein’s regime was a perfectly competent wholesaler of oil.
This whole ‘it was always about the oil’ smacks of an unhealthy occultism, of looking for hidden signs to find secret meaning.
Just thinking about this – can anyone point out to me any countries with:
* a lot of oil;
* governments that are actually accountable to the people; and
* governments that would want to stop or even slow down the pumping of oil on to the world market at prices even close to the current ones?
I can’t think of any.
.
If there is one thing that I see time and again it is the confusion of the interests of the people with those of the government. They are rarely the same – even in Australia, never mind those countries where there is no need to have a democratic mandate to govern.
.
N.B. – I am not saying we should invade all or any of them, just trying to ensure the debate looks at the consequences of the argument. It will lead to the impoverishing of the people of the country.
We’re in a stinkhole so why maintain a presence forever? Saddam was stopped very smartly when he attempted to expand his reserves at a fraction of the cost of this disaster. So yeah control of oil…wouldn’t have anything to do with the promised land would it?
FdG. Secret meaning? Where do you get that? It’s hardly been a secret. The truth always gets teased out over time, then it becomes conventional wisdom. In this case the policy has just met with the caus belli that’s always been out there. Everything else has been a lie to this point.
BTW where exactly are the other places to get this endless supply of oil? Just askin? Show me? In quantities that actually mean something for future supply.
Nelson’s statement goes to the heart of a simple fact. The ME is where the action is. There ain’t many places left where the stuff is so readily available at a price that we can afford.
Here we go, Phil. The countries topping the list of oil imports to the US? Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Algeria… then Iraq. Get some, Marines!
Actually, you know, I wouldn’t mind a bit of Nigerian invasion action. Might dry up the flow of 419 emails I have to constantly delete.
Well, not really, no. And even if that were true, the simple fact that a country contains oil is a reason to trade and ignore human rights abuses, not invade.
I mean the apparent need to find a sinister motivation behind the invasion. Is it not enough reason that the Bush/Cheney administration simply wanted a good fun war against a régime that richly deserved it?
It’s interesting in light of this recent admission
“In a stunning interview for the French (reference) daily Le Monde, Fatih Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (i.e. the intergovernmental body created after the oil shocks of the 70s to coordinate the West’s reaction to energy crises) effectively says that peak oil is just around the corner, and that without Iraqi oil, we’ll be in deep trouble by 2015:”
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/2721
For those who give a rats there is more background at this link http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/2661
While oil was, and is, central to the Iraq invasion, the US never intended to “steal the oil”
The war always had energy security at its heart, but also the missionary zeal of the neocons hoped to spread liberal democratic capitalism from Iraq outwards. Their biggest prize would have been toppling the vile House of Saud.
The thinking was that liberal democratic governments could finally release the US from the Cold War ‘empire by proxies’ strategies it had adopted against the Soviet Union’s own ‘empire by proxies’ (and in the case of Egypt, of course, basically physically setting up shop).
There was also the issue that Saddam had started to sell his oil in euros and the planned Tehran oil exchange was planning to also. The impact of the oil fiat currency switching from the greenback to the euro would have had a catastrophic impact on demand for US Treasuries that has underpinned its twin-deficits and China’s boom.
And when sanctions were lifted, France, Russia, and China had already tens of billions of dollars of contracts already signed by Saddam, which would have left the US out of the fun.
Heh, you got me there FdG.
Tanks for the link RobWindt, I was gonna post that at some point. It’s an important read.
Fiasco da Gama:
From The Guardian America’s pipe dream – A pro-western regime in Kabul should give the US an Afghan route for Caspian oil.
Surely someone as erudite as FdG would know this or did he just forget?
Phil
First of all, I don’t think anyone has claimed that the supply of oil is ‘endless’? But for info on the supply of oil world wide you might like to look at
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/presentations/2000/long_term_supply/sld011.htm
And
http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6848&contentId=7033471
In the second reference, check out the ‘workbook’ link under ‘Historical Data’.
FdG,
I you really want to know why we invaded Afghanistan, think pipelines. Ted Rall has some good books, cartoons and columns for you to read.
Nobody is rushing to invade Sudan and Yemen, as I noted.
And you seem to have forgotten how the USA did in fact sponsor a 2002 coup in Venezuela, only to see it fail even more precipitously than the ongoing Iraq fiasco.
FdG – err, Sudan has oil.
Quite a lot of it, in fact. Try googling for the two words “sudan” and “oil”.
Or, alternatively, we project power there so that they can keep their right to sell or not sell to who they please. For instance, not letting Iran close the straits of Hormuz during the Iraq-Iran war. There has probably been at least one US carrier group in the gulf continuously since 1979.
What is it they say about people who assume?
In your case you mistakingly assume that you have something worthwhile to contribute to this discussion.
Gandhi must be taking the piss, as well as drinking it. Rall is a talentless, tuneless moron kept employed for having the correct views. Why anyone would imagine they could learn something about Afghanistan by reading his carpet-chewing rants is a mystery. They couldn’t even learn how to draw from them.
Much less that Afghanistan was invaded for a freaking pipeline – like the Taliban couldn’t be bribed to allow a pipeline if it was so lucrative. So when can we see construction start g-man? 2010? 2020? The world ends in 2038, so we better get a wriggle on.
Adrian, you’re assuming that too.
That last post should have looked like this-
That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day(apart from the first half of the first sentance which is spot on).
Does anyone really beieve the the US would prefer a democratic SA implementing the will of the Saudi people in place of the current bunch of highly reliable despots???
Craig Mc,
And the fact that Afghan President Karzai is a former Unocal employee is just a coincidence, right? Hmmmmmmnnnnnnnn??????
It’s a double-edged scimitar to be sure. Those reliable despots stay in power by blaming the joos and americans for all the ills of the world via their lavish wahibism sponsorships (coming soon to a mosque near you). Which in turn produces more jihadis for both Scotsmen to kick in the goolies, and also sport for the local repression forces.
If the reliable despots suddenly got unreliable and disappeared, all those angry jihadis would be free to create havoc, and they certainly would. But would there be the long-term pressures to create more? Quite possibly not – these things tend not to fester in democracies. Managing that cusp is the trick, just like it was when the USSR crumbled, and for all I know, like China will be next decade.
As long as we shovel money to the Saudis it’s likely we won’t ever find out, but come day one of fusion power and $5/barrel oil we well might.
FdG,
Securing energy is as much about ensuring a ready supply to ones self as it is denying that supply to others.
Look at a map of the world for a second. Look at all the potential US enemies/adversaries much closer to the ME: China, Russia, even Europe.
Control the ME resources, you control your potential enemies. Simple.
Oil from Canada/S. America/some parts of Africa is all very well but is not strategically meaningful. The action is in the ME, always has been and will continue to be until the last drop of oil is extracted.
This was never about democracy, human rights or any of those other silly things. They were simply put into the political bloodstream to fool the rubes.
In any case, if your thesis was correct, the foreign occupation would have ended long ago. If my theory is correct, they’ll stay for a very, very long time.
I think those “permanent bases” support my theory – what do you think?
Shorter Ratty: When all else fails, ‘fess up.
On the bigger issue, John Greenfield on 5 July 2007 at 2:45 pm is correct.
Like the oil in Germany and Japan?
Gee Gandhi, would you like to throw in any more crackpot sources while you’re at it?
Gandhi, that’s nonsense. Karzai was never a Unocal employee. That canard was started by a single report in Le Monde in 2002 but for which it has not offered a scintilla of evidence to back its claim although the media being what it is it pops up from time to time.
The claim was, essentially, that in 1997/98 Unocal entered into negotiations with the the government of Afghanistan, the Taliban, which had come to power in 1996, for the right to build a pipeline from Central Asian republics to the Indian Ocean through Afghan territory and that Unocal engaged Karzai to be their local rrepresentative for those negotiations. Such negotiations did take place but Karzai and Unocal both deny that he had any involvement in them. His denial is credible because at the time of the negotiations he was in exile in Pakistan, having had a fall-out with the Taliban after they (he alleges) murdered his father, a significant Pashtun clan chief in Afghanistan. With the bad blood between him and the Taliban at the time he would obviously have been the last person Unocal would choose as its go-between in negotiations.
But so what if he not had his falling-out with the Taliban and had been an advisor (not an employee as you have described him) at the time. That’s the way business is done in much of the world, including in Australia. If you want to get things done you do it with the help of people with local knowledge and influence.
