Howard has his Tampa 2004. Like Tampa, it involves the participation of a foreign power and exemplifies the politics of winning votes through fear. Unlike Tampa, that participation is voluntary and very, very deliberate.

 

In August 2001, The Norwegian vessel the Tampa answered an SOS call from Australia�s coastguard to rescue boat people from a sinking boat. Howard grabbed the chance for the politics of full-on fear and loathing, including baseless claims that terrorists could be aboard the boats and an SAS boarding of Tampa to turn it away from Australia. International maritime law and refugee laws were trashed as the 2001 version of Jewish people fleeing the Nazis and floating the seas without anywhere to land. Our �ship of fools� was populated with Afghanis and Iraqis fleeing the evil Taliban and Iraq, both regimes we since toppled.

But this time, Labor leader Mark Latham handed Howard the opportunity, if he dared subordinate Australia�s national interest to the altar of his lust for power.

Of course he dared. In last week�s talks between Howard and Bush, they discussed domestic politics. The deal: Howard would continue to be Bush�s echo chamber on the war in public, and to privately close ranks with the Americans, as Australia did when we became aware that the Americans were committing war crimes at Abu Ghraib. And Bush would publicly put the American alliance on the line to arm Howard with Tampa Mark 2.

This morning�s page one lead story by Paul Kelly in The Australian left us in no doubt about the deal or that Rupert Murdoch, an enthusiastic Bush backer, would promote the campaign through his media assets.

The US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is America�s second most senior diplomat, but diplomacy, let alone respect for Australian democracy, went out the window in his chat with Kelly.

He mounted an unprecedented and blatant propaganda strike to re-elect Howard through fear that if we elected Latham America would abandon the alliance. His arguments could, and probably were, written by Howard. The echo chamber payback.

Armitage also laid on the line something Howard has only dared hint at � that the Free Trade Agreement with the US was conditional on us staying in Iraq. Yes, it is blood for money. And it is money for political slavery.

Armitage dismissed Latham�s statement affirming his decision to bring our soldiers home by Christmas � the one he wrote after Bush whacked him in Howard�s company last week – line by line:

“Mr Latham said he looked to the day that a Labor government could work with the US to further strengthen intelligence, strategic and cultural relations. Apparently economic and political relations were not so important. Now you either have a full-up relationship or you don�t.

“I would argue that the US has spent a lot of time and energy trying to develop a free trade agreement with Australia, but these are things the people of Australia have to decide for themselves.” (see US steps up Latham attack).

(And have a look at today�s Australian editorial on Abu Ghraib, almost literally a composite of Alexander Downer�s increasingly ludicrous attempts to deny what the facts have shown � that Australia was an accessory after the fact to the war crimes at Abu Ghraib and helped the Yanks argue that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. It even praises Downer�s Lateline interview this week, where he answered not one question asked and admitted he hadn�t even bothered to read the crucial documents in Australia�s possession. This ain�t journalism, it’s crude political propaganda which shames Australian journalism and stinks to high heaven.)

Publicly putting the American alliance on the table to protect the careers of Bush and Howard is, of course, appalling and dangerous. But it does exemplify the attitude of Bush and Howard to politics � to win at any cost, regardless of the national interest. The Bush/Howard play is a radical, momentous change in Australian and American policy on the Alliance. Australians now stare at the threat that Australia is either effectively the 51st state or is on its own. With the Yanks on everything, or against them on everything.

The so-called greatest democracy in the world is also interfering in British politics to protect the current President�s job. Fearing that Tony Blair could be removed from office before the US presidential election in November, thus dealing yet another blow to Bush�s credibility on Iraq, Bush�s thugs are pressuring their supposed ideological soul mates in Britain, the Conservative Party, to stop criticising the conduct of the war. In the traditionally conservative magazine The Spectator at Bush to Howard: hands off Tony Peter Oborne reported:

“… the most important leader of the international Coalition, by far, was and remains Tony Blair, the only foreign leader of whom American voters are even dimly aware. In recent weeks the Republican Party has woken up, with a gulp of horror, to the prospect of a Blair defenestration. Specifically, it fears that the British Prime Minister could damage George Bush�s international standing by quitting before the November Presidential election.

So an operation has been launched within the White House, the State Department and above all the Republican Party to keep Tony Blair in office. This takes a number of forms…

The Republicans are now stretching themselves to the limit to put pressure on the British Tory party to give Tony Blair the easiest possible ride.

This kind of direct intervention in British politics by the United States is far from unprecedented. In 1987 President Ronald Reagan helped out Margaret Thatcher by humiliating Neil Kinnock when he made an official visit to the White House.

Now the same kind of pressure is being applied, only in reverse. The White House regrets that the new leader of the Conservative Party, Michael Howard, is failing to give unstinting support for the Iraq war and Tony Blair. There have been as yet no menacing calls from the Vice President. But Michael Howard has been left in no doubt that he is in the doghouse. �The White House hates Michael,� says one senior Conservative official, perhaps with exaggeration. �It feels that he is not standing shoulder to shoulder with Tony Blair. It is furious with him.� The official says that Howard has received �quite a few indirect messages� from the administration to the effect that it would be better if he stayed his tongue.”

