http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=110963&d=17&m=6&y=2008

For those with short memories, it was al-Sistani who compelled Bush to allow the Coalition Provisional Authority, supported by Australian force of arms, to hold a referendum on the nature of the Iraqi constitution. Said constitution, it should be remembered, estabished a state based on Sharia Law.

Sayyid al-Sadr is reportedly very happy with al-Sistani’s support of his position.

It is to laugh…

Checkmate, Chimpo.

The parameters of Phase II were negotiated between Senate Republicans and Democrats, for years, so it was maybe doomed to be a document with glaring omissions. But as damning as parts of the report were (Rumsfeld’s false testimony, etc.) it probably could have been a lot worse for the executive branch, had not large swaths of White House communications been excluded from the scope of the investigations.

As Walter Pincus of the Washington Post writes, “the panel did not review ‘less formal communications between intelligence agencies and other parts of the Executive Branch.’”

Which basically means that only the speeches and public press statements by senior officials, fell within the purview of the intel. committee’s investigation. As Pincus points out, that leaves out a number of the other ways the administration misled the public before going into Iraq…

“We really don’t need anybody’s permission.”
- George W. Bush, as quoted in NYT on March 11, 2003.

“International law? I better call my lawyer; he didn’t bring that up to me”
- George W. Bush, 12 December 2003

” “political choice of falsified intelligence”.”

I have a gut feeling you might be right.

The problem is not of politicians, especially ministers and prime ministers, telling fibs …. the general public expect them to tell bare-faced lies from time-to-time.

No, the hanging crimes are [1] folly and [2] ruined expectations.

Crawling to a born-loser foreign ruler did us no good whatsoever.

Worse yet, when you listen to what motorists are saying as they half-fill their fuel tanks right now, you’ll understand why there will be no shortage of donors of 2″ manilla rope if Mr J W Howard follows Mr Saddam Hussein on the long drop.

At a meeting chaired by King Abdullah, the Saudi cabinet restated its view that the leap in prices that saw New York’s benchmark contract hit a record 138.54 US dollars on Friday was unjustified by fundamentals.

No, nothing fundamental except for the fact that the US$ has declined 50% against world currencies in the last two years.

So any, including oil producing nations, that have their assets denominated in dollar terms is now half as wealthy as they were two years ago.

If Saudi Arabia dumps the US$ peg, then we could be in for a very bumpy ride.

The final withdrawal of British troops from Iraq could be announced by the end of the year, the BBC has learned…

BBC political editor Nick Robinson said he understood that the government’s next announcement on troop numbers would be made in July. This is unlikely to be the moment when full withdrawal will be announced.

The UK Labor Party is now polling at a miserly 25%. Brown is at a new low of 3.9 out of 10.

Meanwhile, the Saudis are calling for talks with oil consumingnations - could be a first step towards dropping the US dollar peg?

It’s interesting that Al-Maliki is increasingly cozying up to Iran. Here’s Juan Cole’s analysis of his latest visit to Tehran:

Bush and Cheney are desperately afraid that the next administration will get out of Iraq, thus removing the mercantilist advantages they were trying to throw to US oil companies in developing Iraqi fields. They believe they can commit the US to a long-term military presence in Iraq by becoming the guarantor of Iraqi security at least in the medium term, and by locking in that role through a security agreement between Bush and Maliki. Iran’s opposition is threatening to block this deal, and thus al-Maliki’s visit.

… Al-Maliki wants an agreement with the US, but wants to confine US troops to their bases unless he authorizes an operation. He also wants private contractors to be subject to Iraqi law. His demands have thrown a wrench into the negotiations, since the Bush administration had assumed that the US military and its contractors could retain their current freedom of movement under a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA).

Note the supreme hypocrisy of the Republican Party. Bush and McCain are attacking Barack Obama for saying he would meet with Iranian officials. But they are perfectly o.k. with their man in Baghdad, Nuri al-Maliki, doing exactly the same thing. In fact, it may well come out eventually that Bush and Cheney sent private messages to Ahmadinejad via al-Maliki.

It’s a nasty business, with un-democratic, un-representative players on all sides. But I don’t expect Australia’s legal status for remaining forces to be an issue that gets much attention. Officially, I imagine we will be staying on at the “invitation” of the “sovereign” Iraq government as a purely “diplomatic” mission, whatever happens with US “combat” troops.