See, I don’t think I *have* expressed a thesis except to deny the one that makes petro-dollars the exclusive motivation of US foreign policy. I don’t think it’s too ludicrous to accept that the invasion of Iraq was badly thought out at every level, tactically and strategically. I stand by what I said earlier, that:
Katz:
You’re laying into him because you think he’s telling the truth? The guy can’t fucking win with you.
FdG
What happened to the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf?
Did the villagers say, “LBWCW, we’ll overlook your record as a liar. In fact, in future, we’ll treat everything you say as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”?
No, the little liar (by whom, of course, I mean the LBWCW) was treated with the suspicion and disdain that he richly deserved, given his form as an inveterate liar.
Fiasco da gama wrote:
He should never win. This issue has been fudged, obfuscated, covered up, tiptoed around and generally bastardised since the the f*cking day this little tool decided to throw our lot in with the criminals running the US. He has denied right up until today that the war had anything to do with oil, now a sudden, defiant confession. The real tragedy is that the old bastard won’t live long enough to see his precious “legacy” dragged out into the sunlight so we can see just what a bunch of witless fools we elected in 1996, when we get to see the truth about AWB, pre-planning for the Iraqi re-invasion and what these idiots knew about it. He deserves not only to lose the next election, but to be run out of the country on a rail covered in tar and feathers.
Gotcha Katz. So though you agree with cut ‘n’ paste Greenfield that the war was about oil, you don’t believe the Government when they say that oil is worth warring for. At least you’re consistently inconsistent.
(Adrian: that’s how you sledge.)
Wikipedia might be of help to you.
In any case, your comment supports my argument not yours: What were the bases in Germany for in the first place? To stop the USSR from streaming across Western Europe! And Japan? China!
Judicious placement of military assets to protect vital strategic interests. Oil isn’t the only valuable resource.
Except for, you know, this:
Your “good, fun war” theory doesn’t really explain the need for permanent bases. Or why the occupation continues. Control of oil to deny potential enemies does.
I agree that the execution of the war has been farcical, but that doesn’t change the underlying motivations.
Wrong FdG.
Those who’ve been around the blogs long enough. (I used to post at Quiggin) will tell you that my objection to the War on Iraq wasn’t based on a moral argument.
Rather it was based on my scarily accurate prediction that Chimpo, the Poodle and Ratty would make an utter cock-up of it.
Of course oil is worth warring for. It’s so worth warring for, you’d think that the invaders would try extra hard to get it right.
One of those efforts might be to explain to the voters why an extra effort ond more sacrifice for something as vital as oil is a very appropriate use for the nation’s blood and treasure.
But that did Ratty do instead? Yes that’s right. He lied.
So if you want to be more like Adrian, FdG, you must try harder.
I don’t care if you agree with Brendan Nelson about wars-for-oil, Katz, that’s not the point. First you give Howard a serve for lying (which is entirely warranted, I’m with you there) then you give him a serve for ‘fessing up’. Which is it to be?
Following below from ABC online this morning is what was meant to be El Rodente’s grab-du-jour:
“Australia facing ‘major military struggle’ against terrorists”
Then along came Stud Nelson with his “faux pas”.
Ratty is ropeable.
From the Govt Gazette
“I had a look at what Brendan said and I think in fairness to him he didn’t quite say that,” Mr Howard said on Macquarie Radio.
“I haven’t said in my speech that the reason we went to Iraq is oil or the reason we’re staying there is oil.
“We are not there because of oil and we didn’t go there because of oil. We don’t remain there because of oil. Oil is not the reason.”
One of them is telling the Truth, and it ain’t Ratty.
There is also the fact that the “fess up” maybe a pre-emption of reports that are likely to come out with the dethroning of Blair and the reopening of investigations into the Bush administration on its conduct from September 11 2001 up to the invasion of Iraq.
I have nothing concrete yet but the feel around is securing an estimated 3 to 5 trillion US dollars in Iraqi oil, along with stopping it being traded in Euros, played a big part in the invasion planning for that time period, and Howard was in the know for some of it.
Didn’t take long for that particular window of opportunity to slam resoundingly shut.
Fiasco, repeat after me: John Howard and ‘fessing up’ do not, and never will belong in the same sentence.
Neither.
My confected quote is a parody and perhaps a paraphrase of Ratty’s own thought processes.
Just how do you think Howard explained his sudden candour to himself?
Can you do better in as few words as my rather elegant apophthegm?
From ABC online:
The Defence Minister, Brendan Nelson, says it is in Australia’s interests.
But the Treasurer Peter Costello disagrees.
Prime Minister John Howard told radio 2GB Iraq is not about oil.
The Greens:
The Democrats:
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd :
So why did they go into Iraq?
We know it wasn’t because of WMD – Howard had ONA reports on his desk clearly stating Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al were fabricating the “evidence” for WMD and duping Colin Powell.
Oil was clearly a factor, as has just been admitted (sort of). Maybe it was Saddam’s intention to sell it for Euros and cause the US dollar to collapse (given it is no longer linked to a gold standard)?
Then is the theory that they were basically stupid and thought they were doing the right thing and that it would all work out OK, despite the military doctrine that nobody can successfully “occupy” another nation, as we are now seeing.
Maybe they really thought they would “get rid of all the terrorists” even though they have created a whole lot of new ones and not even caught Bin Laden.
It seems they are collective losing the plot now – 3 different stories from the Treasurer, the Defence Minister and the Prime Minister. It will be interesting to watch how Howard weaves all together into a semblance of order. Maybe Nelson will take a dive, as Campbell did eventually.
I dunno, based on the quotes in the linked article (and nothing else, to be fair — if Howard’s made a direct statement, I wouldn’t of seen it), the Kremlinologist in me thinks that Nelson is not at all ‘confessing’ to a concealed oil motive in the 2003 decision to go to war; he’s simply stating, in sort of roundabout diplomatic terms, the nature of the facts as they stand today.
What he’s admitting to, in essence, is the central fact that Bush fucked up on an unimaginably gigantic scale, by failing to plan for and neutralize the vicious internal struggles and resulting civil war that every schoolboy knew to expect in a Saddam-less Iraq since way back in 1990, if not earlier. The oversight was and remains one of such stupefying incompetence that I get the feeling I must be living in a science fiction movie. I mean, *nobody* could have been *that* stupid, right?
It follows that, regardless of what you think of “oil-as-a-motive” back in 2003, it’s a live ball right here and now, because Bush’s stupidity has put the oil prize within reach of Iran, AQ, and any number of other factions that are inimical to Western interests. And that will remain a significant security risk. The Kuwait war was fought for the perfectly legitimate reason of keeping a combined massive oil stranglehold out of the hands of a crazy dictator; a continuing troop presence in Iraq now, it’s arguable, would be (morally uncomfortable but strategically logical) justified in light of keeping the same situation from developing vis a vis Iran or AQ or some other ugly faction. Which of course is all Bush’s fault.
Lead sentence of the article: “Defence Minister Brendan Nelson says securing the world’s oil supply is one of the Federal Government’s considerations as it decides how long to keep troops in Iraq.”
Well it sure as shit has to be a key consideration NOW. Note that he’s talking present and future tense. What I see between the lines is not “Yep, we were always trying to steal their oil,” but, “Thanks a lot, President Fucktard. Now we have to stick around for Lawd knows how long, just to keep the oil out of the hands of Dr. Evil.” Well, I mean the *other* Dr. Evil, not Cheney.
As I go forward into the future, it is important for me to secure an income . . I can now, according to the moral line of the
goodbad Dr Nelson, presumably use this as justification for peddling pot perhaps? Or maybe a bit of cat burglary? Anything goes in a cowardly new world as we go forward into the future, securing resources. I always wondered how one morally justifies looting and pillaging. I only needed to wait until today.Do these, (I like that, not the sharpest knives in the drawer) think that the general populous has sunk so low that we will think it perfectly alright to kill, maim, and terrorise innocent people, thousands of miles away in order to secure ‘resources’?
I’m a bit concerned about the way he spoke of the entire Middle East region. Major war, coming to a planet near you. I wonder if this has made international news? Ooops yes it has. “Australia in it for the Oil”.
Nice theory JPZ.
It is highly likely that oil supply security has increased as a factor since 2003.
However, to say that it has grown in importance is not the same as saying that it did not exist as a consideration in 2003.
And to admit that the issue of energy security is now in play, when it was not in 2003, when all that oil was controlled by the beastly Saddam Hussein, is to admit that the whole enterprise of Iraq is going terribly badly.
