This piece was first published in the Sun Herald today.

 

John Howard is a weak man, the worst possible leader of Australia in an era with potentially catastrophic consequences for the West and what we stand for.

Strong men encourage dissent from people of good faith with expertise, not silence it. Strong men are unafraid to say no to close friends (in this case America, when it was obvious President George Bush’s decision to invade Iraq would mean disaster for America, and potentially for Australia).

And strong men, if they make a decision they believe to be right but which is unpopular, seek to persuade their people of the rightness of the cause, not avoid the issue until there is no choice.

I’ve always believed that democracies based on the British tradition, achieved through the blood of many people over many centuries, are a beacon for the world. Yet the democracies of Britain and two of its offspring, the US and Australia, decided on a course that has strengthened immeasurably the cause of those who wish to destroy what we believe in by invading Iraq without a sensible plan to secure the peace.

There is one common denominator in the Anglo nations which invaded Iraq (our sisters Canada and New Zealand did not do so). The leaders in all three are totally focused on spin – for many reasons – and have forgotten, or jettisoned, what we stand for (or used to).

Here are two examples from last week. Bush said he had admonished his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, but not because of the collapse in discipline (to accept the kindest interpretation) that led to the gratuitous humiliation of Iraqi prisoners. He did not demand an explanation or a brief on what had been done to fix the problem. “I told him I should have known about the pictures and the report.” So he could prepare his spin.

For two weeks before 60 Minutes in America broke the torture story, it obeyed requests from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers not to run it for fear it would harm American interests in Iraq. The network ran it only after learning that other journalists would tell the story if it didn’t. Myers assured Americans that the incidents were isolated, but later admitted he had not seen the report of General Antonio Taguba, completed in February and disclosed after the 60 Minutes programs by Seymour Hersh, which found it was systemic (the full text is at msnbc). In other words, he spun the line without getting the facts.

Just like Australia’s “leaders” these days, the people who know don’t tell the people who need to know so the latter can get away with lying to the people. That’s probably why Rumsfeld didn’t tell Bush – to give him an out!

Bush has spent more than $100 billion on this war so far. Imagine what could be done for Americans, and the world, with that amount of money. Imagine how a president with brains and courage could have united the Western world and moderate Muslims against Islamic extremism, and reduced the West’s dependence on the oil that drives our persecution of Iraq?

And imagine if Tony Blair and Howard had had the courage to say no to an idiot President advised by mad ideologues like Rumsfeld. Maybe, just maybe, the American people would not have fallen for the lies Bush told over the 3000 bodies of American citizens on September 11. Maybe, just maybe, the civilised world would be united against the enemy, and be attracting to our cause the people who the enemy is trying to recruit, instead of forcing them to join the other side.

But no. Our “leader” said yes straight away, and lied to us for months before sending us to war against our better judgement. And he’s allowed this rogue superpower to keep two Australian citizens in Guantanamo Bay without charge or access to lawyers. The allegations of torture there are long standing, but Howard and Philip Ruddock look to camera with their most “sincere” faces and say they’ve been assured by the Americans it is not so.

And now that we know what the Americans do to prisoners, the Australian Government says nothing. Nothing. How could they? While the Americans torture the Iraqis in their own country, we lock up Iraqis who fled Saddam in our own detention centres. Poor fellow, Iraq.

You know how they get away with it? Because we, the people, let them. In the end, Bush, Blair and Howard invaded Iraq because our democracies were not strong enough to stop them. Blame politicians, blame the media and blame ourselves. The question for all of us, after we purge Australia of this weak, amoral excuse for a leader, is to work out how we can ensure we never let any “leader” do this to us again.

On April 10 last year, I wrote Whose flag? and The human spirit after the fall of Saddam’s statue:

 

At 12.35 this morning, a marine placed the United States flag over the head of Saddam’s statue in central Baghdad. An Iraqi man climbed onto a US tank and waved the old Iraqi flag. People threw flowers at him. An American marine climbed up the statue and replaced the US flag with an old Iraqi flag, not over Saddam’s head, but hung from his neck.

After removing it, an American tank pulled Saddam down by chain. He didn’t topple; he bent, hanging down from the pedestal. Finally, he split apart, his head and torso on the ground, his feet still firmly planted on the pedestal.

Memories of Umm Qasr, when the Americans thought, wrongly, they had taken the port town very early in this war, and a marine planted the American flag aloft before being told to take it down.

The world knew the war would be won. The world is split asunder on whether the Americans came to conquer or to liberate, on whether the war on Iraq will enhance or worsen world peace, on whether a war of civilisations has begun or is closer to ending, on whether the West will reunite or has split for the long term.

The American and Iraqi people stand face to face, soaked in blood, after decades of bloody proxy plays, uniting in a moment of joy at Saddam’s defeat.

The world will now learn, perhaps over years, not months, how the American and the Iraqi people deal with each other after this moment passes. How the two nations and their peoples negotiate the peace. How the Iraqis, now certain that Saddam is gone, will react to an American occupation. Whether America will replace a man it once called “our bastard” with someone chosen by the people, or by it. Whether it will allow the Iraqi people to decide whether to allow a permanent American base on its soil, or demand a settlement on its terms and pretend that’s the will of the people. Whether it will insist that its companies profit from the peace or allow the Iraqi people to decide where and how its oil wealth will be spent. Whether Iraq is ungovernable and will tear itself apart, or will survive intact.

Hold your breath. Pray food and water are delivered quickly and efficiently. Hope against hope the violent deaths end soon.

*

This is a day when you dare to hope, and fear hope will be dashed. Although the war is not over, it is a day when healing could begin and hearts could open. Yet energy is drained at a time when the important, patient, constructive, long term work must begin.

I’ve received emails of hope, triumphalism, abuse, threats, bitterness, argument, advice – you name it. The war on Iraq is bloody for the combatants and the innocents, bruising for those who watch, worry, wonder, can’t sleep, weep, despair, and dig to the core of what they believe in, and why. Millions of people around the world in almost every country in the world have experienced an intensity of feeling, energy and debate on one subject – our common future – through the prism of one nation, Iraq. I hope that the world’s scrutiny will bring out the very best in America. Only America at its most noble can achieve the result the world needs out of this nightmare. Peace with dignity. Webdiarist John Nicolay said to me today that the scenes in Baghdad yesterday were “a marvellous affirmation of liberal values – and of the belief that, ultimately, it’s not possible to crush the human spirit entirely.”

I think that test is about to begin. It will be a long, long road, with no certainty of victory. So let all of us who believe in liberal values – pro-war, anti-war, ambivalent, keep Australia out of it, only with the UN – shake hands and do our best to make John’s wish come true.

David Jones writes: “Just maybe? I have been sickened and saddened by the war in Iraq. The pictures today of Iraqis rejoicing in the streets cheering their US liberators gives me cause to question my stand on the high moral ground. Who am I to pass judgment on any of this? To walk a mile in the shoes of the war victims or the victims of Saddam Hussein’s regime is not one I would want to undertake, nor one I will likely ever understand.”

(ends)

***

Within days of the fall of Saddam’s statue, we knew that the Coalition of which we are part had not planned for peace, when looting engulfed Baghdad and the Americans chose to guard only the Oil Ministry, not the hospitals or the museums. It�s been downhill ever since. The torture revelations put the full stop after our defeat. The world is more dangerous, and the enemy grows stronger. Our closet ally is dangerously weakened. Yet Bush, Blair and Howard remain in power, as yet refusing to take responsibility for the disaster they have inflicted on the world against the best advice of many in their own nations.

I recommend Abuseat Abu Ghraib, the psychodynamics of occupation and the responsibility of us all by Stephen Soldz. The piece documents the evidence of systemic American torture long before the photos came to light.

Tonight, your recommendations and comments on the torture. I said just after the war that Iraq had become the prism through which the western world would decide its values, and it�s now urgent that we work this question out together and elect leaders who will embody and further them (seeCould we start again please?)

To begin, Chris Wood writes to his federal MP Tony Abbott: “Margo, I thought I’d send on a view from the ‘burbs (I’m sure widely held) – my emails to local member Tony Abbott, who had to go to preferences last time. I’m waiting for a response – don’t like my chances.”

From: Chris Wood, Sent: Friday, 7 May 2004 8:00 AM, To: ‘tony@tonyabbott.com.au’, Subject: TREATMENT OF IRAQI PRISONERS

Dear Tony,

I refer to my earlier email (below), the front page of today’s Sydney Morning Herald and the coverage this issue is rightly receiving around the world. I realise from the transcript of your last interview with Alan Jones (on your website) that you have been distracted by the Pollies Pedal which, amongst other things, is the product of a desire to improve the image of politicians, to have time to respond to me as yet.

How would you explain the front page of today’s SMH? I am not unable to deal with it – the usual about good/evil, errant acts of a few and compare and contrast Saddam etc – but what I have difficulty with is the continued absence of anything that might be regarded as robust criticism or an expression of outrage from our government.

This is an issue of the most fundamental importance – treating all human beings with dignity. Any WW2 or Vietnam vet will tell you humiliation of prisoners is unacceptable in any circumstances. How can we otherwise justify our presence and support for the US now it is clear there are no WMDs and never were at the time of the invasion?

I note Bush’s apology, and hopefully the long awaited departure of Rumsfeld, that does not absolve us.

I look forward to your views. Not all of us vote based on the views pushed by Alan Jones, in fact I suspect an increasingly small minority. A bit more moral courage on the government�s part might actually improve its image.

Yours sincerely, Chris Wood

*

Chris�s previous email to Abbott:

Dear Tony,

As a Warringah resident I am rarely moved to write to you – maintaining a family, my professional life as well as participating in our community leaves little time for correspondence, but it is the first of this list of priorities which causes me to contact you in the context of the recent publication of photos showing the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by US troops.

One of my 13 year old twins (a student at St Augustine�s) was particularly distressed and angered by what he saw. So am I. I am even more angry as a result of the comments by Alexander Downer yesterday that it was not necessary for the Australian government to register its concern/protest regarding the matter because the US Administration was dealing with it in an appropriate manner. True enough the Bush Administration seems to at least be paying lip service to taking action, but our government’s flaccid response via Mr Downer only increases the perception that we are the lackey of the US.

We are a sovereign nation with a proud history of contribution to the defence of others. It is hard enough to accept that we are even in Iraq (on a false premise) but to see the blind compliance and/or timidity of our representatives on this basic issue of human rights and respect for fellow human beings (no matter how much the occupation is justified by the alleged need to overthrow the barbaric Saddam Hussein regime) is sickening.

We are all compromised as a result and our children right to point to the hypocrisy of our political leaders.

I urge you to press for a robust independent Australian expression of concern over this issue.

***

THE TORTURE

Full text of GeneralTaguba�s report into prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. (via Tim Gillin)

For a private torture investigation see Tortured souls (via Brian McKinlay):

Stories in Iraq have a tendency towards determining themselves, and the one I’ve been working on has taken on new meaning this second time around. It was last January when I came upon the horrendous story of Sadiq Zoman. In short, he was detained by U.S. soldiers last July from his home in Kirkuk. While in U.S. military custody, he was beaten, tortured with electric shock, whipped, one of his hands was broken, his head was bludgeoned, and he was dropped off comatose to the General Hospital in Tikrit a month later.

For the Human Rights Watch status report on American prisons in Iraqi see 10 Prisons, 9,000 Prisoners (via Scott Burchill)

Tim Gillin: If this CIA interrogation manual is any guide, the Abu Ghraib MPs (and their handlers?) were ‘amateur hour’ incompetents. See also US ships Al Qaeda suspects to Arab states.

UK forces taught torture methods (via Antonia Feitz):

The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by Special Forces soldiers that is now being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they are doing, according to British military sources.