OTOH maybe it’s time someone in the media looked at how many Aussies are still working as mercenary killers for companies like Blackwater. We never seem to hear about them till one gets shot.

In his speech to Parliament, the Prime Minister made it clear that “this withdrawal does not signal an end to the Australian Defence Force’s mission” in Iraq. He pointed out that the navy “will continue maritime security operations in the Persian Gulf”, that the air force will support the Multi-National Force Iraq through “vital transport, sustainment and maritime patrol tasks” and that the army will “protect Australian diplomats, other civilian staff and senior visitors to Baghdad”. Also, the force “will maintain headquarters, logistics and embedded support elements”. In short, Australia remains a member of the US-led Multi-National Force Iraq. Also, Australian forces will continue to play a key role in Afghanistan.

The UN mandates under which Australian forces currently operate expire at the end of 2008. The Maliki government has stated that this mandate will not be renewed.

At present, Iraq and the US are in intense and for the time being fruitless negotiations over the status of US forces in Iraq after the expiry of the above-mentioned UN mandate.

Yet I am unaware of any negotiations proceeding with regard to the status of Australian forces in Iraq after the expiry of the UN mandate.

Is there any discussion of the prospective status of Australian forces in Iraq?

I presume that ALP figures would be less than pleased were the status of Australian forces subsumed under the status of US forces in Iraq, whatever that status may be after the Iraqi parliament rejects Maliki’s acceptance of America’s colonising status in post-UN Mandate Iraq.

“[W]hen a tough question is asked and not answered, when reputable people come before the public and say, ‘wait a minute, something’s not right here,’ the press has treated them like voices crying in the wilderness. These views, though they might be given air time, become lone dots — dots that journalists don’t dare connect, even if the connections are obvious, even if people on the Internet and in the independent press are making these very same connections. The mainstream press doesn’t connect these dots because someone might then accuse them of editorializing, or of being the, quote, ‘liberal media.’

“But connecting these dots — making disparate facts make sense — is a big part of the real work of journalism. So how does this happen? Why does this happen?

“Let me say, by way of answering, that quality news of integrity starts with an owner who has guts… In the current model of corporate news ownership, the incentive to produce good and valuable news is simply not there.”

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003813671

I note that Hendo took the opportunity to give Toohey’s article a slap.

Will the mainstream media in Australia do the right thing?

RIGHT thing…hmmm…maybe that’s half the problem.

But of course that is not “accurate” - the decision to go to war was in fact based on a political choice of flawed intelligence over more informed and reliable intelligence. Is Rudd really embracing the official lie, or is Hendo just putting his own spin on things?

Almost entirely correct.

I’d amend the highlighted passage slightly to read “political choice of falsified intelligence”.

Your point about the access that the Australian government had to the British JIC analysis is important. If Howard overrode ONA advice based on JIC analysis, then Howard has been exposed as a liar.

That possible lie helped Howard to justify Australian bellicosity.

First there must be an enquiry with the sharpest possible terms to investigate the veracity of Howard’s claim that he accepted all ONA amendments to his statements justifying Australian bellicosity.

Then, if Howard is demonstrated to have lied on this precise point, then there must be a Royal Commission into failures in Australian intelligence.

No nation should ever go to war on a lie.

And a democracy that goes to war on a lie does not deserve to be called a democracy.

Rudd has softened his attitude towards the intelligence which led the coalition of the willing - and other nations, including France and Russia - to believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Labor used to maintain that Australia’s involvement in Iraq had been based on a lie. Last week the Prime Minister said, accurately, that “the decision to go to war was based on flawed intelligence”. In other words, the allegation of mendacity has been junked.

But of course that is not “accurate” - the decision to go to war was in fact based on a political choice of flawed intelligence over more informed and reliable intelligence. Is Rudd really embracing the official lie, or is Hendo just putting his own spin on things?

Hendo points out (quite rightly) that Rudd is not as anti-war as he pretends, and that both Left and Right parties in the anglosphere have made bad calls on Iraq. But what is this rightwing mouthpiece really trying to say? It seems to me the article is a subtle attempt to declare an end to the whole Iraq War issue as a political football:

The Iraq venture, while not over, is scaling down and there are reasonable prospects of a satisfactory outcome. Meanwhile, Rudd Labor is attempting some initiatives in foreign policy - including advocating an Asia-Pacific community. This may or may not come to fruition. Agree with Howard or not on Afghanistan and Iraq, Australia was never so influential as it was from 2003 to 2007. Except during the final years of World War I, and the postwar peace settlement, during Billy Hughes’s time.