But the official song sheet on that issue says that the invasion and latterly the “Surge” the producing a million specks of light.
Now, which one is it to be?
1. It was always a little bit about oil. We just lied to you about that, so that you would get too upset over a trifle.
2. It wasn’t about oil at all at the beginning. But since then we’ve been so utterly incompetent that we’ve stuck your SUV to the tarbaby of Iraq, and now you’d all better learn how to ride bicyicles.
Link, Metafilter are certainly on to it.
Link, you need to think of “the potential going forward for the long term”, as spoken by US Trade Rep Susan Schwab on tonights, 7.30 report.
Bren may not be the top gun in the arsenal, but he’s ours.
He is a doctor after all.
Drops hand grenade and then leaves for OT.
Can’t do better than that.
I don’t think so Katz. You know what they say, those who can, do, those who can’t, cliché.
(Paragraph two, JPZ: I take my hat off to you.)
Wow, the Germans must have felt so cheated to have the US prevent that. Er, how does that support your argument that the US would only have bases in Iraq just to get all the oil? That was your argument, wasn’t it?
Which also seems to be the premise of this original post: If the Americans do something, it must therefore be bad for everyone else. Therefore everyone must oppose the Americans. There’s no such thing as convergent interests in Phil’s world.
Yes, one group of strategic assets are your friends, including fragile, sputtering democracies you’ve spent billions establishing at far greater political and monetary cost than it would take to just buy all the oil from an unembargoed Saddam.
Of course one of the reasons for having forces in the gulf is to protect oil trade. They’ve been doing it since flares. It doesn’t mean they’re stealing all the oil, which is just the childish imagination of the Captain Queeg left, except Queeg was at least right about the strawberries.
jpz gets it.
“A far left populist”
LOL> Cheers, Phil.
I’m surprised so many are going down the oil route with this. Sure it played a part in the invasion but I’ll throw in my 2 cents. I believe the invasion has been going exactly as planned. Quite a lot of people knew hell would break loose if Saddamn and his bluffing was dethroned and I’m sure plenty in the US administartion would’ve known that too. I honestly believe the whole point of it was to create chaos and anarchy.
Firstly as most know there is no business like war. The US was always goign to profit hansomly in defence contracts no matter who was invavded. But Irag had the appeal of Saddamn and Dubya’s daddy couldn’t do him so “honouring” the family name with that scalp would’ve always been a juicy carrot. By creating what they knew would be permanent chaos (on a much larger Israel/Palenstine scale) it could always be used to expalin or justify just about anything imaginable. A boogey man grab bag of sorts that could distort whatever situation the US and it’s allies see fit to continue to push a certain agenda.
Why do you think they’ve stopped looking for Osama (or never really started)? He can be used as a poster child for the US and co. and also by terrorists for recruting purposes etc. in a never ending battle of wars/rights being stripped/oil etc and civilisation is at their disposal for as long as both sides see fit.
What? That doesn’t even make sense.
No, silly boy. The bases are there to deny potential enemies access to the energy.
Oil is the lifeblood of a modern army. Without it, your army is going nowhere. Control your enemy’s access to oil and you control your enemies.
And who is saying its a bad thing? Look at what Katz says – warring for oil is a perfectly valid. Just don’t lie about it and say its for “democracy” or “WMD” or “freedom”. And for god’s sake, don’t f*ck it up!
For the love of God … no! no! no! Nobody is talking about “stealing” the oil as a reason. Jesus.
Nothing said by jpz contradicts my point. Although it does contradict you.
Link from Dead Reckoning that shows the extent of US bases around the world (massive) and the amount they spend on Defenc(s)e.
http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/reserve-currency/2007/07/05/
Nelson’s statement looks like a post facto justification, possibly made in order to link the issues of Iraq and petrol prices in an election year. If I am not mistaken, he was offering it as a reason to stay in Iraq, not a reason for invading in the first place.
The biggest problem I have with a lot of Iraq war commentary, both pro and anti-war, is the tendency to explain the now well known mistakes of the early invasion period simply by saying “Bush screwed up.� Often no attempt is made to understand why the US acted the way it did in post-invasion Iraq.
Yet why the US acted as it did is extremely important, because it sheds light on its motives. I think, for example, that the under-resourced and under-planned WMD hunt suggests that WMD may not have been the big deal they were made out to be.
The actions of the Bush Administration don’t seem to be those of someone seeking control of oil either. A US mainly concern with oil would have had security as its number one priority. It would have gone in with plenty of troops, co-opted the eminently corruptible Iraqi army, found some strong man from amongst its ranks willing to do what the US said and put him in power. Alternatively it could have done what Paul Wolfowitz suggested in a statement to the House National Security committee in 1998 and established “a liberated zone in Southern Iraq [where the oil is] comparable to what the United States and its partners did so successfully in the North in 1991.�
Instead the US went in with inadequate forces, abolished the army, implemented de-Baathification and took over the troublesome city of Baghdad. Rather than taking control it robbed its self of all the implements it could have used to gain control. The neoconservative belief that democracy is the natural state of mankind and that it will simply emerge if all those things which impede it are removed, along with Rumsfelds plans for military transformation explain these actions. Oil lust does not.
“that shows the extent of US bases around the world (massive) and the amount they spend on Defenc(s)e.”
I wonder if it also shows this amusing little co-related statistic…
Number of world wars fought on planet earth since 1945: 0
Yes, I imagine the inhabitants of Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq etc etc, would agree with your assessment, and your quaint definition of ‘world’.
Oh I get it, it’s only a world war if it directly affects OUR world.
Guess it doesn’t include The War on Terror
You, sir, are a world class tosser.
Adrian, He’s a paid up member of the Coalition of the Drilling.
A distinction made between wars that incorporate direct military involvement by all the major powers of the day and those that do not. Oh the audacity!
That’s an argument is it, Shakespeare?
Thank you, MorningDude, for linking to that brilliant piece of vulgar-libertarian gold-freakery. Now the only thing this thread needs is mention of the Freemasons—and I think a reference to the Crusades wouldn’t be out of place either. Right JPZ?
Not exactly, Fiasco, but I would have thought that you of all people could detect the difference between an argument and pointless sledging. But I shouldn’t give you more credit than you deserve.
Oh, I appreciate a good sledge, especially when it’s original (‘world class’ was a nice touch w/r/t world wars). This site is usually pretty good for people who write their own material, Cut ‘n’ Paste Greenfield excepted, natch.
As Chris has pointed out, though, you were deliberately misunderstanding JPZ’s point about global conflicts.
Nah, I don’t accept credit. Since I’ve been converted by MorningDude to the Way of the Gold Standard I only accept ferrous fungibles.
About the only non-choir based comment I can make on this thread is to remind some people that this isn’t a binary world. The war doesn’t have to be about oil/not about oil. Oil can be one of a multiple of factors that were considered. And of course it was considered – even to the level of the idea that reconstruction was to be fully paid for by Iraq.
What this shows is that Nelson is out of his depth. He’s not in charge of Defence policy, he has no idea about “energy security” and is just another goose in a role that Howard has given exclusively to clowns and losers.
The whole reason why ministers used to resign is that it was best not to have a minister who has lost all credibility, and because ministers used to have some pride. Nelson is a political corpse and the only reason he hasn’t been replaced is because it would take time for Howard to explain Nelson away, but defence policy is run from Howard’s office and Nelson’s future is limited.
Mind you, Labor’s defence spokesman is no Eisenhower or Marshall.
Aurous fungibles, I would have thought.
Yeah, technically, GregM, but that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it? Anyway, there was this one commenter once who speculated that you could use carbon nano-rods…
To Kim Beazley’s credit, labor have been on to this for a while…
http://www.alp.org.au/media/1005/speloo190.php
You’re all full of crap. This is all just typical lefty navel-gazing.
Who cares whether it’s about oil when we’ve got a prime minister who’s such a jock that he can leap into his own personal F14 and take on the nation’s enemies all by himself? http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,1658,5555497,00.jpg
Lost in the noise about the war/no war for oil, was the defence update.
It’s the biggest piece of retrospective justification I’ve ever seen, and deserves a post all of its own…
US officer in the picture:
Just cries out for a caption, doesn’t it?
“And see, it hasn’t even got 1,000 flight hours on the clock yet!”
Christine Keeler wrote:
Nitpick – it’s not an F14, they’re all retired now. Don’t ask me what it is though, you’ll need a hard core military hardware geek to sort that out.