The fear politics of Tampa Mark 2 is escalating so quickly that it looks to me like Howard will go early, perhaps as early as August 7.

First we had George Bush � the man whose handpicked puppet to rule Iraq Ahmed Chalabi had just been disowned as a suspected spy for Iran, and who was about to announce the resignation of the CIA director George Tenet � stand beside Howard to say it would be �disastrous� for Latham to pull Australia out of Iraq.

Both he and Howard (Howard after Bush, naturally) last week explicitly compared the war on Iraq to World War II, after claiming that Iraq is now �the frontline�. And now Richard. With us or against us.

If you accept the World War II analogy, then you�re forced to accept that America, the UK and Australia started it. Howard said he took us to war to make us safer from terrorism. Yet he stepped into the terrorist’s trap by invading a Muslim nation without ties to al Qaeda and now admits that “international terrorism has invested an enormous amount in breaking the will of the coalition in Iraq”. In other words, we made a mistake, but now we can’t afford to lose. Therefore it would be rational, wouldn�t it, to ask whether the government which put us in this dreadful position – where oil supplies are at risk, recruitment to al Qaeda has surged, and instability is now chronic in many Muslim nations – is the right one to lead us in an attempt to minimise the damage. Why is noone asking that question? Our mainstream media is largely captured, that�s why.

If Australians are shit scared that we�re entering World War III, they might do anything to keep America onside. That�s what Howard promises and what his media backers will ram down our throats.

It�s going to be hard for Latham to make Howard�s Tampa 2 a winner for him, and I bet more than a few Labor people are thinking back to 1975, when, it has been alleged, the CIA stepped in to destroy the Whitlam government.

I hope Latham sticks with the politics of hope and continues to assert Australia’s independence and national pride. A new government in America, Britain and Australia could yet avoid World War III. Which is what the world�s peoples are desperately hoping for.

Jack Robertson is Webdiary’s ‘Meeja Watch’ columnist. He has reported previously on his long quest for the truth of the anti-Wilkie leak in Andrew Bolt: I did ‘go through’ leaked top secret report by Wilkie, Wilkie, Bolt and ONA at odds over top secret report and Wilkie: Blame ‘outrageous’ PM, not top spies.

 

 

A Meeja Watch salute to Tom Allard, who obviously still understands that only reporters can SET news agendas; and with a sympathetic shrug for News Wimited�s Malcolm Farr, who of course we fully understand must be under enormous pwessure fwom Uncle Wupert not to investigate Abu Ghwaib-gate too cwosewy. Poor widdle Pwess Gawewy Pwesident.

From the One Letter to the Past � Salute to a Lemming Pack

Dear Mainstream Australian Press, circa early 2003,

You got to write the mainstream newspaper columns. You got to ride the airwaves on talkback radio. You graced our television screens on shows like Meet the Press, The Insiders and Sunday. You composed our broadsheet leaders, you selected what opinions about Iraq were aired in the Op Eds, and you decided what pre-war questions our elected leaders were asked, and how persistently and pedantically and impolitely.

Which was �not very�, on all three counts.

As Mr Phillip Knightley, one of the great war and security issue reporters, recently reminded us all here at Webdiary in principle, and as Mr Allard is showing us in practice now: only news reporters can set the news agenda, only stubborn and persistent footsloggers can MAKE the wider public �interested� (or �uninterested�) in the stories that count.

The Lance Collins story, say – or the Andrew Wilkie one (or that of any of the other Iraq war whistleblowers, back then in early 2003 when it really mattered). Only you get to sit up the front in the high-powered press conferences, Laurie Oakes. Only you got a one-on-one interview with the most powerful man in the world, Paul Kelly. You�re among the very few Australians who get to know our politicians� spin doctors, Michelle Grattan, who hear the inside stories and the hot gossip, Kerry O�Brien, who catch a glimpse behind the scenes, Matt Price and Mike Seccombe and Karen Middleton and David Penberthy.

Unlike us angry, impolite, untrained amateurs, you journalists get to carry a press card. You get to go to the Press Club lunches. You get invited to the politicians� end-of-year knees-ups, and some of you, like your Press Gallery President Malcolm Farr, even get to hang out at the PM�s private barbeques. (Way to get a scoop, Mr Woodward – STOP THE PRESS: MAN OF STEEL PREFERS MUSTARD, NOT SAUCE, ON HIS T-BONE!!! Malcolm Farr reports exclusively from the frontline.)

You �professional� reporters get special passes and privileges and protection in war zones, seats on the politicians� aeroplanes that take you there for Anzac Day, and access of all sorts to faraway centres of global power, giving you a close-up look at the people whose decisions can end up killing and maiming us nobodies. You�re our eyes and ears and, during question times, especially our very blunt tongues, and we expect you to use those �free press� privileges to help ensure that when we and our nobody loved ones do waltz off to fight yet another �war to end all wars�, there really is no other option. It really is a �last resort�.