Pictures of wounded men being shot censored by TV by Robert Fisk (via Antony Loewenstein)

Roy Wilke: A job ad on the Internet, for anyone who wants to go buggerising around in an Iraqi prison: CACI

Cameron Jackson in Kirribilli: I followed the link on your piece about abuse and torture in Iraq to the website “Al Basrah” (http://www.albasrah.net/images/iraqi-pow/iraqi-pow). The web-site was truly disturbing – I don’t know what the provenance of the photos is, but I felt compromised even by looking at them. It caused me to reflect on just what a voyeuristic world we live in. Yesterday, I thought I would return to that site to see what else I could find on it. I was told that access was forbidden. I wondered who had forbidden it and for what reason? Is it my server? Is there some other force at work? If this is some kind of censorship, who is practicing it?

* TORTURE COMMENTARY

The psychology of torture (via Tim Gillin)

Torture as pornography (via Lynette Dumble)

Another Open Letter to the Troops in Iraq:

What these images of the Abu Ghraib humiliation and torture have done in the United States is collide with the “exalted image and the pseudo-event” of the Bush propaganda apparatus, just as the images of the My Lai massacre did in 1969. That collision between the reality and the real image of war startles civilians here in the La-La Land of wide screen TV and suburban SUVs, and it shakes them out of their opiated shopper dream-state.

Digital Cameras Change Perception of War:

The explosive photos of abuse in an Iraqi prison drive home a defining fact of 21st century life – that the pervasiveness of digital photography and the speed of the Internet make it easier to see into dark corners previously out of reach for the mass media.

Does Abu Ghraib have a silver lining?

***

THE FALLOUT

An Iraqi�s impressions: �What is happening in Iraq? After the Fallujah siege, as insurgency continues and the June deadline for transfer of sovereignty approaches, Caspar Henderson of openDemocracy interviews the civil society researcher Yahia Said over a line between London and Baghdad.� (via Tony Kevin)

Rumsfeld�s last stand:

Divine Providence has hidden ways that are beyond human understanding. Small things suddenly assume the proportion of great things. And now, taking everyone by surprise, a relatively insignificant element in the myriad of blunders that the invasion has visited on that unhappy desert land has brought the entire imperial enterprise in Iraq to teeter on the brink. Corruption, slaughter, and deception all failed to ignite the American domestic imagination. But the revelation that a few Iraqi prisoners might have been tortured by a few inexperienced noncoms from the Appalachian backwoods (where I live), has suddenly brought the careening imperial juggernaut of the world�s sole superpower to a screeching halt.

Will the anti-war movement get Bush re-elected?

How to stay in – without staying the course

For the really big picture, see Black Gold is King (via Darren Urquhart)

***

READER REMARKS

Nicholas Pickard

These are OUR allies? And all we can say is that Saddam was worse? Something is surely rotten…

The revelations about the US in Iraq – and how all the blame is being placed on the bottom-most ranks in the chain of command – raises some rather worrying questions about what is being done in Australia’s mostly privatised and US-run prison system, as well as the refugee detention camps.

***

Peter Fimmel

I am altogether unclear as to why anyone should be surprised at the performance of the foot soldiers in America’s Iraqi prisons in view of the behaviour of their political and military masters.

What does Dubya and his mates think goes through the minds of the troops when they are immersed in political leader’s lies about WMD and uranium from Niger, illegal preemptive invasion, wholesale killing of civilians in their shock and awe campaign and deliberate targeting of mosques and residential areas with cluster bombs and tanks?

And as for the sanctimonious clap trap about Americans being less wicked or evil that Iraqis, where is the evidence for such an outrageous notion?

***

Harry Heidelberg

Friday: I am watching live the unraveling of the Bush administration. Consider that Bush says Rumsfeld hid the pictures from him. It�s well known that Powell likes neither of them.

I just heard Bush say he is sorry… the King of Jordan is in town.

The Red Cross in Geneva is now on live. They knew about this long ago. They don�t tell – they need access so they don�t tell (until it got out via the Wall Street Journal). Always remember that each NGO does its own job. Amnesty exposes, but that is not the role of Red Cross. They can�t tender care unless they have access.

The Economist says the picture of the guy with the electrodes could be iconic. They all are.

How incredible. Truly incredible.

Bush only found out about pictures by seeing them on TV. Excuse me? The whole place is collapsing. Rumsfeld should be fired for that alone.

***

Chris Murphy in Southport, Queensland

�Relatives and friends of Pfc. Lynndie R. England, who appears prominently in the photographs of prisoners in Iraq being abused, are searching for answers.� The New York Times, 7 May 2004

What on earth did these people ever think war would really be about? Crisply ironed uniforms? Discipline? Respect? Law and order? Human rights? Peace?

Just like the executioner in a Texas prison, an army that storms into another country with all guns blazing was never going to make the world a better place.

Those who think that military solutions promote democracy and respect for human rights should get a life. It is obvious to all but the morally blind that George Bush lies through the very pores of his skin whenever he says that “war was the last resort”. The man hasn’t a peaceful cell in his entire evil body.

Is it any wonder, then, that the U.S. Army in Iraq has become an extension and amplification of Bush’s core of violence?

Wars are lost by armies who no longer believe in the justice of their cause. Empires crumble when their armies disperse in confusion. The American Empire – the one dreamt of by Cheney and Rumsfeld and Perle and Wolfowitz – has begun to fall apart before it even began. And the decline could be very, very rapid indeed.

***

Tim Gillin

What’s fascinating about the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal (S&M-gate?) is the incredible naivete of the pipsqueak war criminals captured on their own digital film. My dictionary defines naivete as “The state or quality of being inexperienced or unsophisticated, especially in being artless, credulous, or uncritical.”

It is as if they can imagine no consequences for their action, no moral or other law greater than their power. They do not even have the courtesy, shame or common sense to attempt to hide their crimes.

Is this just the “no rules, no guilt” amorality of the Britney Spears generation? At the same time isn’t this just taking Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive war anywhere anytime to its ultimate limit? Did these “troops” (if you can call weekend warders “troops”) simply take the Bush doctrine at face value?

Bush, of course, claims to be a “Born again Christian” but his reworking of Christianity seems to replace the American government for Jesus.

In a sense these misguided “children” (as Seymour Hersh keeps calling these Gen-X war criminals) are the bastard offspring of Bush and “Big Brother”.

***

Simon Neldner

During his announcement of a boost to security funding at ASIO headquarters, an ABC reporter asked the PM how long he thought the war on terror would take to be won, whereupon he replied: “I hope it doesn’t last longer than the cold war.”

If we were in any doubt, it’s now plain to see that the PM has no idea about the nature of the security problems we are facing, let alone implement the programs and strategies required to find a workable solution.

It also says something about the state of the world – and why foolish foreign adventures like Iraq are tolerated – when the fundamental root cause of terrorism (ie recruitment) is INJUSTICE. Until we deal with this – and our own pitifully small foreign aid budget (0.25 of GDP) – then the war on terror will be, as Gore Vidal predicted, a never-ending one.

The PM might like to compare it with the “cold war”, but the only thing they both have in common is that these types of conflicts cannot be won militarily. The Soviet Union went broke in a futile effort to outspend the United States military-industrial complex (and underwrite its ideological stalemates). The while the current conflict can only be solved in two ways.

First, if we address the real, every-day concerns of people in the developing world (e.g. safe drinking water, a decent job, basic health care, a place to live etc). Or second, if we are prepared to kill everyone on the planet. The first solution is less expensive and far less bloody then the second, but from the PMs glorification of our military and security capabilities, you’d have to wonder if he wants us all to be destroyed.

Am I being too over-the-top, too-sensational? Let’s consider this, that for every dollar the world spends on foreign aid commitments, almost sixteen dollars are allocated to defence and security budgets to protect the world from threats that are related to the lack of spending on the former. Most of the world’s population is living in conditions that can only be described as unequal, unjust and unfair.

And before anyone mentions Osama bin Laden, and that no amount of persuasion or generosity will stop his murderous rampages and religiously inspired delusions, they are correct. The world will always have those individuals who wish to cause harm to others, to impose their ideologies and beliefs on others by threat or use of force. This is part of human nature, a dark side, but one that can’t be ignored.

However, a general improvement in living conditions would certainly take the heat out of both the recruitment to and the financial support of terror organisations. The public support for these groups would also diminish over time, as would the funds which allow them to operate and flourish. There would be no safe haven for them, if the West was prepared to be an equal partner (not just a pretend one).

If Osama bin Laden were killed tomorrow, no victory could be declared, as the conditions that allowed his organisation to grow are still as strong as ever, and if our leaders think otherwise, they are kidding themselves.

This is demonstrated by the futility of Israel’s current policy of targeted assassination, as while it makes a good headline, it achieves nothing to rectify the brutality and the pettiness of the occupation (where Hamas has no problems signing-up new suicide bombers). While their actions are indefensible, the conditions under which the Palestinians live cannot be ignored or simply dismissed as having no relationship to the source of the current violence. It’s actually of central and over-riding importance, but to acknowledge it, means we have to smash the very system which has created it – and that’s the issue we should be talking about it.

I could go on and on about this, but the real test will come on Budget night, and the extent to which our foreign aid budget is increased. As there have been no announcements, no media-friendly briefings or favourable press leaks, we can assume that our foreign aid budget is not going to get a 50 or 100 or 1000% increase. If this is the case, then the PM has sold-out this country and its citizens, because if we continue down our current path it will only be a matter of time before a WMD is used to attack a western city. Then what will we do?

At the moment, our options are continually being narrowed towards pre-emption and military intervention, and while I have no problem in having a robust defense, we have to be more pragmatic, and to spend just as much on foreign aid/development projects in those countries that need a helping hand.

It might also help if we actually act on what we believe, where the rule of law, the right to a fair trial, applies to all citizens of this world (regardless of their country of origin). Today, we spent a lot time making up new rules and new laws to undermine the very rights we claim to be protecting, and which so many men, women and children have had to die for in Iraq. We all deserve better.

A year after Bush declared �Mission accomplished� in Iraq, a few mainstream American military and foreign policy voices are urging the US to admit defeat and withdraw.

 

These opinions were aired before the images of torture which end any chance that the Iraqi people will believe that America is a benign force for freedom and democracy in their nation.

Since the publication of those images on Thursday night the shocks keep coming. So tonight, updates on the tragedy of Iraq and your thoughts on what went wrong and what to do next.

The truth about American torture

* Seymour Hersh obtained the military report into America�s torture chambers in Iraq: TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB: American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?

* Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, in charge of Iraqi prisons at the time, says the block concerned was off limits to her and under the complete control of US intelligence – Rough Justice in Iraq:

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski is angry. She says she warned her superiors from the first about the ill-treatment of Iraqi prisoners… The trouble was, Karpinski says, she didn’t have enough troops or resources to do the job right, and the men at the top ignored her complaints. “They just wanted it to go away,” she told NEWSWEEK last week… “There’s no excuse for what these people did,” says Karpinski. “They’re just bad people. But the guys involved in this were new to Abu Ghurayb. It got way out of hand.

Karpinski says the abuse took place in Abu Ghurayb’s Block 1A, which had been taken over and turned into a windowless prison-within-a-prison by military-intelligence officers. They called the shots there, not the usual military-police guards. “So far I haven’t heard of any investigation of the military-intelligence people,” she says.

* The American military denied problems in the prison for months, dead batting complaints from the British human rights envoy and Amnesty International. Hersh reports:

As the international furor grew, senior military officers, and President Bush, insisted that the actions of a few did not reflect the conduct of the military as a whole. Taguba�s report, however, amounts to an unsparing study of collective wrongdoing and the failure of Army leadership at the highest levels. The picture he draws of Abu Ghraib is one in which Army regulations and the Geneva conventions were routinely violated, and in which much of the day-to-day management of the prisoners was abdicated to Army military-intelligence units and civilian contract employees. Interrogating prisoners and getting intelligence, including by intimidation and torture, was the priority.

* An American veteran comments in Abu Ghraib as My Lai?

* The Americans have outsourced interrogation to private contractors (see Hersh), thus ending the last remaining core function of the State: Privatization of warfare. And now we�re losing our SAS soldiers to the private army in Iraq: Army exodus: SAS troops quit. Webdiarist Donald Brookcommented:

It’s good to see the war being privatised, with soldiers leaving the SAS and going entrepreneurial. One had thought that the blight of socialism, under which armed conflict has been seen by old Lefties like Howard et al as essentially a public enterprise, would never be cured.