Likely if the man of steel tried to take off, he’d redefine the length of the runway unilaterally and fall into the ocean when mugged by reality.
It’s an F-18F Super Hornet from VFA-102.
US officer in the picture:
“Sir, get the fuck away from my plane”
Sorry FDG, should have known it was one of the USN’s crap interim aircraft.
Howard: Which button works the dog whistle?
Costello: Where’s the button for the ejector seat? I will press it for him . . .
Nice one, Christine, but I reckon the officer’s saying:
“Gone on, step right in, I dare ya. I’ll blast you halfway to Baghdad.”
Back in step now, it seems …
As I have been pointing out for five years, Iraq-attack was motivated by oil, but not in the way paranoid Leftists normally assume. Conspiracy theories that assume the US invaded Iraq to grab the oil, profit from oil contracts or to reap seigneurage profits from $US oil trading contracts are several orders of magnitude off in terms of rational cost-benefit.
The US’s oil motive in invading Iraq was stategic, not economic. It was not to access oil for amicable companies. It was to deny oil to inimicable states. If there is one thing worse than your friends not having oil to use to make butter, it is your enemies having oil revenues to spend on guns.
US strategic doctrine is pretty clear on this. Enemy states, whether Nazi, Commie or Baathist, are not allowed to control “the Prize”. This goes back to NSC-68, the Carter doctrine, Reagan codicil and the revised National Security doctrine of 2002.
Baathist Iraq was classified as an enemy or “rogue state”. It threatened a region of vital interest to the US. It had a record of militarism, either WMD proliferation or international invasions. And it seemed to be kind of friendly to Islamist terrorists. Three strikes and you are out, in the post-911 national security hysteria.
The US regime changed Iraq in order to organise a client state swap, ditching Saudis/hitching Iraqis. Pulling out of Saudi would calm down the Wahhabist terrorists. Pushing into Iraqi would crush the Baathist militarists. This theoretical interpretation was acknowledged in the aftermath by Wolfwitz himself. And persons as different as Yamani, Hitchens, Fukuyama and Wilkie have more or less signed onto it.
The Iranis were the US’s past client state but had gone bad under Ayatollahs. The Saudis were the US’s current client state but Wahhabism had made them suspect. The Iraqis were the US’s future client state and were considered redeemable.
The beauty of a client state is not just that it guarantees cheap and reliable oil, nice though that is. It is that it prevents cheap oil from being under the direct control of a potential enemy or rival to be used for hostile militarism. Instead client states patronise the hegemon’s industries for arms deals, industrial contracts, gaming and whoring.
The only problem was that Saddam was not considered trustworthy, and Baathism was considered the Arab form of Bolshevism. He would not play ball. So he had to go, and the Baathists had to be purged.
Of course the plan was doomed to failure because Iraq is not even a proper nation state, let alone a client ready for recruitment.
Many of the bigger wars of 20thC have been about the Prize, control of the oil deposits through SW Asia. But more important than accessing oil for friendly companies
Well, everyone’s a potential enemy, so that means keeping the oil for themselves. Well maybe when we have a President Humungus, but in the meantime they guarantee the free movement of oil in the face of some, shall we say, excitable types in the region.
Hmm. I think the implication that it’s all about controlling oil is saying it’s a bad thing, and if I thought it was about that I’d agree with most of the pundits here. It’s not the 19th century colonial period anymore, and in any case there are easier ways of securing oil than the Iraq war route. They could have bought, greased and gift-wrapped Saddam for a tenth of what it has cost them and oil might even be half the price it is now.
Maybe they have fucked up controlling all the oil (personally I think the concept of precision, humane war is self-defeating. I’m with Sherman on that score.), or maybe it’s just that their first (or second, or third) priority isn’t to “deny potential enemies access to the energy”.
Well, I wasn’t saying it contradicted you – I should have added a BTW. My bad. OTOH, I don’t think it contradicts me either. Your bad.
Shorter Strocchi: We invaded for the oil, and I was the only one to predict it.
A world war, by definition, is a war the involves all of the great powers on one or other of the sides in the conflict. By this definition there have been far ,more than two world wars – some people identify six or more world wars in history, including the Napoleonic wars and the War of the Spanish Succession. Anyway, by this definition the War on Terror is NOT a world war….
Cheers…
Christine Keeler on 6 July 2007 at 9:48 pm
No, wrong on both counts. Shorter Strocchi: Iraq attack was to constrain oil from Baathist guns not obtain oil for Republican butter.
And, as I repeatedly pointed out, Yamani and Hitchens were alluding to the client state swap before the invasion. Others, such as Baer and Wilkie were obviously clued in but did not spell it out. Fukuyama later said this was the only interpretation that made sense.
But it was Wolfowitz, who after all planned and promoted the invasion, who was the only Bush admin official to let the strategic cat out of the political bag:
I laid out the “ditch Saudi/hitch Iraqi” thesis in mid 2002. It implied a US troop pull out from Saud and a US troop push in to Iraq. And the US did in fact withdraw troops from Saudi in early 2003.
The US seems determined to keep its enduring bases in Iraq, with the Saudi angle very much in mind.
Contrary to Leftist paranoia, the US has not tried to steal all Iraqs oil, or monopolise its oil industry.
My theory predicted the pan out of military events Middle Eastern from late 2002 through early 2003. Remind me again of what Christine Keeler, or in fact any Larva Prodders, predicted?
Everyone:
This weekend is as good a time as any for His Excellency the Governor General to to ask Mr Howard to resign his commision and to ask Dr Nelson to form a government.
BEFORE the crisis hits home …… and while it is still possible to have a fairly smooth transition of power – without turmoil.
More self-absorbed, attention-seeking nonsense from the master. Untrue to boot – as we’ve been all too frequently reminded over the past five years, the US motivation for going into Iraq was to give Jack Strocchi a chance to display his mighty intellect.
Looks like one of those comments whose purpose, or effect, is to focus discussion on the commenter to me. As usual.
I have been visiting this blog for a couple of weeks now. My assesment?
Generally, a bunch of self opinionated, pseudo intellectual wannabes with egos considerably exceeding their pretensions and with literary abilities to match.
Goodbye.
Shorter Strocchi: Look at me
US interest in the Middle East is mostly due to oil, obviously, but only a crude conspiracy theorist could think that America invaded Iraq for the sole purpose of installing a pliant regime that would sell it cheap oil.
Leaving so soon Disappointed? We could have so much fun together, especially in terms of your exit parameters. I have to say I’m very…um..disappointed with how you’ve just cut and run after just one petulant little comment. Come back. Let’s dance a bit.
“Well maybe when we have a President Humungus”
But we do. It’s just he wears his face armour back to front and upsidedown while his hordes are now buggering off saying “fuck this for a game of soldiers”.
And now to the
jokejack strocchi question.Why do you bother any more Gino? You’ve been monomanically peddling your grand unified theory of Wetness, and various ancillary observations, around the intertubes for several years now.
Yet you’ve convinced very few (although Birdy seemed to be impressed and he harbours multitudes) and generally become a butt of the blogosphere across the spectrum.
Whatever original and/or sustainable observations you have to offer (and yes, there have one or two) just gets lost among your general hyperbole and hysterical braggadocio.
So why do you persist? Any chance you had of influencing or changing anyone’s mind vanished the moment you started using adjectives and adverbs.
Do you see yourself as some kind of pixelated St Sebastian, noblely pierced by a swarm of derisive comments as you proclaim the gospel. Combined perhaps with a deep seated desire to be constantly and publically mocked?
Or do you just have another deep seated desire to abuse people and find your jury-rigged jeremaids a handy vessel for such a mission?
Or perhaps it is because you can’t work out any better way of telling others what it seems you must be constantly telling yourself – that you are a brillant yet woefully underappreciated thinker living a worldly and fulfilled life.
My money’s on a combination of all three. I’m sure jack’s massive, haughty yet lip-quivering response will give us all another insight into the ratio between these elements.
Get a life Jack. Show us you can joke, flirt and flaff and fart about like the common people whose side you keep professing to take.
My god, look at the time! I might as well stay up to dawn now while downloading Glenfiddich Gran Reserva and You Tube footage of English Electric Lightnings. I never tire of watching those archaic and chunky silver arrowheads taking off like bottle rockets from strips of sturdy county tarmac.
Nouvelle Vague at Hamer Hall was a tres formidable show by the way.