So it’s over to you, historians, while the backroom boys quietly “finish the job” in Iraq. M’kay? Now let’s all “move on”…

Like I said earlier, nobody should be expecting politicians of either party, or the corporate media, to push for real accountability here. It’s up to us ordinary citizens to demand it.

The point at this stage is not to organise a lynch mob for Howard, but to demand an inquiry that explains exactly WTF happened here in Australia. Were our intelligence agencies really duped by misleading info from abroad, as they claim? Did Howard, Downer, Hill and others deliberately ignore the more accurate intelligence for the sake of our relationship with the USA, or was it never presented to them?

What secret commitments did Howard make to Bush when he was in the USA on 9-11, 2001, and again on June 13th, 2002 (just a week after Tony Blair had visited Bush’s Crawford ranch)? Meetings documented in the “Downing Street Memos” around that time show British and US collusion to “fix intelligence around the policy” of a provoked or pre-emptive Iraq invasion. It is hard to believe that Australia was not involved in such top-level chicanery, but even if we were out of the loop it still begs the question “Why?”.

For example, >a href=”http://howardout.blogspot.com/2007/07/good-long-look-at-john-howards-war-in.html”>consider the British Government’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) report issued on February 10, 2003, and sent to Australian intelligence eight days later:

It said a war leading to regime collapse would increase the risk of chemical and biological weapons getting into terrorists’ hands and lead to a heightened terrorist threat to Western nations.

Howard repeatedly denied this risk. Under questioning from Labor’s Simon Crean in September 2003, Howard said neither he nor any of his ministers had been briefed on the JIC findings. Howard said all his major Iraq speeches had been checked by the ONA and he had accepted every suggestion for change. A Howard spokesman declined to reveal whether the ONA had concurred with the JIC report, as Andrew Wilkie claimed.

As ever, Howard’s modus operandi was shrouded in secrecy, and none of his compliant ministers have spoken up. We need to know to what extent our security and political apparatus is now subservient to Washington or London. To pimp my old blog post again:

But how does our support for the USA’s military and economic goals in Iraq benefit us? Has Howard made a secret deal to secure Australian companies a share in Iraqi oil revenues? Have we traded military support for agricultural deals? Or have we traded away our nation’s good name just for the promise of military protection, even as we help the USA create new enemies who might one day cause us to need such protection?

Are we Australians now content to play the role of an outlying US state? Are we permanently hitching our economy to the USA’s? Is that wise? Is that what the Australian people want? Is anybody ever going to ask us?

Answers please, Mr Rudd.

So obviously Howard must be brought to justice. We cant have people like that running around, getting off scot free, can we?

Jack, He may have a case to answer, as an accessory.

For fear of setting a precedent it is extremely unlikely that any government will allow a prosecution of an erstwhile PM or minister for action taken when in office.

We already have a precedent SATP, his name is Pinochet.

Wasn’t this a strange bit of theatre by the government in the build-up to the Iraq invasion?:

GREG JENNETT: Unlike the other Western leaders, Mr Howard won’t be making the case.
He’ll let the Foreign Minister, fresh from talks with the Bush Administration, present the evidence against Saddam Hussein.

JOHN HOWARD: He is the person who should be making the statement on the issue I’ve outlined at this time.
Obviously if there’s a need for me to be directly involved later on, of course I will be.

SIMON CREAN, OPPOSITION LEADER: I’m asking the PM to show leadership on this.
I’m asking the Prime Minister to share with the Australian public what information he has that has not yet been made public.

GREG JENNETT: The PM promises Mr Downer will detail Iraq’s noncompliance with UN demands.
It’s unclear how much fresh evidence, if any, will be in his dossier.

SENATOR ROBERT HILL, DEFENCE MINISTER: We have evidence of the program of weapons of mass destruction and we certainly have evidence of Iraq’s state-based support for terrorism in other instances.