* The American media hardly run the story for days, although the Hersh scoop seems to have forced them to do so. See Iraq Torture Images Vie with Photos of U.S. War Dead:

This shows U.S. newspaper editors understand what kind of war coverage interests American readers, according to David D. Perlmutter, a historian of war and media at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. “The torture pictures are absolutely irrelevant,” Perlmutter said in a telephone interview. “Americans care about American soldiers, and only journalistic and political and academic elites fret about pictures of collateral damage …

As US blogger Kevin Drum said:

Remember this the next time someone wonders aloud why Arabs all hate us so “irrationally.” We play down incidents like this as “aberrations,” merely a few soldiers out of thousands, and run the story on page 27. They see it splashed across the front page and think of it as yet another case of American hypocrisy. It’s going to be awfully hard now to convince them they’re wrong.

***

Voices for withdrawal

* Former General Sees ‘Staying the Course’ In Iraq as Untenable:

It is delusional, asserts the Army veteran, college professor and longtime Washington hand, to believe that “staying the course” can achieve President Bush’s goal of reordering the Middle East by building a friendly democracy in Iraq. For the sake of American security and economic power alike, he argues, the U.S. should remove its forces from that shattered country as rapidly as possible.

“We have failed,” Mr. Odom declares bluntly. “The issue is how high a price we’re going to pay. … Less, by getting out sooner, or more, by getting out later?” His is not the voice of an isolationist, or a peacenik, or Republican-hater. He is talking from the conservative Hudson Institute, where he was hired years ago by Mitch Daniels, later Mr. Bush’s budget director. His office displays photos of Ronald Reagan, under whom Mr. Odom directed the National Security Agency, and Jimmy Carter, on whose National Security Council staff he served.

* Conservative� foreign policy expert Christopher Layne of the Cato Institute (one of the very few right wing think tanks which opposed the war) wrote The Best of Bad Choices in �The American Conservative�:

The United States has no good options in Iraq but the least bad is this: Washington should transfer real sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30. It should tell the Iraqis to work out their own political future among themselves and turn over full responsibility for Iraq�s external and internal security to the new regime in Baghdad. Simultaneously, the United States also should suspend all offensive military operations in Iraq, pull its forces back to defensive enclaves well away from Iraq�s cities, and commence a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq that will be completed on December 31 (or on January 20, 2005).

There is no point in being Pollyannaish. In the long run, the U.S. will be better off leaving Iraq. In the short-term, however, there will be consequences � not all of which are foreseeable � if the U.S. withdraws. But that misses the point. Sooner or later the U.S. is going to end up leaving Iraq without having attained its goals. Washington�s real choice is akin to that posed in an old oil-filter commercial that used to run on television: America can pay now, or it can pay later when the costs will be even higher.

* Paul Krugman in In Front of Your Nose:

Even among harsh critics of the administration’s Iraq policy, the usual view is that we have to finish the job. You’ve heard the arguments: We broke it; we bought it. We can’t cut and run. We have to stay the course. I understand the appeal of those arguments. But I’m worried about the arithmetic.

… I don’t have a plan for Iraq. I strongly suspect, however, that all the plans you hear now are irrelevant. If America’s leaders hadn’t made so many bad decisions, they might have had a chance to shape Iraq to their liking. But that window closed many months ago.

* United Press International analyst Arnaud de Borchgrave wrote in Looking for the exit:

Total alignment on Prime Minister Sharon’s anti-Palestinian strategy has turned even moderate Muslims against the United States. Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak said hatred of the United States had never reached such depths.

When Mr. Bush suddenly dropped longstanding U.S. opposition to Jewish settlements on the West Bank, rooted as they were in U.N. resolutions, Israeli settlers could not believe their luck. Sharon conceded Gaza, where 7,500 Jewish settlers had no future among 1.3 million Palestinians, but in return obtained U.S. blessings for permanent Israeli habitation in large swaths of what was to be a Palestinian state. Even illegal hilltop settlements concluded they were now safe from removal and immediately began erecting permanent structures to replace mobile homes…

No sooner had the White House’s red light flashed green than the once surreptitious, crawling annexation of the West Bank resumed in the open. Jewish West Bank settlers were jubilant, while Palestinians were adrift in the Slough of Despond. With the Right of Return for Palestinians also off the table, and no viable state of their own on the West Bank, extremist organizations will have no problem recruiting more jihadis (holy warriors) and merging terrorist operations with the underground resistance in Iraq, Arab opinion has been inflamed to the point where Palestine and Iraq are now two fronts in the war against what Charles de Gaulle used to call “the Anglo-Saxons.”

Osama bin Laden is probably thinking he’s some kind of strategic genius.

After the torture photos scandal, he wrote Tutwiler’s mission impossible:

The shameful pictures of U.S. soldiers humiliating naked Iraqi prisoners were the final straw for Margaret D. Tutwiler. Moved out of her post as Ambassador to Morocco last December to become Undersecretary of State for Public Affairs, Ms. Tutwiler was instructed to spruce up the Bush administration’s image in the Arab world in particular and the Muslim world in general.

It took her only four months to conclude this was mission impossible. She was the third “image” czarina to come a cropper in three years. Competing against the Qatar-based al-Jazeera and Dubai-based al-Arabyia and their coverage of the occupation of Iraq gave Ms. Tutwiler about the same chance of success as going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

* For a detailed account of the end of the neo-con power in Washington, see Jim Lobe�s US on the brink:

One year after President George W Bush declared the end of major combat in Iraq, the United States appears to be teetering on the brink of strategic defeat in its Mesopotamian adventure.

Even as Bush on Friday reiterated his ambition to bring “freedom and democracy” to Iraq and the Middle East, a series of recent policy reversals � capped by Friday’s announcement that a former Ba’athist general will take charge of an all-Iraqi security force in Fallujah � suggests that an increasingly desperate Washington will settle for far less.

* The father of thus Senate and a consistent opponent of the war, Senator Robert Byrd made a speech called Mission Not Accomplished in Iraq to mark the first anniversary of Bush�s boast:

Since that time, Iraq has become a veritable shooting gallery. This April has been the bloodiest month of the entire war, with more than 120 Americans killed. Young lives cut short in a pointless conflict and all the President can say is that it “has been a tough couple of weeks”. A tough couple of weeks, indeed.

Plans have obviously gone tragically awry. But the President has, so far, only managed to mutter that we must “stay the course”. But what course is there to keep when our ship of state is being tossed like a dinghy in a storm of Middle East politics? If the course is to end in the liberation of Iraq and bring a definitive end to the war against Saddam Hussein, one must conclude, mission not accomplished, Mr. President.

The White House argues time and again that Iraq is the “central front” on the war on terrorism. But instead of keeping murderous al Qaeda terrorists on the run, the invasion of Iraq has stoked the fires of terrorism against the United States and our allies. Najaf is smoldering. Fallujah is burning. And there is no exit is in sight. What has been accomplished, Mr. President? (For Byrd�s pre-war speeches against the war, see A lonely voice in a US Senate silent on war and Today, I Weep for my Country…)

***

Allen Jay

This piece by Alex Cockburn, Watching Niagara: Stupid Leaders, Useless Spies, Angry World, summarises the situation perfectly and applies equally to Howard�s Australia.

My only comment on evaluating intelligence and being able to sort the wheat from the chaff is that it requires an unbiased and open mind. When you have either a political or ideological bias there is a great temptation to ignore contrary facts and information as a matter of deliberate policy or because you subconsciously give them little credence.

That seems to be the deep corruption and failing within Australian, British and particularly US intelligence.

***

Alistair Bain in Perth

I am amazed at all these protestations of outrage at the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. We knew from interview snippets revealed during the invasion that elements of the American and British forces had little respect for the Iraqis. The abuse of prisoners is hardly surprising.

You claim not to have believed the released Japanese captive when he recounted his captor’s claims of mistreatment by the Americans – until you saw the photographs. Hmmm. We believe what we want to, don’t we? We invaded Iraq because we wanted to believe Mr Saddam had WMD. We didn’t want to believe that Iraq’s “liberators” could be brutal and inhumane.

The pictures – of which others, less “presentable”, exist – are reminiscent of the rape of Nanking, where Japanese soldiers had happy snaps taken while they abused Chinese women.

However, I acknowledge your moral courage in openly stating your changed position. What amazes me is how quickly former supporters of the invasion are changing their minds or carefully qualifying their support. Why do they think so many people raised objections to the invasion in the first place? With what REAL evidence did they offer their support?

I sympathise with Mark Latham’s pull-out call. However, part of me still believes that since Australia has allowed itself to become part of the Iraqi mire we have a moral responsibility to stay and help clean up the mess. Let’s hope we can find ways of doing so which truly make amends for the unspeakable horror we have helped create.

***

Russell Dovey in Canberra

Recent images of American and British soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners are more than disturbing; they are damning to a cultural tradition that upholds itself as the way of freedom, peace, and civilisation. The West is shamed by these photos, as it is by every act of barbarity that its soldiers commit in foreign wars.

Those in the US and British military who were responsible for these crimes, those who gave the orders, and those who did nothing even though they knew these crimes were being committed, should be arrested and tried in a court of law. It is the third group that I fear will get away with their crime, because the very nature of these acts means that many will have heard what was going on, making it hard to separate criminal negligence from disbelief.get away with their crime, because the very nature of these acts means that many will have heard what was going on, making it hard to separate criminal negligence from disbelief.

It is disturbing to remember that before the war, the US refused to join many other countries around the world, including Australia, in signing and ratifying the treaty for the International Criminal Court. The ICC handles war criminals who have not been adequately tried in their own countries.

It is possible that the Bush administration knew this sort of thing was likely to happen, and therefore ensured it could control the investigation. So why didn�t they make sure that soldiers knew the basic idea behind the Geneva Convention and respected a prisoner’s human rights? Why did it not respond to allegations that many of its soldiers regard Iraqis as subhuman?

However, Margo, the solution you propose in An empire in moral crisis may be worse than the problem. If the US and Britain withdrew all their forces from Iraq, then there would be no more tortures, beatings or Falluja-style massacres committed by American or British soldiers upon Iraqis.

Unfortunately, the American and British forces are not the only self-righteous, militaristic cowboys in Iraq, just the most numerous and well-armed. There are dozens, if not hundreds of militia groups of various sizes in Iraq, each one with a different view on how the country should be run. The weapons available to these groups range from the ubiquitous Kalashnikov rifle to rocket-propelled grenades capable of ripping apart a car.

An optimist might think that once the American and British forces leave, these militias would have no-one to fight anymore. They would go home and keep their rifles buried in the back yard, wrapped in oiled cloth, in case they were needed again.

No doubt, this is exactly what many of them would do. Quite a few more would simply protect their own neighbourhood, as they have ever since the fall of Saddam’s regime in the absence of any effective policing by the CPA.

Unfortunately, many of these groups were not formed in reaction to the Western occupation, or to protect their own neighbourhoods. Some are the personal armies of aspiring warlords, out to conquer as much territory as they can and hold it by force.

Other groups are motivated by religious beliefs, and intend to enforce their own rules and systems of worship wherever they can. Finally, there are terrorist groups under the banner of Al-Qaeda, using Iraq as a stage to hurt the US in their propaganda war, caring nothing for the people they kill or maim in the process.

Iraq’s borders are being enforced by the American and British military. Effectively, Iraq now exists as a nation because of the occupation. If we withdraw, then the borders are just lines on a map. While regional militias would fiercely defend their territories from Turkish, Iranian or Syrian attack, they would be hard-pressed to mount the fully co-coordinated defence required to prevail against the well-equipped armies of Turkey and Iran.

At best, if American and British forces withdrew entirely, Iraq would become a fragile coalition of diverse militias, many of whom have long histories of violence with many of the others. In another part of the world, they might even maintain stability, and be left alone to find their own way to govern themselves.