Disappointed:
This is a conversation, occasionally a stoush, sometimes place where wisdom is found and definitely a garage-sale of opinions, ideas and second-hand things that might work if you tinker with them …… it is not a final exam nor an online scholarly journal nor a legal judgement. It is imperfect. So refresh yourself ….. return and join in …. lower your expectations if need be …. and comment where you see fit. It won’t hurt …. and we might [or might not] learn something from you.
That’s a bit unfair, Disappointed.
Speaking strictly for myself I’d assess my pretensions and my ego as more or less equal in size.
Phil:
Sorry to see that your excellent topic “Please Mr Howard” [about Louise Barry's very public questioning of John Howard] get tangled and mangled.
Jack Strocchi:
Well, I might disagree with a lot of what you have to say but I’ll still read you.
Everyone:
[1] If we are in Iraq for the oil …. [2] and we get out …. [3] what will really happen next?
Christine Keeler
“We” – as in Australia – did NOT “invade for the oil.” “WE” invaded for diplomatic reasons.
Excellent questions GB. Here are some hints.
According to Al Bawaba just yesterday, Moqtadr Al sadr’s supporters in the Iraq Parliament declared opposition to the Washington-urged Iraqi Oil law.
Seems that a majority of the Parliament are inclined to agree with the Sadrists.
And Brendan Nelson’s brief outbreak of candour hasn’t gone unnoticed in Baghdad, either.
Jeez, that means all those jihadist subscribers to Al Bawaba now have an additional reason for killing Australians.
Maybe Howard can demonstrate his goood faith by supporting the opinions of the majority of that expensively-elected Iraqi Parliament.
Ratty could dip his finger in purple dye and intone “Ich bin eine Baghdader!”
Not Washington-urged but Washington-written Hydrocarbon law and it is unprecedented anywhere. It basically hands over most sovereign rights for Iraqi oil to the US companies, who set the terms and conditions for the sharing, with the percentage of profit going to the US firms also being the most generous of any sharing deal out there. It is hard to read this Hydrocarbon law as being anything other than the culmination of the US invasion plan, along with the fact that Iraq is the only major oil producer that doesn’t have its oil metered (though that is old data and may have changed over the last 12 months).
I read the name of the Washington author for the Iraqi Hydrocarbon law but can’t remember it (terrible with names), but will chase the source if I still have it bookmarked.
Don’t mistake a majority disagreeing about something for a majority agreeing about something.
Katz: “…could dip his finger in purple dye and intone “Ich bin eine Baghdader!â€?…”
An even funnier mispronunciation would be Ich bin ein Baghdaddy.
I was summarising Lord Strocchi.
We didn’t go in for oil.
We wanted to protect our wheat market.
For that, we needed to support the Americans, so their companies would not get Halliburtonian deals that cut us out.
Which is why the Wheat Board nongs were not only running around in the country, but were given such status by the Australian government.
We don’t really know why we went into Iraq, but the Liberal Party Room does – Howard took the go to war proposal to them and they collectively endorsed it (unanimously as I recollect). Back then I think WMD was the stated sole reason. Given that WMD is no longer an issue, they have found various other reasons to stay and not been entirely honest or transparent about them. So much for “representing the Australian people”. The Government has no accountability except “at the next election”.
There should be are requirement for a 75% majority of all parliament (or a plebiscite of all Australians) to go to war, given the extreme consequences.
It is interesting that so many people swarmed over the “Please Mr Howard” post (and the Tim Blair blog) and attacked Louise Barry rather than dealing with the issues she raises – namely that Australia is obviously less safe as a result of the Bush Howard “war on terror” and “war for oil”. Their apparent high sensitivity indicates this issue now has traction.
It appears that Rudd is now getting some traction on criticising Howard’s position on Iraq, and converting what was a strong positive for Howard into what should become a strong negative. This is all about the election, not about the rights and wrongs of Australia’s participation in Bush’s Iraq war.
Perhaps Howard’s motives are actually unilateral support for Bush’s bereft Iraq war/strategy even though it is no longer widely supported in the US. Another 3 Republicans have now broken ranks.
So how will it all end up? Well, nobody can stop people loading cars vans and trucks with explosives, driving them around and detonating. Not in America, Australia, Iraq (even with the “troop surge”) or anywhere else.
The after effects of the Iraq war will play out for decades, like the Iron Curtain/Berlin Wall post WWII and North & South Korea post Korean war. This was obvious from the day they went in, but they (Bush, Howard & Blair) chose to ignore it for reasons only they can divulge.
There is no easy answer, no quick solution. But staying there “indefinately” is obviously not an option, despite what Howard says. Howard has an exit strategy – even if is just to “follow Bush” – he is just not revealing it.
I had an Iraqui colleague several years ago who returned. I wonder about him now, whether he is alive or whether he has become an “insurgent”. He certainly wasn’t a radical when I knew him, but if he has lost family and friends, who can tell how he is now?
And now this from Costello:
And it has not descended into chaos already, depite the troops?
Do our notions of democracy apply to a country with colonial borders set by the British that encompass Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish ethnic groups? I think not.
This is completely ignoring the decade where the US armed and supported Saddam and his lunatic war against Iran. This would have created quite a lot of ill-feeling against the US right across the Middle East. Oh, and they armed and support Bin Laden as an “insurgent” against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. The Russians eventually had to withdraw with their tails between their legs didn’t they?.
This is revisionist and puerile. 105 people killed in the last bomb blast. Imagine this in an Australian city . . .
But that is totally wrong Peterc, and I really wish that Howard/Costello/Downer and the rest of the Bush sycophants would be made to account for continually painting Saddam in the Al Qaeda camp. He was Osama’s enemy for stuff sake and was never a terrorist in the way the CoW is making him out to be.
Saddam’s one terrorist act, for which he was always heavily condemned, was to give large sums of money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel when they had their houses bulldozed by the Israelis. That’s the entire sum of his foray into terrorism, yet to hear Howard and co talk you would think he was the founder and architect of terrorism, along with being the greatest terrorist leader the world has ever seen. He apparently makes Osama look like a kindergarten bully.
Even now the government keeps couching their invasion of Iraq and occupation as “fighting terrorism”. Insiders rightly stated that the terrorists in Iraq make up but the smallest fraction of the insurgency and violence there, so why isn’t Howard pulled up for this blatant twisting of the facts every time he utters it, which is often?
No it didn’t. US support for Saddam, which was minuscule anyway compared to that of his principal backers, the Soviet Union and France, was seen in the Middle East as supporting Sunni Arabs against Shiite Persians and as the great majority of the population of the Middle East is Sunni Arab, which loathes and depises Shiite Persians for religious and cultural reasons, this was seen as a good thing and one of the few things they could visibly see the US doing that they could agree with, it being for the past forty years Israel’s principal backer. Saddam was, and is, seen as a hero by many Sunnis and Arabs in the Middle East.
No they didn’t. They armed and supported a motley crew of Afghan warlords against the Soviets but not Bin Laden who was only a peripheral player in that war and whose principal role was to provide finance, from his own considerable resources in Saudi Arabia, to those who wanted it from him, many of whom were Arab jihadists and not Afghans. Next you’ll be saying that the US supported the Taliban in the war against the Soviets, even though the Taliban wasn’t formed until 1994 after the Soviets had left Afghanistan and the US had lost interest in the country.
It would be helpful when you make accusations of revisionism that you don’t indulge in it yourself.
Or indeed an Australian beach resort, which is what Bali effectively is. Of course it does not fit your convenient narrative as the bombing there occurred before the invasion of Iraq.
Now we’ve found and disabled Saddam’s Devilish Human Shredding Machine we can declare job well done, finally and modestly accept all those flowers and chocolates thrust at us by a grateful Iraqi citizenry, draw a self-deprecating figure in the sand with the toe of our desert combat boot, and modestly retire.
What’s that you say? They haven’t found The Shredder yet?
Re-introduce conscription and send in the Army reserve!
The easiest way to understand all of this nonsense is to see the current US government as a Fascist Dictatorship.
Everything becomes so much clearer if you do.
GregM,
The CIA of course disputes this but they would wouldn’t they?
A peripheral player? This is a joke surely?
Your assertion that Bin Laden is just “a background funding source” doesn’t match all the Bush and Howard rhetoric to the contrary and just doesn’t hold up. If in doubt, read his Wikipedia article.
And linking Bali (which by the way isn’t an Australian resort) to Bin Laden is another obfuscation. Or are you suggesting Australia’s participation in the Iraq war is a reasonable response to the horrendous Bali bombing?