GREG JENNETT: But nothing linking Saddam Hussein’s regime with the September 11 attacks.
As it stands, next week’s debate won’t have any sting in its tail, no resolutions and nothing to vote on.
But that could change after President Bush gives his speech to the UN, and Mr Howard says more parliamentary debates could follow.

JOHN HOWARD: If any decision is taken by this Government to commit Australian forces abroad anywhere, I will be informing Parliament of that.

GREG JENNETT: And he says he’ll keep Simon Crean informed of any developments along the way.
(LATELINE, ABC (Australia) Broadcast: 12/9/2002
Downer to outline case against Iraq)

Speaking of drama…

I wonder if Aussies who tried to speak out against the Iraq Invasion & provide evidence regarding the “sexing up of intelligence” were treated to an “ambush” by the Corporate media’s go-betweens, character assassins & “blowhards” as we see attempted here on Bill Moyers?:

http://www.newshounds.us/2008/06/08/fox_news_porter_berry_ambush_of_bill_moyers_at_ncfmr_unedited.php#more

Fortunately the “ambush” backfired. It’s always handy to have a digital camera available just in case.

Well put.

And many in the Corporate media enable the war-initiaters…war constructors. Then act like guard dogs when one attempts to question the moral certitude stances & war-mongering views of certain politicians & media moguls.

Here’s a possible example of cheeky media-oriented distraction…& using unsubstantiated & wobbly evidence to help construct the case for invading Iraq, and the ABC involved is not the Aussie one:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/09/abc_anthrax/index.html

(The unresolved story of ABC News’ false Saddam-anthrax reports, Glenn Greenwald, Salon . com, Monday April 9, 2007)

The media stories & spin MUST be scrutinised more thoroughly in Australia as well. Kudos to blogs such as Lav Prod for doing so. Insightful comments & valuable links here, much of the time.

Good on ya Mark & the Collective….& commentors.

Ironic you should bring up Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting on the related thread ‘Lest We Forget’ Gandhi. I had it on my mind when I mentioned FORGETTING on Road to Surfdom a week or so ago. His views on totalitarianism are interesting, to say the least. Worth reading about his life, or the paintings of such.

Delightfully plausible.

Well then, let us suppose that the Ba’athist regime did have quite a few more weapons capable of causing multiple civilian casualties [call them WMDs if you like] than we had imagined. Let us further suppose that these weapons were in good condition, under very strict control and in places well hidden from us.

Would it have been better to have allowed Saddam Hussein to use them as bargaining chips in delicate negotiations with us over his own future …. OR …. for us to have gone “Nah-nah, coming ready or not” [as we did] and then, some weeks later - after allowing sufficient time for swags of such weapons to slip unhindered across any of Iraq’s borders - for us to rush in kicking-ass [or, if you prefer, kicking-ar*e] in that wonderful display of pyrotechnics, shock-n-awe?

If such weapons did exist, my guess is that they are now being quietly looked after very well indeed and kept in readiness for whenever they might be needed …. and a very long way away from Iraq.

Steve At The Pub [34]:

“For fear of setting a precedent it is extremely unlikely that any government will allow a prosecution of an erstwhile PM or minister for action taken when in office”.

Yeah, fair enough ….but that depends solely on the United States remaining powerful and not following the Soviet Union into the dustbin of history. If the United States does collapse then we mightn’t get too many choices about what we do with that great follower of President G W Bush, our former prime minister Mr J W Howard. Just think of it as a variation on Victors’ Justice.

Nevertheless, given the enormous importance of clarifying the legal basis or otherwise for wars of pre-emption, it seems to me eminently desirable that such an argument - an argument based on international law - be tested in an international tribunal.

Legal-technically Iraq was still in a state of war when the “Coalition of the Willing” attacked in 2003, governed by the terms of the cease fire agreement set down in the aftermath of that conflict.

The rationale for the Coalition attack depended on Iraq’s purported violation of said cease fire agreements, regarding issues of armaments disclosure. Iraq was still in a state of war, albeit suspended. Therefore that attack was still “post-emptive” in the formal legal sense.

The ADF’s role in the second phase of the Iraq war was mainly to protect Japanese engineers engaged in civil reconstruction work, building schools and hospitals and the like. This sort of thing is a war-crime alright, right up there with Eichmann and Mengele.

So obviously Howard must be brought to justice. We cant have people like that running around, getting off scot free, can we?