However, the land of Iraq has been blessed, or cursed, with a staggeringly large amount of oil. Especially in a time when we are constantly being told that the oil will start to run out in 30 years, it is hard for any country to resist this lure. Oil is valuable both for its financial and its geopolitical value, even if a country is already the richest, most powerful nation on earth with its own oil reserves.

If the USA is unable to go without Iraq’s oil, Iraq’s neighbours would be even more unable to resist the opportunity to grab what they can now in order to protect themselves from economic chaos in 30 years, and Iran would especially see it as a chance to gain more control over the US economy.

So the Iraqi people, far from having a chance to determine their own future, would be invaded and plunged into anarchy. Civilian deaths in the widespread fighting could be in the tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands would probably die from lack of basic infrastructure, combined with an inability to deliver food aid. The flood of refugees into surrounding countries would cause even more hardship and famine.

Therefore, even though the occupation of Iraq is wrong and must end, to simply wash our hands of the mess would be worse for Iraq’s people and for global stability. I don’t mean that the PM is right about “getting the job done”, because he wouldn’t know what the real job was if it hit him in the face.

This petty, selfish national interest that the PM seems to believe in is not what the Australian people believe in. We are not a selfish, petty little people, ready to sell another country down the river to enrich our American big brother. Our fearless leader has done a great job of convincing the world that we are, but we know better.

***

A version of this piece was first published in the Sun Herald today. See Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker for TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB, a detailed report into systematic US torture at Saddam�s former prison. Yesterday was the first anniversary of Bush’s “Mission accomplished” decree. On Friday, American time, he defended his statement with these words: “A year ago I did give the speech from the carrier saying we had achieved an important objective, accomplished a mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein. As a result, there are no longer torture chambers or mass graves or rape rooms in Iraq.” He lied. The US defence force has confirmed that Bush was kept informed of the investigation into the American torture chambers in Iraq – completed in February. Webdiary�s April statistics are at the end of this entry. For an update on the torture scandal, see Is US withdrawal the least worst option?

 

Yep, time to get out of Iraq

by Margo Kingston

G�day. Time magazine this week interviewed Jumpei Yasuda, one of the Japanese hostages set free by Iraqi kidnappers:

�The man who pointed his gun at me told me he was walking on the sidewalk and was arrested by the G.I.s when he wouldn�t answer their questions. He said he was imprisoned for almost a month and regularly beaten up. One day, he said, he was taken to a private room and sexually assaulted. He asked me what I would have done if I were him, and I had no answer.�

I didn�t believe the man�s story. Now I do. I�ve also reversed my opposition to Mark Latham�s promise to bring our soldiers home by Christmas. The photos released by Sixty Minutes in the US changed my mind (also see thememoryhole and albasrah). The photos record tableaus in a US prison in Iraq. In one, a man cloaked in black, his face covered, stands on small box, electric wires attached to his fingers, toes and genitals, after being told that if he falls off he will be electrocuted. In another, several naked men, garbage bags over their heads, are arranged in a human pyramid. One American soldier stands behind them, arms folded, smiling to camera. A female soldier squats behind them, also smiling.

The photos are deeply disturbing, not just for their sadism, but because they are precisely posed. They are �artistic�, not torture in action, but torture frozen to capture the moment for the camera. Trophy pics. As Juan Cole wrote:

“There was also apparently coerced male on male sexual activity. The genteel mainstream news reports of this scandal (which have given it less attention than it deserves or than it will get in the Arab press) have not commented on the explicitly sexual message sent by the abusers, which is that Iraq is f**ked.”

The decadent American empire now sees itself as the star of its own movie. Remember when it rushed a few troops into Baghdad to show it could win quickly, meaning no one was there to stop the inevitable looting and anarchy when Saddam�s regime collapsed? Remember when George Bush dressed up as a soldier to pronounce �mission accomplished� in May last year? Every non-American is a stage prop for the greater glory of America.

We�re told that those directly involved in recreating the Caligula movie in Baghdad will be court martialled. Yet if you read the very few stories on the matter in the US media, it�s clear that the smiling faces are scapegoats for a US defence force which has lost its way. There was no training for the soldiers on holding prisoners. They were not even given the Geneva conventions on the treatment of prisoners, and were told to get on with it when they queried prisoner abuse. The US even outsourced interrogation to private contractors!

When I wrote about my change of heart on Latham, a couple of readers accused me of being silly. �Surely you must have considered the possibility that, if psychopaths constitute between 1 and 5% of the male population worldwide, then there must logically be a similar percentage of psychopaths in the volunteer US military,� wrote Mike Lyvers.

Matthew Cleary: “That you now think the troops should leave is akin to thinking jails should be abolished because there are instances of prisoner abuse by guards.”

But the photos are the defining visualisation of what�s been becoming clear since Saddam�s statue fell last year. The Americans were unprepared for the task of securing the peace, with defence chiefs failing even to train soldiers on the cultural norms of the Iraqis so they would not needlessly humiliate or insult them. Even worse, the ugly side of being American, the side incapable of empathy with any other culture, let alone respect for it, has eaten alive any chance of nurturing democracy in Iraq.

Recently, a British officer said the US troops saw the Iraqis as �untermenschen�, a term Hitler used to describe Jews, gypsies and other �racially inferior� groups:

“My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans’ use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They view (the Iraqi people) as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it’s awful.�

As one of three nations which invaded Iraq, Australia is responsible for what is happening there. What those pictures show is that it is not possible to �do the job� any more. The war is lost. They longer we stay, the worse it will get, for the world and for the long-suffering Iraqis.

As for the importance of the US alliance, the United States under its present government is a force for evil and perpetual war. Until America elects a leader and an administration which brings out the good side of America and listens to solid, thoughtful advice, we are endangering our security by supporting it.

All the reasons they told us to go to war have fallen apart except the one about giving the Iraqi people freedom and dignity. Now that one is in ruins. What is the job we must do, Mr Howard?

Bring our soldiers home. The longer we stay, the more complicit we are in the war crimes of an empire in moral crisis.

READER QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Noel Hadjimichael

The war of images between good and evil has swung against the Americans for the first time. Passionate believers in the benefit of ridding Iraq of the despotic regime, such as myself, are appalled by the image of gun-happy US military tourists treating �lesser breeds� like this. Voters from the mainstream don�t expect unsullied heroes in our military forces. But they do expect self-restraint and common sense judgment. Professionalism is not a luxury but a benchmark standard.

***

APRIL WEBDIARY

Top ten entries

1. A superpower defeated?, April 10

2. Is it any wonder the Iraqis are resisting?, April 13

3. Media don’t get it on Latham and Iraq, April 1

4. Why the big parties won’t keep Big Media honest, April 29

5. Why is Latham alarming?, April 5

6. Murdoch v the people on Iraq, April 7

7. Few chances left to restore public service integrity, April 14

8. Latham’s troops recall: your say, March 31

9. Andrew Bolt: I did ‘go through’ leaked top secret report by Wilkie, April 30

10. Latham tunes us into Iraq, April 6

Top five referring websites

1. antiwar

2. theage

3. spleenville

4. informationclearinghouse

5. roadtosurfdom

G�day. Tonight, your reaction to the sadism photos, including a piece by Webdiary columnistNoel Hadjimichael. Dell Horey recommends Poll: Iraqis out of patience, and notes that �it came out BEFORE the awful news about the treatment of Iraqi prisoners became known. I hate to think what is going to happen when those photos are shown in the Middle East�:

 

Only a third of the Iraqi people now believe that the American-led occupation of their country is doing more good than harm, and a solid majority support an immediate military pullout even though they fear that could put them in greater danger, according to a new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll.

We�re torturing people here, too. See the court judgement about Iranian asylum seeker Mastipour.

A reminder that the North Shore Peace and Democracy Group�s forum Secrets and lies destroy democracy: the impact of decisions behind closed doors on democracy in Australia is on Monday at the Willoughby Town Hall. Speakers are Kevin Rudd MHR (Labor), Senator Marise Payne (Liberal), Senator Kerry Nettle (Greens) and Senator Aden Ridgeway (Democrats). The questions to be asked are:

1. We were told the invasion of Iraq was necessary because of Saddam�s weapons of mass destruction. �If Iraq had genuinely disarmed, I couldn�t justify on its own a military invasion of Iraq to change the regime� � John Howard, 14 March 2003. How can we trust future justifications for war in the light of what we now know?

2. There has been little informed democratic debate in Australia about the causes of terrorism � in particular Israel�s occupation of Palestine. The War on Terror cannot succeed by dealing with the symptoms alone. How can Australia work to address the causes?

3. Does a request for support from the US automatically and always pre-empt Australian policy and budgets at the expense of education, health and welfare, and if not, how should we decide which requests to refuse?

4. The present rigid control of Australian political parties over members effectively hijacks much of the decision-making process from open debate in the parliamentary chambers to behind the closed doors of party rooms, and is more coercive than in the US and UK. Why should this be permitted?

5. Australians are very cynical about the political process, and the extent to which secrecy and falsehood are used to justify policy decisions. How can our faith in the system be restored?

***

Lesley Snow

I am utterly repelled by the photographs and reports of treatment of Iraqi prisoners by US troops. Iraqi people are generally modest and shy people so it is hard to imagine how humiliated they must be by being photographed as part of a pile of naked bodies and jeered at by their captors. What else is the US army doing to its prisoners?

***

Time to win the public relations war before it’s too late

by Noel Hadjimichael

Photos of US service personnel allegedly humiliating, mistreating or abusing prisoners in their care will severely damage the moral and political claims of the coalition of the willing.

Regardless of the technical arguments about conventions over prisoner welfare, the role of US personnel in prison management or the need to retain large numbers of prisoners in sub-standard facilities, the war of images between good and evil has swung against the Americans for the first time.

Passionate believers in the benefit of ridding Iraq of the despotic Saddam regime, such as myself, are appalled by the image of gun-happy US military tourists treating ‘lesser breeds’ like this.

This must be disowned by the US military and its leadership. This sorry event must also be disowned by the political players so keen to ensure that we get the job done.

Those killed in the fighting, thankfully no Australian, will be forgotten if the occupation of Iraq is allowed to take on soap opera overtones. The sacrifices of coalition forces will be for nothing if the wider world and in particular the Islamic world believe that Americans are culturally insensitive and overtly arrogant in this endeavour.

Conservatives and social democrats who support the war demand the highest standards of professional soldiering. The pictures released to the media of smiling and arrogant occupiers will do more damage than any flash oil deal or convenient political outcome.

Voters from the mainstream don�t expect unsullied heroes in our military forces. But they do expect self-restraint and good common sense judgment. Professionalism is not a luxury but a benchmark standard.

If we can restructure Germany after the World War with financial aid and de-nazification, surely we can give Iraq a fresh start. Swift and substantial action by the relevant authorities on these outrageous allegations of prisoner mistreatment will do much to restore the moral and political case for intervention, invasion and reconstruction.

Iraq is not the next Vietnam but akin to 1946 Germany/Austria. We have occupation and resistance. We have ideological enemies and friends. Fortunately we have no carve up of the Iraqi nation into warring localities backed by different political occupiers.

***

Mike Lyvers

I’m concerned over the deterioration of Webdiary lately. It seems to me that the days of intelligent debate and commentary on your site are over. Why? I’m not referring to spelling errors but rather to the quality and diversity of analysis. Your site seems to have become that of a leftie, Latham cheerleading squad (which is surprising given that two-stroke is no more a leftie than little Johnny).

You wrote:

“I’m still trying to breathe after seeing on Lateline the photos of American soldiers smiling as they pose with tortured Iraqi prisoners, if torture is the word for the horror.”

Surely you must have considered the possibility that, if psychopaths constitute between 1 and 5% of the male population worldwide, then there must logically be a similar percentage of psychopaths in the volunteer US military. They will be subject to court martial and severe punishment for their crimes, if that makes you feel any better.

“The images are out of a Caligula movie.” A Caligula movie? I thought there was only one!

“The world has gone to hell. George Bush’s war on Iraq will haunt all our lives. I recant my objections to Latham’s policy. Out now! There must be a better way, there must be.”