The subtle ongoing demonisation of Muslims by the Howard government is a contributing factor to creating polarisation, dissent then antagonism in a small proportion of Muslims across the world. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy.
The radical extremist KKK exist in the US, but this doesn’t make the US a radical extremist state on its own. Some might regard invading other countries on false premises without international agreement or support and the resultant massive civilian casualties does though.
The CIA even gave the Mujahadeen surface to air portable Stinger missiles to shoot down Russion helicopters, than panicked when their “relationship” with the Mujahadeen & Bin Laden turned to custard. They could of course be used to shoot down US helicopters too. Then they conducted covert operations to retrieve the missing Stingers, but didn’t totally succeed.
Another joke right? Support is support. The US could have stopped the evil tyrant from destabilising the Middle East and engaging in war that killed over 10 million. But they chose not too as it suited their ends at the time.
The subtle ongoing demonisation of Muslims by the Howard government
You’re dreaming Peterc. Dopey statements by several Australian Imams and Muftis make this totally unecessary
US support for Iraq
Try this for an indication of the real level of support to Iraq from the US. Follow the links to SIPRI and learn.
Also bear in mind that the tiny amount of support provided by the US in 1983 was in the context of the Iranian act of war in invading the US embassy in Teheran
For such a miniscule support it is very strange then at the time Rumsfeld visited Saddam in Iraq more than any other leader in the world. I haven’t the amount of times he went to Iraq and was photographed shaking Saddam’s hand (big grin for the PR pics) as he gave another handout in military aid, but it was several times. I know the figures show the US gave a miniscule amount of “conventional” arms, but so what. The US is still the number one exporter of arms to the world today and sell to just about anyone, just as Russia and other countries do. The US can’t claim to be clean skinned on this at all just because on conventional arms to Iraq they were a bit player. Then what the reports don’t show is the monetary and military planning support, along with covering up for any of Saddam’s indiscretions.
Then for such miniscule support it is strange that the CIA actively covered up Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds at Halabja to the point newspaper headlines of the time stated “CIA reports Iran gasses Kurds”. The US went on to cover up many of Saddam’s worst atrocities, and in fact a majority of his atrocities were carried out under the US watch. This has led to the wide supposition that because of the US’s active cover up for Saddam, Saddam took it is a green light to basically do what he wanted. When he discovered that Kuwait was slant drilling and stealing his oil (technology and expertise supplied by the US) and invaded, apparently Saddam was genuinely surprised when the US turned on him.
Lot’s more on this, but to say the US had little to do with either Saddam or Osama is really understating the truth on the ground, or is yet another attempt by the conservatives to rewrite history.
a majority of his atrocities were carried out under the US watch
You mean like in 1983-88 when the US contributed 0.8% of conventional arms to Iraq compared to 57.8% from the Warsaw pact countries?
What do you mean by “under the US watch”? By your reckoning, I suppose the USSR was under the US watch during WWII when the US supported it with very substantial arms shipments?
How about some evidence rather than wistful conspiracy theories?
PeterTB,
So your point is “the US only supported the devil incarnate a little bit so it doesn’t matter”. Really? I don’t agree.
And how many Christian preachers (like Pell) have made “dopey statements” (or worse)? Does this justify a “war against Christianity” or the conclusion that all Christians are dopes? Of course not.
Many religions have firebrand clerics, yet Howard only ever singles out Muslims. His behaviour and statements are contributing to the problems he says he is trying to address. He is trying to put out the fire with petrol.
It’s a extremist conservative mindset, like “zero tolerance” on drugs stops drugs – when quite clearly it doesn’t.
Peterc
That’s the way, speculate that I am making a point, and then fulminate about it.
Try sticking to what I actually said – you’ll get less ulcers that way!
Many religions have firebrand clerics
Only if you equate the silly but moderate statements of Pell to those of Sheik Hilali
extremist conservative mindset
An absurd statement by definition
peterc, first you quote Robin Cook and the you refer me to wikipedia which directly contradicts Robin Cook. Which should we believe; Robin Cook or, as wiki says, Bin Laden, his deputy al Zahawari and the CIA who say Cook is wrong.
You then fabricate words for me
I did not use the words ” a background funding source” to describe Bin Laden. Do not make up words for me. It is dishonest and unethical to do so.
The rest of your post is too silly for further fisking, except for one last thing:
Another joke right? Support is support. The US could have stopped the evil tyrant from destabilising the Middle East and engaging in war that killed over 10 million. But they chose not too as it suited their ends at the time.
The Iran/Iraq war was a terrible and bloody one but 10 million dead????? Puleeease!!! Cite a credible reference for that number. Or is this, like just about everything you write, another example of your peurile revisionism?
Peterc
Well, you mightn’t be able to stop them completely but you can certainly minimize the risk a hell of a lot …. The trouble is that it won’t ever happen because to do so would require a radical change in thinking — and far too many decision-makers have invested their vanities and their careers in pushing on in the same old ways.
We’ve been through this ratbaggery before: throwing living flesh against barbed-wire, machine-guns and artillery in the First World War ….or trying to bomb ideology, trying to shoot grievances and then using body-count as a measure of momentary “victory”[???] as in the Viet-Nam War. Until we get a radical change in political, commercial and military thinking, we will continue to be soft, helpless targets.
Don’t bet in that. There are several quite simple things that have yet to be tried. And thery never will be tried because, again, that would require a radical change in thinking. U.S. Special Forces were becoming more and more successful in the Viet-Nam War until the Pentagon’s dunderheads stepped in an stopped all those funny things going on ….. and the same sort of thing is happening today.
The clear winners in our failure to adapt and be innovative so far are the insurgents, the terrorists and the racketeers.
Morningdude
You don’t have the number of times that Rumsfeld visited Saddam in Iraq? Therefore you don’t know how many times he visited Saddam and have no basis for saying that it was several times. Why don’t you research the number of times Rumsfeld visited Saddam rather than making it up and expecting anyone would believe you.
What is the US watch? This statement is so idiotic as to be beyond ridicule (unless you’re aZNetter, where it is the common currency).
GregM:
Your words which you choose to quibble about are pretty clear:
Good to see that you apparently acknowledge the US support for Saddam during the Iran/Iraq war during which 1 million died (excuse my typo). Quibbling about numbers is not salient, unless you propose that not too many died in the war so it doesn’t count or some such nonsense.
PeterTB:
A bit off topic, but here is some more about extremist conservative mindsets. They:
* are radicals masquerading as “conservatives”
* are happy to lie and dissemble about the reasons for going to war (believing that the end justifies the means)
* steadfastly believe they are right in the face of evidence to contrary (Australia is less safer following our engagement in the Iraq war)
* display ongoing dishonesty as standard practice (“The Iraq war is not about oil, it is about oil, its about energy security, its about democracy …. )
* deny funding for successful social programs (e.g. addressing child abuse in Aboriginal communities) then send in the army and police to “fix it”
* give tax breaks to the rich and not low income people (directly & indirectly via bracket creep) on the basis that the trickle down effect will somehow benefit them
* spend 8 years denying climate change, 1 year being skeptical, then 1 year doing belated reviews and enquiries to ensure the coal mining industry and export profits are not compromised, when climate change crisis is upon us.
* claim that taking action on climate change will “endanger Australia’s economy” when the exact reverse is true
* etc . . .
It takes signficant political skill to do all this and somehow present as a reasonable human beings, get elected and form a government.
Permit me thoroughly to recommend Shaun Carney’s “Oil, war and allies a dicey mix,” in today’s Age.
Starting from the proposition that “[t]he PM’s dubious reasons for fighting in Iraq need tackling” Carney anatomizes with surgical precision the craven nature of Howard’s foreign policy.
Carney points out that Australia is in Iraq because the US is in Iraq.
He observes that Australia’s niggardly military contribution belies the rhetoric insisting on the importance of this struggle. In other words, Australia’s presence is primarily political, not miliitary.
Carney suggests that Howard’s approach to foreign policy would be inappropriate even if Australia’s great ally were well governed: “allies must be able to sometimes say “no” to each other, and that the rationale for one group of men and women sending a group of countrymen into mortal danger can never be allowed to become a political marketing tool.”
It is evident to Carney, as it should be to any observer of the US, Australia’s “geat and powerful friend” is not well governed. On the contrary, George W. Bush, that the President and Commander-in-Chief of the US is a twerp. He blundered into war on an arrogant hunch.