Out now, and leave the long-suffering Iraqi people to their fate: either total anarchy or oppression by a brutal Islamofascist regime. Is that really what you want?

“We must find leaders fast, real fast.” What sort of person do you think wants to be a “leader” anyway? Think about it. I’d bet the proportion of psychopaths is far higher in that category than in the general population.

Just a reality-check, Margo

***

Matthew Cleary

Why recant your objections to the early removal of Australian troops in Iraq? You are saying that your attitude to Australia’s ongoing commitment in Iraq has changed because of the disgraceful actions of individuals. It is not the policy of any government in the coalition to mistreat Iraqi prisoners, and now caught those responsible are to be tried. (Margo: Oh really? See Accused in POW scandal, soldier tells of questions. Is reckless indifference a policy?)

The actions have quite rightly been condemned by the Prime Minister and I have not heard one word in support of the mistreatment. That you now think the troops should leave is akin to thinking jails should be abolished because there are instances of prisoner abuse by guards.

I read Webdiary often and rarely agree with you or many of your correspondents. That is OK with me; however I get really irritated by the articles full of emotion and a lack of pragmatism.

***

Harry Heidelberg in Switzerland

I totally agree with you that the world has gone to hell. It is yet another reminder of the evil that comes out of every war – on both sides. Oh and I am not self-conscious/embarrassed about using the word evil. Treating prisoners like that is evil. There is no point in using a more fashionable or lighter word.

Not everything in the world is bad though What is happening in Europe today and tomorrow is a miracle. Communism and fascism left deep scars on this continent. War has never been far. Even this is forgotten. Tomorrow 10 new countries join the union. A union united in diversity. 75 million join the union to make a total of 450 million. A union of countries committed to peace and democracy.

It is easy to be a cynic. Skepticism is cheap and comes for free. Hope requires commitment and hard work. Are wars in Europe long ago? No.

This time last week I was in Paris with two of our Swiss based employees. One was a French speaking Swiss and the other a Swiss citizen who grew up in Serbia. At 18 he was stabbed 8 times as part of the war. It was possible he could have died. He spent 6 months in hospital and thought a lot about the rest of his life. His parents wanted to get him out because they feared he would end up dead.

There were two possibilities, the Czech Republic or Switzerland. He arrived in Geneva speaking only Serbian. He learnt French and English and won a prize in accounting at the university in Geneva. His fourth child was born on Tuesday this week.He is married to an Italian. I gave him a job here last year. He is young, successful and a victim of war in Europe. He’s in his 20s.

EU expansion is a very hopeful thing.

***

Peter Funnell in Canberra

The treatment of Iraqi prisoners, no matter what they might have done or were suspected of doing, is beyond appalling. This was sadistic sport. It implicated every nation that is involved in this awful war. We are shamed beyond words.

It would have been better if they had fallen on the field of battle. But once captured, they were in our care. Every well trained soldier understands this. It is the very bottom of human conduct to assault and abuse people in custody.

That it has happened in Iraq at all is just amazing. Wouldn’t you think they would have the good sense to see that anyone they captured in battle was likely to be released back into the community, just as all the former Iraqi soldiers who fought in some capacity during the original invasion?

Honestly, the US Government and military couldn’t be trusted to run a chook raffle. They’d endanger the chooks!

The US General in charge in Iraq asks that we do not judge the whole of the US Army by these rotten incidents. Wrong general! That is exactly what we should do!

There have been several video sequences of the US troops in action on TV which I have found very disturbing. The manner in which they have treated Iraqi citizens is disgraceful and ensures they make enemies at every turn in a country that understands retribution as a form of conflict resolution.

It indicates poor training and at times, a lack of effective rules of engagement. Shoot first; ask questions later are what the US military does best. This is beyond them.

It is reminiscent of all the dreadful images that came out of Vietnam at its worst. Has the General forgotten the prisoners incarcerated at the US base in Cuba? It is hard to know what to call them, as the US Supreme Court is finding out. But there they are languishing in appalling circumstances and are treated to any handling that their jailers feel appropriate completely out of view of the international community. The standard of treatment is now well established as illegal and inhumane.

General, your army and your government is in complete accord with the fools that abused Iraqi prisoners and posed for the happy snaps. Your bloody army is well and truly out of control in a situation that is getting well and truly out of control and beyond your ability to contain. Discipline is shot to pieces. In these circumstances, the excesses will only increase, as will the grotesque nature of the retaliations.

The situation is a direct reflection of two things – the attitude and values of the US Government and its troops, and the miserable level of training and discipline of significant number US troops on operations, the majority of whom is now National Guard. You think these troops don’t reflect your leadership and that of your subordinate commanders, and most particularly, your society?

General, you are going the right way to lose this conflict. Everything, including the professionalism of your troops is against you. Australians have bitter experience of our soldiers, sailors and airmen being taken prisoner in war. Many were treated as appallingly as some seem to be in Iraq or Guantanamo Bay. I have not met one Australian ex-prisoner of war who would endorse this corrupt human behaviour and I have met a few of them, among them including my father (Japanese POW /Changi/Burma railway).

We had no business going to war and we must now get out as soon as possible. The suggestion that because we broke it we own it is rubbish. The Iraqis don’t see it that way. They want us out and unless we go they will fight on.

I’m still trying to breathe after seeing on Lateline the photos of American soldiers smiling as they pose with tortured Iraqi prisoners, if torture is the word for the horror. The images are out of a Caligula movie. The world has gone to hell. George Bush’s war on Iraq will haunt all our lives. I recant my objections to Latham’s policy. Out now! There must be a better way, there must be. We must find leaders fast, real fast.

 

All we can do is what we can do. This week, Webdiary columnist Jack Robertson interviewed Andrew Wilkie, an Australian hero who did and is doing what he can do, and decided to do what he could to find out what was happening to the Australian Federal Police investigation into the leaking of Wilkie’s top secret ONA report to Howard cheerleader Andrew Bolt, columnist with the Herald Sun and invitee to Rupert Murdoch’s recent gathering of his worldwide army of propagandists in Cancun. Jack is doing what he can do. Here is his preliminary report. More to come.

To begin, here’s my summary of the story as of last September, from Howard on the ropes: Labor’s three chances for a knockout blow:

The leak of intelligence whistleblower Andrew Wilkie’s top secret ONA report on Iraq to Government-friendly journalist Andrew Bolt in June began to haunt Howard last week after his government brazenly briefed government backbencher Sandy Macdonald on its contents to hit Wilkie over the head with in the parliamentary inquiry into Howard’s pre-war intelligence.

The leak of Wilkie’s report is a serious breach of security and a criminal offence which went unnoticed back in June. The Macdonald drama lifted the lid on the scandal, revealing that ONA had referred the leak to the Australian Federal Police for investigation on July 4. NINE WEEKS later, the AFP had not interviewed Bolt! The AFP now joins the Australian Electoral Commission as an ‘independent’ body under strong suspicion of having been so politicised under John Howard that it no longer performs its duty without fear or favour.

I rang the AFP last week to ask when the investigation began and why Bolt had not been interviewed. The reply: “Following a thorough evaluation, the AFP moved into investigation phase YESTERDAY.” The AFP said it was also investigating the use of top secret material by Macdonald. In other words, a government MP is under criminal investigation and the leaker could well be a government staffer or minister guilty of a serious crime and a serious breach of security in a security-conscious Australia.

I was the subject of an AFP investigation many years ago when I was leaked a Simon Crean Cabinet submission. These types of leaks – unlike leaks of classified security documents like Wilkie’s – are usually ignored, because often it’s politicians doing the leaking. I was interviewed at the Canberra headquarters of the AFP within days of Crean’s referral, and said “no comment” to all questions asked because my source was confidential. But the police had good reason to interview me. I could have got the document anonymously in the mail or found it in a rubbish bin, and in either case could and would have been frank with the AFP. So why wasn’t Andrew Bolt interviewed? Two reasons spring to mind – either the police already knew who leaked it and didn’t want to pursue the matter, or had decided not to investigate at all.

This is an intolerable situation and, as other writers have pointed out, makes a despicable comparison with Australian defence force officer Merv Jenkins, who took his own life in Washington after vicious government retaliation for his failure to obey a directive not to give US intelligence contacts information on East Timor prior to the independence vote despite government-to-government agreements to do so (see Mike Carlton’s A leak by the bucketful and Michelle Grattan’s It’s no secret: let he who is without spin…).

But the significance of the Government’s Bolt play is much greater than further proof of its entrenched double standards and dangerous politicisation of Australia’s core democratic institutions. If it’s OK to leak intelligence to discredit the whistleblower, why isn’t it OK to release intelligence to refute Wilkie’s accusations that Howard lied about his reasons for invading Iraq? Why not declassify the intelligence which would prove Howard’s constant claims in arguing the case for war that invading Iraq would REDUCE the risk of terrorism, REDUCE the risk of WMDs finding their way into the hands of terrorists, and make the world a SAFER place for Australians? Why won’t Howard disprove Wilkie’s assertions by proving his own case?

He sure needs to now. Sensational documents just released by the British parliamentary inquiry into Blair’s stated reasons for war reveal what the British Joint Intelligence Committee told Blair (and the Australian intelligence services) six weeks before the war:

“The JIC assessed that al-Qaeda and associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest terrorist threat to western interests, and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq,” the British parliamentary report says.

“The JIC report, ‘International Terrorism: War with Iraq’, also said there was no evidence Saddam Hussein wanted to use any chemical or biological weapons in terrorist attacks or that he planned to pass them on to al-Qaeda. “However, it judged that in the event of imminent regime collapse there would be a risk of transfer of such material, whether or not as a deliberate regime policy.” (Australia was told: war will fuel terror).

Wilkie made these very points upon his resignation from ONA before the war. Why did Howard invade? Didn’t he care about increasing the threat of terrorism? Did he judge that our security reliance on the United States was so large that he had to agree to a request from a mad president? So large that he ignored the best available intelligence and passionate warnings from Indonesia and and other neighbours that invading Iraq without UN sanction would greatly destablise the region, thus increasing the risk to the safety of Australians?

***

Special report on the Andrew Wilkie leak

by Jack Robertson, Meeja Watch columnist for Webdiary

Andrew Bolt, the Herald-Sun journalist at the centre of an on-going Australian Federal Police investigation into the alleged leaking last year of a Top Secret ONA report, said yesterday he did �go through� the report while writing a June 2003 article discrediting the analytical credibility of its author, the former ONA analyst Andrew Wilkie.

The confirmation comes amid fresh claims by Wilkie about the internal distribution and handling of the report which re-kindle suspicions that elements of the government were involved in the leak.

The controversy first erupted after 23 June last year, when Bolt�s article ridiculed Wilkie�s credibility as a critic of the government�s Iraq policies, apparently based upon his access to top secret pre-invasion assessments Wilkie had prepared in late 2002. The article, titled �Spook Misspoke�, said:

�When I go through the only secret report that Wilkie ever wrote about Iraq as an Office of National Assessment analyst, I wonder just who fell for a �fairytale�.

Asked whether this description of his access to the report was correct, he said, “Of course it is. Otherwise why would I have written it?”

�Everything I wrote about that [Wilkie] report … is accurate, and raises serious doubts about the credibility of Andrew Wilkie that need to be investigated by those who would like to elevate him to Sainthood.�

Asked whether he had gained this access at a time �closer to December 2002, or closer to 23 June 2003�, Bolt would only say that “I can tell you that my [article] is accurate, and I�d like [Wilkie supporters] to deal with the revelations it [contains] that go to the credibility of Andrew Wilkie.”

“Andrew Wilkie was making wild claims that traded on what he has promoted as his superior knowledge of Iraq. [His supporters] need to question whether [they] should put so much faith in this man.”

Bolt declined to comment about his source for the report. Asked if he was prepared to exclude the Prime Minister�s and the Foreign Minister�s offices as his source, he responded:

“Don�t insult my intelligence and yours. If you claim to be a journalist, these questions are just so preposterous…they�re an insult. You would not put them to anyone else that had revealed documents that supported a thesis with which you whole-heartedly agreed. The only reason you�re asking me is that you want to elevate Andrew Wilkie against the evidence.”