Thus, if I may add my gloss to Carney’s argument: under Howard, Australia has become a tiny acephallic conjoined twin of a retarded giant. How humiliating.
And how refreshing it is to read Shaun Carney after the ignorant moralising of Tony Parkinson.
Ooops. That should have been close tags, not strike. Sorry.
Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq twice, and the whole saga of his visits are very damning on him and what he was to do in the future. Too much damning data to post but read through the link. The National Security Archives cover ups of support for Saddam by the US and supplying weapons against their own policy.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
Some data from other sites:
Look I could go on posting the data but it would fill the replies, just do the search and look it up yourself. Ignore the left wing sites if you want and just look at the US government’s own archives and declassified documents, it’s all there. For stuff sakes the CIA have even admitted they stated it was Iran who had carried out the gassings at Halajba, that is on record.
Peterc:
A revision of your revisionism, perchance?
Morningdude on 8 July 2007 at 9:00 pm:
Morningdude on 9 July 2007 at 12:15 pm
.
Twice is several????
Also here is a list of the major conventional arms supplies to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war, listed by country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War#Table_of_major_conventional_arms_sales_to_Iraq
It seems from it that the war occurred on Brazil’s watch and China’s and France’s and the Soviet Union’s watch. On the face of it it appears that the EVIL Canadians did more to arm the Iraqis than the Americans did. What news can you give us of the several visits the Canadian Defence Minister made to Saddam in Baghdad? Or the Brazilian Defence Minister’s visits, or how many times the Swiss Defence Minister ducked in to say hello? Or is this the unspoken other over at ZNet where only the US can do wrong and the nice Canadians and Brazilians and Swiss are repositories of the world’s virues?
Why don’t you guys just stick with the facts, which are damning enough of Rumsfeld, rather than resorting to making things up.
Katz: “It is evident to Carney, as it should be to any observer of the US, Australia’s “geat and powerful friendâ€? is not well governed.”
Well it’s awfully hard to argue with that. A simple proposal for a constitutional amendment that would have a tendency to stem some of the more egregious nonsense:
1. Congress shall not authorize a declaration of war (or otherwise empower any other sketchily-defined prolonged military excursion) unless it shall also, simultaneously, authorize nationwide military conscription without exception. The draft is to remain in place until the formal cessation of hostilities, again without exception.
By forcing Congress to only declare war on condition of mobilizing, the people would be automatically forced to equably bear the shared costs and hardships of mobilization. All of a sudden, the people would speak awfully loudly, and they would take a detailed interest in the arguments for war; and they would have to be rather thoroughly convinced of the truth and justice of the arguments.
MorningDude — if what you’re saying about Rumsfeld and chemical weapons in the 80s is true, then it’s pretty damn over-the-cliff, and pretty ugly stuff. As to the larger issue of US support for Iraq in the Iran war, horrid as the whole period was, is it not the case that the West had an interest, shared with Saddam, in containing the spread of a Shi’ite Islamist fundamentalist revolution further into the disputed Sunni/Shia territory of Iraq. Presumably the other Sunni Arab states shared this concern. I don’t know where the Soviets would have landed, but my guess is on whatever side would cause the most trouble. I imagine it’s possible that the whole thing could have spread into a much larger regional war, though I don’t know what the learned literature has to say on the subject. (Didn’t Saddam essentially view himself as the gallant shield of the Arabs against the dreaded Persians at the time?)
None of this is pleasant to consider, and some or much of it may remain inexcusable, but I think you might have to sift a little more finely on the strategic issues (though not on the glaring moral ones).
From the Wikipedia Iran-Iraq war article:
Caption on image of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam:
So Saddam’s WMD capability and deployment was not obviously not concern to the US back then, and Bush/Rumsfeld allowed Saddam’s atrocious behaviour and war crimes at that time. They obviously changed their tune later.
George W Bush was not even Governor of Texas at that time; he was the part owner of a baseball team so it is a bit much to expect him in that role to do anything about Saddam’s atrocious behaviour and war crimes at that time, unless of course the role and responsibilities of baseball team owners are much broader than we had heretofore thought and they extend to conducting the foreign policy of the United States.
But a question for you. What did the governments of Canada, Brazil and Switzerland do when they got wind of Saddam’s atrocious behaviour and war crimes at that time? Throw the issue over to the Association of Major Baseball Team Owners for guidance?
As least the French were consistent. They didn’t care about Saddam’s atrocious behaviour and war crimes in 1984 and they didn’t care about them in 2003.
Peterc
deny funding for successful social programs (e.g. addressing child abuse in Aboriginal communities)
Name just one such successful social program that has been denied funding
Hear, bloody hear.
From the Little Children are sacred report:
The report goes on to detail the success of this initiative to date.
Reported on SBS Living Black on Sunday 6 July 2007 – The Howard government is not renewing funding for this program. despite its success and calls from all involved for it to continue.
Which makes Howard, Brough et al astounding hypocrites. It is incredible that Howard is ignoring the vast bulk of the report recommendations, yet using it (and Noel Pearson) as the “trigger” for his politically motivated intervention. Its obviously political, else he would be actioning all report recommendations and working collaboratively with the states & NT rather than beating up on them.
Back on topic (sort of) regarding US Middle East Policy, it interesting to plot out the “war timeline”:
Iran-Iraq War, 1980 to 1988, President Ronald Reagan’s watch (mostly)
Gulf War, 1990 to Feb 1991, President George H Bush
Iraq War, March 2003 to ????, President George W Bush
It is clear that “military solutions� and/or supporting local conflicts and wars have been a prominent part of US strategy in the Middle East since the Iran-Iraq war. Prior to that they were satisfied with having despots in their pocket (such as the Shah of Iran, Saddam etc).
If I lived through one of the US supported wars (and lost friends or relatives), or under one of their supported despots, I would be pissed of with the US too.
So is oil a motive? North Korea has had confirmed WMD (nuclear) and missiles to deliver them, human rights abuses, no democracy and a despot, yet no US war against them. Thankfully, diplomacy (and some cash) appears to be about solve that particular problem. Not so in the oil rich Middle East, where oil is almost certainly a factor, as acknowledged by John Howard himself in his recent address to the ASPI ‘Global Forces 2007′
Then what were US soldiers doing in Korea from 1950 to 1953? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War Sunning themselves?
And you missed one President in your “war timeline”, President Williiam J Clinton http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/16/transcripts/clinton.html
Of course you’ve missed the list of French Presidents who have been involved in Iraq, starting with Valery Giscard D’Estaing, through Francois Mitterand to Jacques Chirac (Saddam’s buddy).
Why do you have no comment on their “war timeline”?
If I lived through one of the French supported wars (and lost friends or relatives), or under one of their supported despots, I would be pissed of with France too.
Clinton served from 1993 to 2001 and was caught up in the WMD concerns too. But he didn’t take the US into war “pre-emptively” based on fabricated “evidence”.
I don’t think the Korean War is particularly relevent to this discussion, except that it does highlight the ongoing tensions between the US and China as world superpowers. The US is in decline (with some denial) while China’s economy and military capability is on the rise. It was interesting that the US targetted the Chinese embassy with one of their “extremely accurate” cruise missiles during their bombardment of Bagdad, but claimed it was “a mistake”. So are their missiles “extremely accurate” or not? The Chinese certainly thought it was deliberate.
I agree that the French (and others) have been guilty of selling arms and munitions globally for profit, but you will recall they did oppose the latest Iraq war . . . which makes them hypocrits too. I agree with the Dalai Lama’s call for cessation of the international arms trade.
The most worrying aspects of Bush’s Iraq war are the doctrine of preemptive strikes, their crap fabricated reasons & evidence, disregard for International consensus (they tried to snow the UN, then went in anyway when they didn’t succeed), and their apparent gross stupidity thinking that the war was over when Bush made his victory speech on the aircraft carrier.
I think they will leave eventually with their tail between their legs, like Vietnam. I think everyone agrees that there will be no easy solutions. Sadly, many said so at the time Bush, Blair and Howard went in.
By the way,
this article provides more details on US support for Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war. It was quite public and on the record, so trying to rewrite this history is pointless. A few red herrings don’t change this.
Peterc, you are the gift that keeps on giving. The US did not target the Chinese Embassy in Baghdad. They targetted the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo campaign in 1999 when guess who was president. This is what happens to you when, as a supposedly neutral party, you allow your Embassy to be used to rebroadcast one of the belligerent parties’ signals to its army. Not nice but that’s what happens in war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Bombing_of_the_Chinese_embassy_in_Belgrade
When you write:
what, precisely, do you think he was doing when he said, in 1998, link above:
Bombing another country is not an act of war? Or is it that the evidence he relied upon in ordering that bombing was not fabricated?