Bolt did not respond to a separate written enquiry on whether or not he had been interviewed to date by Australian Federal Police over the matter.

Since resigning from ONA in March 2003 in protest over what he said was an untenable disparity between the pre-invasion �exaggerations� of Saddam Hussein�s WMD threat and links to al-Qaeda presented publicly by the Howard government and the more measured assessments of the professional intelligence community he was seeing at the time, Wilkie has come under sustained personal and professional attack from Mr Howard�s government and his media supporters. Last year the Prime Minister apologised to Wilkie after acknowledging that a member of his staff had leaked untrue allegations to the media about the state of Wilkie�s marriage and mental stability.

Wilkie said that Bolt�s article lampooning his humanitarian risk assessments was part of a concerted campaign to neutralise his broader criticisms of the decision to invade Iraq, in particular his consistent querying since he resigned of the WMD and terrorism-link arguments John Howard used to sell the war.

However it has always been the deeper security implications of Bolt�s references to his classified report, rather than Bolt�s �mischievous� spin on it, that primarily concern Wilkie. After reading the article last year, he wrote to the Prime Minister urging an investigation into a serious breach of national security. It is an offence under the Crimes Act for an unauthorised person to receive access to classified material.

In fact when Wilkie wrote to Prime Minister Howard, the ONA had already initiated an AFP investigation into the alleged leak � an investigation that continues nearly ten months later. A second leak investigation � arising from an alleged leak that came to light well after the Bolt article appeared, and involving the same report and the National Party Senator Sandy McDonald – has already concluded with no charges being laid.

It is not known what is causing the Bolt leak investigation to progress so slowly.

Wilkie said on Tuesday that he had now been interviewed by AFP as part of the on-going investigation:

“I was finally interviewed [by the AFP] late last year. As far as I�m aware, there�s been no outcome of that. I don�t know if it�s been completed … I got the impression from the police when they interviewed me that I was pretty well towards the end of their list. I got the impression they�d �made their enquiries�. I also got the impression that they had a strong sense of what had happened, but were not optimistic they�d ever be able to prove it.”

In response to questioning in Parliament last year, Prime Minister Howard and senior Ministers stressed that the initial distribution of Wilkie�s report, in December 2002, involved �in the order of 300 copies�. The Opposition countered by pointing out that the nature of the distribution and handling of classified material is such that it is unlikely that any of the original issue copies would have remained in circulation � that is, in a position to be leaked to Bolt � as late as June.

On 10 September last year then Opposition leader Simon Crean asked the Prime Minister:

“Can the Prime Minister inform the House who in his office had access to this top-secret report? Did the Prime Minister or any member of his office who had access to this top-secret report fail to return it before 23 June 2003, or request a copy of it in the weeks prior to the publication of its contents in the Herald Sun newspaper? Will the Prime Minister ensure that this information is made available to the Australian Federal Police?”

Mr Howard replied:

“I would have to talk to my staff about that. I am not going to give an answer on the run without talking to them.”

A week later, on 17 September, Lateline�s Tony Jones asked Opposition Foreign Affairs spokesperson Kevin Rudd, a former diplomat:

TONY JONES: The PM, of course, says there were 300 copies of this document in circulation. How are you hoping to pin it on one particular person, or one particular office, when of those 300 copies there could be thousands of photocopies, for example?

KEVIN RUDD: Well actually photocopies is not authorised of these documents – I used to work in the system. What happens is you’re given one, you effectively sign for it and you have to hand it back or attest to the fact that it’s been destroyed. But on top of that, you have to put the chronology in order here. Andrew Wilkie, who I think has probably been interviewed on this program before and certainly on other outlets of the ABC, wrote this document back in December last year, from memory.

Now it’s not until June of this year that Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun in Melbourne then begins to reproduce bits of it, or what he asserts to be bits of it, in his newspaper column. Now this document would have been in quite large circulation within Government in December, January, maybe even February, in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Why does it suddenly appear in June? One of the questions I put to Mr Downer – which he didn’t really answer, in fact he didn’t answer at all – was, “Did anyone from your office, Mr Downer, request a copy of this document in the weeks leading up to the article appearing in Mr Bolt’s column in the ‘Herald Sun’ on 23 June? Again, duck and weave, evade the question. If Mr Downer had a robust answer to that, I’m sure he could have provided it. He did not.

There has been no indication since the controversy peaked in September that the AFP investigation has made progress. Andrew Wilkie is not confident that the official investigation will trace the leak, but echoed Mr Rudd�s Lateline comments with regard to the handling and circulation of his report�s original round of issues.

“As you can imagine, [classified reports] all go out in one hit � hundreds go out, electronic and paper… at the time, [which in this case] would be December. And there�s a �burn-or-return� policy, basically. You�ve got to destroy them, and say you�ve destroyed them, or you�ve got to return them. Parliament House does not hang onto copies. They just don�t want the trouble, and they don�t have the facilities for storing vast amounts of Top Secret documentation… [Bolt�s article came out] at least six months or so from when the report came out. So by that stage, the Prime Minister�s office, the Foreign Minister�s Office wouldn�t have had a copy.”

He also revealed that since his AFP interview last year he had been made aware of further information relating to the leak that may re-ignite Opposition speculation on the matter.

It is already a matter of public record that a copy of Wilkie�s report was sought from and issued by ONA some time in June last year. On September 10, Senator John Faulkner told Parliament:

“I remind the Senate of the chronology of the leak of this ONA document classified Top Secret AUSTEO. On June 19 this year, former ONA analyst Andrew Wilkie gave evidence to the United Kingdom Foreign Affairs Select Committee on weapons of mass destruction. His appearance received a great deal of publicity in the Australian media. Around this time someone – I believe from within government – accessed from ONA on a return and burn basis that highly classified, top secret AUSTEO codeword document and it was provided to Herald Sun journalist Andrew Bolt. I believe that the motivation was to discredit Wilkie.”

John Howard and Alan Jones are friends. They�re also political allies. Mutual backscratchers, in other words, for mutual advantage. So Howard invites Jones to his exclusive barbecue for George Bush last year. And Howard chooses Jones, every time, when he�s in political trouble and wants a supportive radio interview.

 

Of course Alan Jones has political power. And he uses it, big time, to get his way, in politics and to line his pocket with advertising dollars.

Cool. But what happens when the third party in the mutual admiration and mutual benefit society is the bloke Howard appoints to enforce the law on radio broadcasting licence holders � in this case 2GB, in which Jones is a substantial shareholder � and to set standards of conduct to protect citizens from abuse of power?

And what happens when a big company � in this case Telstra, which is majority owned by the Australian people – joins the cosy circle?

It�s a recipe for corruption, deceit, and outright betrayal of the foundation of our democracy � the public�s right to know.

Watching Lateline�s discussion with former Australian Broadcasting Authority executive Kerrie Henderson and opposition communications spokesman Lindsay Tanner last night, I was struck by the fact that Tanner proposed no REAL, SUBSTANTIVE changes to the law to protect the citizens politicians allegedly represent. Henderson raised the issue, but Tanner wouldn�t touch it. No, let�s just have an inquiry on who said what to whom at THAT dinner party.

Why won�t Labor bite the bullet and promise to do what needs to be done to halt the mainstream Australian media�s slide into effectively lying, consistently, to its readers, listeners and viewers for profit. BAN CASH FOR COMMENT. Criminalise the disgraceful, unethical practice of media selling the news and comment it pretends to be independent? AND ban companies from offering to buy media comment?

I wrote about a scheme by Howard�s tawdry government to spend citizen�s money to buy favourable comment in regional newspapers in Whatever it takes: the Howard Government’s cash for comment play, Is the government ethical? No comment and Howard’s cash for comment: an update. At the time, I asked Tanner whether Labor would stamp out cash for comment for once and for all. It hadn�t been considered, he said.

Of course not. Which major political party would dare offend Alan Jones and John Laws and the other shock shocks who abuse their positions of trust with Australians for personal financial gain? Let alone Kerry Packer, another lucky invitee to the Bush barbecue?

A few years ago, just after the first cash for comment scandal involving Laws and Jones, I was travelling with the Deputy Prime minister John Anderson when he got a call from Laws� producer asking for an interview. �You won�t agree, surely,� I said. �He�s unethical.�

�I have no choice,� Anderson replied. Laws had clout with voters and he couldn�t afford to get him offside. Same for Labor.

And Labor, in truth, is responsible for the diabolical state of ethics in Australia�s radio and commercial television media. There was once a strong, independent, ethical and courageous regulator. It was called the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal and its head was Miss Deirdre O�Connor, who later become a Judge.

Back then, there were licence renewal hearings every three years � TV and radio licences are PUBLIC assets – at which complaints could be aired and licence holders called to account. O�Connor, silly woman, took the law seriously. When Alan Bond, then the owner of Network Nine, effectively admitted bribing Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen by paying him $400,000 to settle a defamation action against Nine so he could do business in Queensland, she called an inquiry into whether he was �a fit and proper person� to hold a licence, as required by law. Her inquiry decided he wasn�t.

The Labor Government, through communications minister Kim Beazley, then abolished the Tribunal and replaced it with a ‘light touch� regulator, the one now headed by David Flint. The industry would self regulate, and most investigations would be in private.

This disastrous move, made at the behest of Big Media, has led to this sad state of affairs. As Professor Graeme Turner argued in Remote Control: new media, new ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2003), the decline in ethical standards in radio is �a consequence of increased and unregulated competition between broadcasting organisations since the deregulation of the radio industry formalised in the Broadcasting Services Act (1992)�.

“The Act understood the media more as a business than a cultural industry and the media have behaved increasingly unequivocally like a business ever since. Issues of media ethics dropped off the regulatory agenda as a result of the so-called co-regulation arrangements that effectively allowed the industry to police its own ethical standards. The expectation of civic responsibility that underpins a commitment to media ethics also, necessarily, dropped off the agenda as regulatory environments were increasingly designed to ensure the profitable operation of commercial media companies rather than to serve the interests of citizens (or even consumers).”

Add to this a twice appointed sycophant of John Howard as industry regulator and, it is now clear, Alan Jones, and anything goes. Telstra�s involvement in paying huge money to get favourable comment from Jones to deceive its own major shareholder, the Australian people � without a word of protest from the trustee of the people�s shareholding, the Howard Government, just adds to the stench.

Come on, Labor, are you game to clean this up? If you are, make sure you include newspapers in your ban on cash for comment too.

But how could Labor be game. Who�s REALLY got the power? Certainly not the citizen.

Is Australia still a democracy or have the Big Parties, Big Media and Big Business taken it away from us? The big parties will only act if citizens tell them to or else. Do we care enough to take them on?

This is an open letter to Tony Blair from some of Britain’s most distinguished former diplomats decrying his backing of the Bush-Sharon deal on Palestine. Thank you to Laurie Cousins for the find, and see ‘I have never seen such despair among diplomats’ for how the letter was organised.

 

***

Dear Prime Minister,

We the undersigned, former British ambassadors, high commissioners, governors and senior international officials, including some who have long experience of the Middle East and others whose experience is elsewhere, have watched with deepening concern the policies which you have followed on the Arab-Israel problem and Iraq, in close co-operation with the United States.

Following the press conference in Washington at which you and President Bush restated these policies, we feel the time has come to make our anxieties public, in the hope that they will be addressed in Parliament and will lead to a fundamental reassessment.

The decision by the US, the EU, Russia and the UN to launch a “road-map” for the settlement of the Israel/Palestine conflict raised hopes that the major powers would at last make a determined and collective effort to resolve a problem which, more than any other, has for decades poisoned relations between the West and the Islamic and Arab worlds.

The legal and political principles on which such a settlement would be based were well-established: President Clinton had grappled with the problem during his presidency; the ingredients needed for a settlement were well-understood and informal agreements on several of them had already been achieved.

But the hopes were ill-founded. Nothing effective has been done either to move the negotiations forward or to curb the violence. Britain and the other sponsors of the “road-map” merely waited on American leadership, but waited in vain.

Worse was to come. After all those wasted months, the international community has now been confronted with the announcement by Ariel Sharon and President Bush of new policies which are one-sided and illegal and which will cost yet more Israeli and Palestinian blood.

Our dismay at this backward step is heightened by the fact that you yourself seem to have endorsed it, abandoning the principles which for nearly four decades have guided international efforts to restore peace in the Holy Land and which have been the basis for such successes as those efforts have produced.

This abandonment of principle comes at a time when, rightly or wrongly, we are portrayed throughout the Arab and Muslim world as partners in an illegal and brutal occupation in Iraq.

The conduct of the war in Iraq has made it clear that there was no effective plan for the post-Saddam settlement. All those with experience of the area predicted that the occupation of Iraq by the coalition forces would meet serious and stubborn resistance, as has proved to be the case.

To describe the resistance as led by terrorists, fanatics and foreigners is neither convincing nor helpful. Policy must take account of the nature and history of Iraq, the most complex country in the region.

However much Iraqis may yearn for a democratic society, the belief that one could now be created by the coalition is naive. This is the view of virtually all independent specialists on the region, both in Britain and in America.

We are glad to note that you and the President have welcomed the proposals outlined by Lakhdar Brahimi. We must be ready to provide what support he requests, and to give authority to the United Nations to work with the Iraqis themselves, including those who are now actively resisting the occupation, to clear up the mess.

The military actions of the coalition forces must be guided by political objectives and by the requirements of the Iraq theatre itself, not by criteria remote from them.

It is not good enough to say that the use of force is a matter for local commanders. Heavy weapons unsuited to the task in hand, inflammatory language, the current confrontations in Najaf and Fallujah, all these have built up rather than isolated the opposition.

The Iraqis killed by coalition forces probably total between ten and fifteen thousand (it is a disgrace that the coalition forces themselves appear to have no estimate), and the number killed in the last month in Fallujah alone is apparently several hundred including many civilian men, women and children.

Phrases such as “We mourn each loss of life. We salute them, and their families for their bravery and their sacrifice”, apparently referring only to those who have died on the coalition side, are not well judged to moderate the passions these killings arouse.

We share your view that the British Government has an interest in working as closely as possible with the US on both these related issues, and in exerting real influence as a loyal ally. We believe that the need for such influence is now a matter of the highest urgency.

If that is unacceptable or unwelcome there is no case for supporting policies which are doomed to failure.

Yours faithfully,

Sir Brian Barder, former high commissioner, Australia;

Paul Bergne, former diplomat;

Sir John Birch, former ambassador, Hungary;

Sir David Blatherwick, former ambassador, Ireland;

Graham Hugh Boyce, former ambassador, Egypt;

Sir Julian Bullard, former ambassador, Bonn;

Juliet Campbell, former ambassador, Luxemburg;

Sir Bryan Cartledge, former ambassador, Soviet Union;

Terence Clark, former ambassador, Iraq;

David Hugh Colvin, former ambassador, Belgium;

Francis Cornish, former ambassador, Israel;

Sir James Craig, former ambassador, Saudi Arabia;

Sir Brian Crowe: former director-general, external and defence affairs, Council of the European Union;

Basil Eastwood, former ambassador, Syria;

Sir Stephen Egerton, diplomatic service, Kuwait;

William Fullerton, former ambassador, Morocco; Dick Fyjis-Walker, ex-chairman, Commonwealth Institute;

Marrack Goulding, former head of United Nations Peacekeeping;

John Graham, former Nato ambassador, Iraq;

Andrew Green, former ambassador, Syria;

Victor Henderson, former ambassador, Yemen;

Peter Hinchcliffe, former ambassador, Jordan;

Brian Hitch, former High Commissioner, Malta;

Sir Archie Lamb, former ambassador, Norway;

Sir David Logan, former ambassador, Turkey;

Christopher Long, former ambassador, Switzerland;

Ivor Lucas, former assistant secretary-general, Arab-British Chamber of Commerce;

Ian McCluney, former ambassador, Somalia; Maureen MacGlashan, foreign service in Israel;

Philip McLean, former ambassador, Cuba;

Sir Christopher MacRae, former ambassador, Chad;

Oliver Miles, diplomatic service in Middle East;

Martin Morland, former ambassador, Burma;

Sir Keith Morris, former ambassador, Colombia;

Sir Richard Muir, former ambassador, Kuwait;

Sir Alan Munro, former ambassador, Saudi Arabia;

Stephen Nash, ambassador, Latvia;

Robin O’Neill, former ambassador, Austria;

Andrew Palmer, former ambassador, Vatican;

Bill Quantrill, former ambassador, Cameroon;

David Ratford, former ambassador, Norway;

Tom Richardson, former UK deputy ambassador, UN;

Andrew Stuart, former ambassador, Finland;

Michael Weir, former ambassador, Cairo;

Alan White, former ambassador, Chile;

Hugh Tunnell, former ambassador, Bahrain;

 

Charles Treadwell, former ambassador, UAE;

Sir Crispin Tickell, former UN Ambassador;

Derek Tonkin, former ambassador, Thailand;

David Tatham, former governor, Falkland Islands;

Harold “Hooky” Walker, former ambassador, Iraq;

Jeremy Varcoe, former ambassador, Somalia.

This piece was first published in yesterday’s Sun Herald.

 

Who do we blame for the superficial sludge that was Australian politics last week? Do we blame the party leaders for each insisting that the other was a dreadful excuse of a man for nicking a few words from other people? Or do we blame the media for putting the story in lights with arched eyebrows?

Iraq is ablaze. Israel is going for the kill against the Palestinians even after it got George Bush’s blessing to permanently seize sections of Palestinian territory in the West Bank. A new book published in the US reports that Bush gave the Saudi Government an exclusive preview of his Iraq war plan and that the Saudis promised him they would get the oil price down by the US presidential election.

Bob Woodward’s Plan Of Attack says that John Howard begged Bush to keep him informed exactly when we’d go to war so he could pretend we made our own decision. Lance Collins is still trying to get the Government to address his concerns that our intelligence services are corrupt and potentially dangerous to our national security.

Where was the questioning on these big issues?

Take the claim that Mark Latham used the same wording as Bill Clinton once did to set out appropriate education benchmarks for our kids and ourselves. So bloody what? Latham announced some big aims – how about some questions on what would it take to get us there and how much would it cost?

I reckon the media and the pollies are locked in a demeaning game they get off on because it’s easy! Howard tries to make Latham look small and Latham returns. Both look small. The media gets a cheap yarn. Big deal.

Web diarist Christopher Selth wrote: “The cries of plagiarism coming from Canberra remind us how far away a new politics is. We find yet again our so-called leaders are engaged in point scoring of the pettiest nature.

“It debases their obligation to deal with the challenges facing our community. It makes a mockery of our political processes. Its immaturity is both outrageous and embarrassing. It truly represents a style of politics where the only objective is the defeat of your opponent, where the political class are lost in their own struggle and utterly disconnected from their responsibilities and the community they are supposed to represent.

“The new Mark Latham should not have risen to the bait. If he wants to represent a new politics and new hope he must stay on the issue. Not play tit-for-tat games. We must demand that these men behave like adults, not schoolboys. Enough is enough. We are paying them to do the job of running our country.”

I blame the media too. Why aren’t we demanding answers to questions the pollies want to run away from instead of the ones they feed the chooks with?

What do both parties think of the latest Israeli actions? What struck me at the joint press conference between Bush and Sharon when Bush gave Sharon everything he wanted was that Bush looked small and weak and Sharon looked like the boss. It seems the sky’s the limit for him now that the US has no other unambiguous friends after its misadventure in Iraq. Yet Israel’s actions seem designed to further inflame Arab enmity and up the ante in the Middle East. What do our leaders think about this?

A group of active citizens of all political stripes on Sydney’s North Shore are showing us a way through the meaningless game the politicians and the media play. North Shore Peace and Democracy will hold its second big community forum on the theme of Secrets and Lies Destroy Democracy? on Monday May 3 at Willoughby Town Hall. Like its first forum last October about why Australia invaded Iraq, this one will see politicians on all sides – Labor’s Kevin Rudd, Liberal Senator Marise Payne, Democrats Senator Aden Ridgeway and Greens Senator Kerry Nettle – take the stage.

Before the forum the group works out six questions to ask each politician in turn. The pollies have prior notice of the questions, and, after they answer, the person who put up the question asks a follow-up. It’s polite, civilised and compelling; it gives politicians the space to speak beyond sound grabs, and citizens the chance to hear answers to the questions they want asked.

The highlight of the October forum was an impassioned plea from former Liberal Party president John Valder to his friend Tony Abbott to recognise that Howard may have committed a war crime in invading Iraq.

You’ll find details of the community forum at http://www.sydneypeace.com. The group’s motto is: “Our lives begin to end when we become silent about things that matter.”

G�day. John Howard copycats George Bush and does a �surprise� visit to our troops in Iraq on Anzac Day (except that the big media knew, but were �sworn to secrecy� – at least the big US media were lied to by Bush so it was a real surprise.)

 

More partisan political photo opportunities, more abuse of our troops for his personal advantage. Yuk. This bloke wants to single handedly destroy our one day of the year as a unifying moment for Australians. No shame, John. No shame.

He pulled out most of our forces after Saddam�s statue fell and organised fake �victory� parades while our hapless soldiers� colleagues from Britain and the US were dying in Iraq trying to create a peace. Now he’s finally admitted it’s still war, and says we could send more troops, reneging on a long standing commitment not to do so.

Who in Iraq told him the latest line to run? Here�s what Downer said on Meet the Press on Sunday:

PAUL BONGIORNO: So, are you saying there would be no foreseeable situation where our Government would send more troops back into Iraq?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: No, I can’t imagine a situation where we would send more troops.

Here we go, here we go, here we go.

Scott Burchill recommends The Los Angeles Times story �Insurgents fortify positions in Najaf, at http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-najaf26apr26,1,3286292.story?coll=la-home-headlines (subscription required):

NAJAF, Iraq – As U.S. troops await orders to enter this Islamic holy city, militant Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr and his militia are strengthening their control here, stockpiling weapons, seizing key religious sites and arresting or detaining those who challenge him.

In the last two weeks, Sadr’s followers – many rushing here from Baghdad, Fallouja and other areas of Iraq – have fortified their positions in the city and the neighboring town of Kufa, including at Najaf’s gold-domed shrine of Imam Ali, one of the most revered mosques in the world…

The open challenge to the U.S.-led administration in a city seen as sacred to Shiite Muslims, who make up 60% of Iraq’s population, has put coalition authorities in a quandary. Two weeks ago, U.S. military officials amassed 2,500 troops on the outskirts of Najaf and declared their intention to restore order to the city and kill or capture Sadr. Last week, they softened their stance, saying they wanted to allow more time to reach a peaceful settlement in Najaf.

But on Sunday, L. Paul Bremer III, the civil administrator of Iraq, called Sadr’s growing weapons cache “an explosive situation.” Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, deputy commander of the U.S. Army’s 1st Armored Division, said soldiers probably would advance into an area on the edge of Najaf being vacated by withdrawing Spanish troops. He said that although the Americans would not interfere with religious institutions, the move would further squeeze Sadr’s forces.

“We’re going to drive this guy into the dirt,” he said.

And see U.N. Iraq Resolution a Tough Sell for the Yank�s latest (last?) attempt to get the UN to take the nightmare off their hands:

The Bush administration is preparing a broad U.N. resolution to endorse its plan to transfer power in Iraq, but it may face a tough sell on proposals guaranteeing legal protection for foreign troops and letting Washington make the final judgments on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.letting Washington make the final judgments on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs, according to U.S. and U.N. officials…

The general goal of a new resolution is to rally international support behind the new provisional government, which is still being negotiated by U.S. and U.N. officials, and ease year-long international friction over the U.S.-led military intervention to oust Hussein.

With serious deliberations on a draft now underway within the administration, U.S. officials are optimistic about rallying enough Security Council support – unlike the resolution authorizing the use of force last year. “We are working on such a resolution, and I’m confident we’ll be able to obtain such a resolution,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told Dutch RTL television Friday.