Well you were the one to claim the US lacked belligerence towards North Korea. I doubt however that the current North Korean situation says much about US/Chinese tensions as world superpowers (which China currently is not). In realpolitik terms both have a lot to lose from the collapse of the DPRK, China from having millions of refugees crossing its borders and the US from having millions crossing the DMZ into South Korea.
Finally, France didn’t just sell arms to Iraq under Saddam. It had a lot tied up in keeping him in power in order to exploit its oil concessions with him. I’m sure that the Dalai Lama would disapprove.
“In realpolitik terms both have a lot to lose from the collapse of the DPRK, China from having millions of refugees crossing its borders…”
But, but… I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t the Chinese just celebrate diversity, and welcome the rich, vibrant multicultural influence of millions and millions and millions and millions of half-starved NK refugees? After all, China, like Britain and France, is self-evidently a “nation of immigrants,” from the Manchus who immigrated onto the Chinese throne, to the Chinese themselves, who immigrated into Tibet and Xinjiang. So the Dalai Lama should celebrate too! Everybody celebrate! Diversity is the strength of the Chinese!
The only problem is what to do if the Chinese refuse to celebrate. After all, it simply won’t do to call them, well, racists; they’re not white.
Come on people, this discussion about oil and Iraq is just sooooooo last week.
If I might adopt a slightly Strocchian tone for a moment, I have been foretelling these many years now (to who it matters not), in the face if much strident and ill-informed criticism from ignorant leftists, that the real enemy at the gates lies not in the middle east nor the Celestial Kingdom.
No, the real threat to western civilisation lies much closer to home, among a nation of devious nogoodniks who would cut your throat as soon as look at you.
I speak, of course, of Canada. And lo, though my enemies have cast me into the wilderness, my delphic predictions have finally come to pass with the news that they are preparing an awesome and terrible military build-up that threatens freedom and liberty everywhere: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070709/canada-arctic-sovereignty/
We must invade. NOW!
“As global warming melts the passage… the waters are exposing unexplored resources such as oil…”
The god of irony will not be mocked.
How good would that be? A US invasion of Canada. Infinite jest, indeed.
No need to invade. We’ll all just immigrate there. Simultaneously. With our guns.
But will their health care system be able to cope?
GregM,
Happy to oblige. Its confusing isn’t it? All the US military activities in the Middle East over so many decades. Their various military actions and even wars have become a bit of a blur. I think the West Wing account may be the most accurate one, for the Democrat presidency at any rate. Truth is stranger than fiction.
I would have thought a person of your towering intellect would understand the difference between an act of war and the declaration of war with commitment of ground troops followed by an indefinite occupation. Apparently not.
George W Bush even used the “c” word post 9/11 while deciding what the US response would be. His mention of a crusade passed almost unnoticed by Americans but rang alarm bells in Europe. It raised fears that the terrorist attacks could spark a ‘clash of civilizations’ between Christians and Muslims, sowing fresh winds of hatred and mistrust. Bali happened after this.
It is obvious that “home grown terrorism” is now a big issue in Indonesia (JI) and the UK, with some concerns in Australia too. Well, if the war on terror (and in Iraq) is a success, I would hate to see what failure would look like.
Stop press:
On SBS news tonight: Michael Schuer (US CIA terror expert);
On ABC news tonight:
Followed by Congress Republicans (Senators Susan Collins & Lamar Alexander):
Howard is of couse still rabitting on about “no timeline, no exit, no timetables”. Presumably he will follow Bush’s imminent announcement in true Deputy Sherriff style, otherwise we will be the last ones in there.
Too subtle for the Americans back in 1941 too, it seems. They took great affront when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor without a declaration of war. An act of war is an act of war whether or not there is a declaration of it and irrespective of whether ground troops are committed. You don’t have to have a towering intellect to know that.
It is obvious that you know absolutely nothing about what motivates JI. They were around before 9/11 and Bush’s use of the word crusade, for example bombing churches in Jakarta in December 2000. Their homegrown terrorism is motivated by their al Qaeda influenced ideology of converting Indonesia to an Islamic State. The Indonesians are making good progress in neutralising the threat from JI.
Further justification for immediate action GregM. It’s publicly funded and therefore, like Britain’s NHS, full of terrorists.
“George W Bush even used the “câ€? word post 9/11 while deciding what the US response would be. His mention of a crusade passed almost unnoticed by Americans but rang alarm bells in Europe. It raised fears that the terrorist attacks could spark a ‘clash of civilizations’ between Christians and Muslims, sowing fresh winds of hatred and mistrust. Bali happened after this.”
To summarize, then: the Bali bombing was caused by careless Bushian use of the “c” word. It follows, via the Multicultural Transitive Property of the Equality of All Cultures, that the Iraq war was caused by careless Islamic use of the “j” word.
Well, that certainly clears THAT little matter up. Now I can finish my toast.
Q.: How many leftists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A.: TEH CRUSADES!
Q.: No, I wasn’t talking about that. I’m talking about –
A.: TEH CRUSADES! TEH TIMOTHY McVEIGH! TEH OIL!
Q.: How many multiculturalists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A.: What have you got against sitting in the dark?! Are you a racist?
Really? GregM, you are the gift that keeps on giving. So you think it a coincidence that JI have recently started directly targetting Westerners?
Paraphrased from the Wikipedia entry on JI:
(After 9/11)
If you think that “The Indonesians are making good progress in neutralising the threat from JI” you had better tell Howard and Downer, all of whom have recently emphasised the Foreign Affairs warning of a threat of imminent terrorist attacks in Indonesia, including Bali. The can’t seem to agree on whether the risk is actually increased, Downer says it isn’t (so why issue it?) while Howard says it is.
Australia is a less safer place and Australians are less safe abroad with Howard constantly pouring more fat on the fire.
Ha! Canada joins the Axis of
OilEvil.GWB: “My fellow Americans. You may recall that I proclaimed that in the long struggle between Good and Evil nations will either be with us, or against us.
Well, there has not been a nation so constantly and inveterately against us during the entire period of our existence as a nation than Canada.
The 49th parallel is irrefutable proof of this.
My fellow citizens, tear down that parallel!!
Of course it is blindingly obvious that the UNSC would list JI as a terrorist organisation linked to al-Qaeda two weeks after the Bali bombing. Your point is?
JI had started its preparations for bombing Western related interests before 9/11. The Singapore embassy bombing plot, the targets for which included the US, Australian, UK and Israeli embassies, as well as a US naval station, thwarted in December 2001, was in its planning stages prior to the 9/11 attack and therefore before Bush made his “crusade’ comment. http://www.emergency.com/2002/jamaah_islamiyah.htm
As to the terror threat to Australia, I don’t take your Chicken Little line. Australia hardly features in SE Asia where the Thais are fighting an Islamic insurgency in their southern provinces, Cambodia has arrested JI agents, the Phillipines is fighting an insurgency with random bombings with the JI connected Abu Sayyaf and Indonesia’s JI terrorism smoulders on despite recent arrests of some of its most senior operatives. http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2007/s1953128.htm Of course they haven’t finished the job yet but, unlike you in your perfect little bubble world, I am prepared to accept that doing so will take some time and there will be set-backs along the way.
Any Australian could, through simple misfortune, be caught up in a terrorist attack at any time in any of those places and whatever Howard says or does would have no influence at all on whether they were. It may amaze you, having lived the sheltered life that you obviously have, that the vast majority of SE Asians don’t discriminate between Westerners on the basis of nationality. The Bali bombers thought, for example, the the night clubs they were bombing were full of Americans, hardly any of whom were there. In any event, as I observed when I was in Indonesia at the time of the Bali bombing the source of animus towards Australia came from its intervention in East Timor, widely seen as a source of national humiliation by Indonesians, as they repeatedly made clear when they learned I was Australian. Howard was, of course responsible for that and by your logic should never have intervened in its liberation for fear of making Australians less safe abroad. Millions of Australians of all political hues would disagree with you and would consider such an attitude gutless.
Unlike you I have lived in Indonesia and South East Asia and have taken a keen interest in their affairs for over thirty years so I don’t have to rely on Wikipedia as my source of information and ZNet as my source of opinion. You should read more widely. It would make you better informed though probably none the wiser.