Yet what some U.S. officials have already dubbed the “mega-resolution” may be in trouble even before a draft is finalized. “This could be the last big diplomatic battle over U.S. Iraq policy,” said a senior U.S. official involved in Iraq policy.

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ANZAC DAY THOUGHTS

Phil Henry

My father penned the letter that appears below earlier today. As a returned serviceman, my father has very strong feelings about this issue. I wasn’t optimistic that his letter would get a run in the paper’s letters column but I thought maybe Webdiary might provide a forum to explore his ideas. Later today, I ran across this online piece. It’s brilliant. I thought about my father’s letter and decided he’s right on the money. Please make of this what you will.

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25 April

To Margo Kingston, Webdiary, Sydney Morning Herald

Lest we forget! Enough, already! Another Anzac Day has passed, but lest we forget will be with us throughout the year.

When I attended reunions of the unit of which I was privileged to be a member, at formal dinners after the usual toasts had been honoured a speaker would recite The Ode:

“At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them”.

The assembled company, still on their feet, would repeat “We will remember them”. And then the speaker would intone “Lest we forget” and the mob would dutifully repeat it.

WHY?? We had just acknowledged and confirmed our enduring memory of the sacrifice of our comrades� lives, and by extension the sacrifice of all those who had done the same. Not only “why”, but also “what”?

It is my contention that the phrase has come to be used to stifle rational thought by invoking some supposed axiomatic belief which may never be doubted. Or some other weasel purpose.

To counter this tendency, I suggest reference to its origin in the poem addressed to the British people, oddly entitled “Recessional.” The date was 1897, the poet Rudyard Kipling, the world was a very different place, but the message is even more relevant today. It should be read and pondered, and the closing lines of the verses should be spoken aloud as written.

Lest we forget! Lest we forget!

Yours sincerely

Leon Henry, Kenmore, Queensland

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Recessional

by Rudyard Kipling

God of our fathers, known of old–

Lord of our far-flung battle line

Beneath whose awful hand we hold

Dominion over palm and pine–

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget – lest we forget!

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The tumult and the shouting dies;

The captains and the kings depart:

Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget – lest we forget!

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Far-called, our navies melt away;

On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget – lest we forget!

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If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe–

Such boasting as the Gentiles use

Or lesser breeds without the law —

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget – lest we forget!

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For heathen heart that puts her trust

In reeking tube and iron shard —

All valiant dust that builds on dust,

And guarding, calls not Thee to guard–

For frantic boast and foolish word,

Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!

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Antonio Yegles (Antonio�s �Who am I� piece is at Mate, where is my country?)

Good to see Howard is following his master Bush�s stunt by secretly turning up in Iraq; as any loyal lapdog should of course. He forgot the fake turkey though. Shouldn’t he have taken a slab of VB and a few Meat Pies to give to the troops? (Margo: One of Howard�s boys did the can of Milo handover – Howard�s spinners must have had fun with that.)

I wonder when he is going to don the fighter pilot suit, go for a taxpayer funded joyride and land on a aircraft carrier to declare: Mission Accomplished! Or should this be: Until the Job is Done!

Or should this really say: Whatever, whenever and however you want Dubya! War Crimes? What War Crimes? – All the way with Dubya!

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Peter Funnell in Canberra

The Governor-General of Australia gave a superb address this ANZAC Day at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. The GG took no side, save the fallen, did not glorify the horror, offered no endorsement of war and spoke of the basis of sacrifice and the precious gift that is our democracy.

It was a first rate example of leadership and plain common sense. Just what the nation needed to hear at this time. Well done GG!

Margo: Why wasn�t he the bloke who went to Iraq for Anzac Day? He�s the commander in chief under our monarchist Constitution, the one Howard pretends he supports. The speech is not yet on the GG�s website.

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Georges Mayes in Ingleburn, NSW

My immediate thought was that Howard has used Anzac to promote his political survival, to boost his popularity whilst defusing the question of the recall of the Australian soldiers from Iraq.

Words like “Howard uses the dead of Anzac as human shields to deliver his political Iraq message unharmed because Latham will not dare fire any political missile” come to my mind. And I shiver at the thought that grown-up men, “honourable men” in Shakespearean parlance, came up with this “great ploy”.

And I shiver even more because I realise that “my thoughts” classify me as mentally unstable, whilst Howard’s ploy will lead him to political victory, the pinnacle of his career as the greatest Australian prime minister.

Cry, Cry Australia

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Tim Gillin in Kensington, Sydney (Webdiary�s seriously pissed off conservative contributor)

Columnist Paul Sheehan writing in the SMH last year provided some interesting arithmetic about the human costs of Australia’s foreign policy.

In World War I, when (our) population was only 5 million, 300,000 men enlisted for duty and the majority, 216,000 of them, were either killed, wounded or captured. To put this in perspective, it was the equivalent of today’s US (with 290 million people) suffering 12 million military casualties.

Despite this, Sheehan went on to sing the praises of a century of our Governments’ foreign policy of “Imperial Fealty”, first to the UK and then the US, a policy that started with the Boer War and now sees us with troops in Iraq. A war that may end up, if the pessimists are right, with us opposing Iraqi patriots fighting for their homeland. Just as we opposed Afrikaner patriots fighting for theirs in the Boer War. We’ve come a long way.

Unfortunately Paul Sheehan did not do a cost/benefit analysis. Sheehan and a lot of ANZAC day commentators seem to think that “the cost is the benefit”.

What would the lives of these “sacrificed” men been like if they had lived? Did they want to be sacrificed? What would their families, children and grand children have wanted? How many potential leaders in business, government and sport did our country lose? Could it be that we really did lose the flower of our manhood then, that the bravest and most honourable were shot down? This could be an explanation of why Australia in the decades since has been run by a conga line of second raters.

If we look at the negative side of the ledger we have to ask some serious questions of a practical political kind too. What exactly did those “12 million modern US equivalent” casualties obtain for us in terms of British support during WW2 and beyond?

The saga of Churchill and FDR’s unwillingness to release Australian troops from mid-east service to reinforce their homeland is so well known in Australia it is hardly worth repeating.

Surely the lesson is clear. Imperial powers, even relatively benign ones like Britain and the US, talk the language of collective security to mask their own interests. Not only is the UN is willing to sell them a mask, but like The League before it, was always camouflage for the great powers. Smaller states cannot realistically expect the power elite in a far off global powers to repay us for past favours. Things just don’t work that way. (For a great analysis of “The UN Charter and the Delusion of Collective Security” see Joseph Stromberg’s paper.

Australia’s massive casualties in the Great War, what Joseph Schumpeter called the “Meaningless Catastrophe” of World War I , did not help us in WW2. We paid our ‘insurance premium’ many times over but when we needed to make a claim the office was shut. Too busy, sorry.

It’s worse than that. There is a strong case to be made that Churchill and FDR “sexed up” a previous dead letter dispute they had with Japan to pave the way for US intervention in the War against Hitler. Northern hemisphere scholars may argue this ultimately had a great result for mankind, Mr.Stalin certainly liked it. But the risk and the cost to our homeland was too great.

In his piece Why are we surprised by war lies? Spiked Online’s Brendan O’Neill says:

On 25 November 1941, just two weeks before Pearl Harbor, there was a top-level meeting at the White House where, according to then US secretary for war Henry Stimson, President Roosevelt ignored the agenda and ‘brought up entirely the relations with the Japanese’. ‘He brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked, perhaps [as soon as] next Monday’, wrote Stimson in his diary, ‘for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what should we do. The question was how we should manoeuvre them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves’.”

In Britain, Churchill’s government concurred that some kind of Japanese attack was bound to take place. ‘America provoked Japan to such an extent that the Japanese were forced to attack Pearl Harbor’, said Captain Oliver Lytletton, production minister in Churchill’s cabinet, in 1944: ‘It is a travesty on history ever to say that America was forced into war.'”

So it is possible that it was the policies of Churchill and FDR that helped put Australia under Japanese threat in the first place, a threat removed mostly by the determination of Australian troops at Kokoda and Milne Bay, the equally courageous US Marines at Guadalcanal, and the USN and Australian Navy in the Coral Sea and Bismarck Sea.

The young Americans who fought with us are honorary ANZACs in my book, even if it makes sense to listen to America’s own founding fathers and distrust the leaders of all great powers.

I have as much admiration for our own veterans as anyone. Their loyalty to each other and their sacrifice should be honoured. Their advice should be listened to with respect. In some ways the respect and admiration ordinary Australians have for our diggers helps make us a better country.

The point is to avoid new Gallipollis, not replay them. We can’t risk another century of Imperial fealty. Maybe that’s the lesson the next generation should learn from Anzac Day.

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REACTION TO Time for tit-for-tat leaders to grow up

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Judy Wood

There are so many people in the community disillusioned by the current political parties and the way the media runs with every little issue put forth by Howard and his team. The game playing is so obvious and the media often is the messenger of the spin. I no longer believe anything in the papers or what comes out of the politicians mouths. It is so bad now that one is not sure whether it is spin or a truthful statement.

If the world was not in such a mess due to the invasion of Iraq it may not matter, but the times are tricky at the moment and we need to know the truth. The current leaders are very dangerous people.

The Bennelong Friends of Refugees group is also holding a meeting � May 14 at St. Anne’s Centre Top Ryde at 7.30 pm. Speakers are Andrew Wilkie, John Valder and Dr Carmen Lawrence. Yes, the community is finding other ways to seek information.

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Jenny Haines in Newtown, Sydney

I think it is idealistic to expect that politics is not going to be adversarial and competitive when everything else in our society is! Having observed the corridors of power from afar and close up over the last 28 years, it must be almost impossible to survive without fighting with all your strength to get your views heard above the din, even if you are Mark Latham, and probably especially if you are Mark Latham.

So for all the idealists out there, it would be nice to have a new politics, but that is not going to happen now, in our current society. So cut Mark Latham some slack – he’s trying hard to define a new path for Labor and he’s making some courageous stands for which he is taking a beating, especially on Iraq.

I don’t agree with everything he says and does, but I’d far rather have him as PM than John Howard!

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Malcolm Manville in Killara, Sydney

You raise an interesting concept in asking our politicians to grow up, although you�re expecting a near impossibility.

No matter how you perceive politics across the spectrum, by acting like adolescents politicians ensured we turn away. It seems to be their ploy to create indifference, cynicism and a lack of interest from the electorate. They do it because it suits them to do it.

When I see Messrs Howard, Abbott, Downer, Rudd, Ferguson et al appear on TV I feel I’m to receive a Logie winning performance. This was illustrated about a week ago when John Hewson referred to Paul Keating apologising for some of the things he�d said about him in public during the months leading up to the election, and said that he actually liked him. Very nice for Hewson, but did we hear an apology to the electorate?

Regarding your reference to the upcoming forum arranged by the North Shore Peace and Democracy group, which is at least trying to engage pollies in some form of open dialogue, why are they giving politicians the privilege of being presented with questions in advance? Most likely because they wouldn�t turn up, is my cynical response.

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David Tester in Cairo

I’m at the tail end of a 5 week trip through Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel. I just had a quick look at the SMH and was unsuprised to see you writing nonsense again.

In case you haven’t noticed, Sharon is about to put his planned END OF THE OCCUPATION OF GAZA to his party�s vote for approval. The IDF is hammering the terrorists as they were in the process of making it appear the Israeli’s are being chased out.

The reality is Bush has told him to get out and Sharon has told his Cabinet that more than once. The end of the occupation of the West Bank will follow in a form that will depend on the outcome of the Gaza withdrawal. Perhaps by then, with Hamas governing Gaza, Arafat will come to his senses and negotiate the West Bank withdrawal process.

Yes, the Israelis will keep some settlements, but if the Egyptians etc hadn’t attempted to “drive the Jews into the sea” in 1967 they would never have been able to. I wonder if the Jordanians intend making a more complete Palestine by donating the East Bank to the new state. After what the Palestinians attempted in Black September I doubt it.