Most of all, when it goes a bit wrong (as wars always do), we expect you to be there to ensure that our soldiers ARE given moral, legal and political top-cover by the politicians who sent them, not left to flap about in the breeze of the Senate Estimates Committee-room as Prime Ministers and Defence Ministers cut and run for cover.

Once again, precisely as we here at Webdiary predicted would happen, eighteen months ago.

Don�t let it happen, Canberra Bubble. Do NOT let our soldiers down again. Do NOT allow a few sundry Lieutenant-Colonels or Grade Five public servants alone swing for this shameful abnegation of Ministerial responsibility. It�s up to you to force the Australian public to understand what is happening (again); to thrust the political buck-passing and bum-covering now going on over Abu Ghraib abuses repeatedly into the public consciousness, until we citizens start fulfilling our democratic responsibilities too, whether we like it or not. It�s our collective civic obligation; we don�t have the luxury of �choice� anymore, because the Iraq War is every last Australian�s war now.

Pro-war, anti-war, or dumbed-down by Reality TV & grasping materialism into stupified oblivion. Oh dear me, do excuse moi for not kissing the �ordinary Australian�s� lazy, ignorant butt. There goes my shot at elected Australian office! Boo-hoo-hoo.

Unlike modern politicians and �small target� pollsters and billioniare media barons and millionaire talkback toffs and condescending, Quadrant-editing, right-wing columnists, serious news reporters and news editors are NOT there to suck up to the filthy masses. If you privileged Canberra Bubblers won�t embrace the responsibility that comes with being a part of Australia�s intellectual leadership – for fear of being called an �elitist� by Piers or Bolt or Devine – then kindly step aside and let ME have your bloody column on the Op Ed page, Paul Kelly. Let ME compose your vacuous autocue wafflings, Barrie Cassidy. Let us amateurs who will gladly do it for free have a go at asking awkward questions in press conferences. Frankly, we can�t mess it up any more than you �professionals� have thus far.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq wasn�t remotely scrutinsed by the �free� press when you all had the chance, and that a smug, sniggering ABC regular like Farr is your Press Gallery President is supremely symptomatic. It�s time you Canberra Bubble lemmings started to examine � very publicly, in the scarce public forums you so lazily occupy – how badly you failed us, why exactly you failed us, and what you now intend to do about it.

Where are all the mainstream mea culpas? You lot were suckered over this war almost to a man and woman, and no amount of ironic sophistication there on the Insiders� couch next Sunday can disguise that fact, Malcolm, Barry and Co. D�oh!

***

One Letter to the Present � Anatomy of (Another) �Un-newsworthy� Story

Dear Mainstream Australian Press, circa mid 2004,

OK, so Loony-Left �told you so� rant over. What can you do about it? Need more encouragement from us, the public who desperately want to support you? Need any hints about what we might regard as the �public interest�?

Try this, say: the Wilkie-Bolt Leak remains of great interest to us. It�s a news story. If you want it to be, that is. It�s up to you to make it one, though; not me (I�m an amateur wannabe), and not Wilkie (he�s got a partisan Green agenda now) or any other whistle-blower, either. As Knightly says, only new reporters can set the news agenda; and then only if they want to. But you have to start asking the right awkward questions of the right powerful people, instead of tamely sitting back and waiting for the next press release or leak or blown whistle.

It�s not that hard, Malcolm. Like I said, even us amateurs can do it. Or have a clumsy go at it, at least. Laurie? Paul? Michelle? Hullo? Hullo, Canberra Bubble?

***

1. JACK AND THE PM

From: Jack Robertson. To: The Prime Minister’s Office. Date: 29 April 2004

Attention Prime Minister’s Press Officer Willie Herron

Dear Mr Herron (sic – Willie’s a woman),

I write a Meeja Watch column for Margo Kingston’s SMH online Web Diary. I’m currently preparing a story for the website regarding the alleged leak of a Top Secret ONA intelligence analysis in mid 2003 to journalist Andrew Bolt, who allegedly referred to information it contained in a Sun-Herald article of 23 June. The story is based upon new claims made by the report’s primary author, former ONA analyst Andrew Wilkie. Mr Wilkie has made the following claim on record, which I intend to publish on Margo Kingston’s website:

“I know for sure that it’s on the record in ONA that – [deleted for Webdiary to avoid compromising the AFP investigation] – asked for and received an additional copy of that report only days before the Bolt article.”

I now respectfully seek the Prime Minister’s written response to the following question:

1. Did the Prime Minister’s office ask for and receive an additional copy from ONA of a Top Secret report concerning humanitarian aspects of an invasion of Iraq (compiled by Andrew Wilkie and first issued in late 2002/early 2003) some time in June 2003?

*

From: Jack Robertson. To: The Prime Minister’s Office. Date: 4 May 2004

Attention Prime Minister’s Press Officer Willie Herron

Dear Mr Herron,

I refer you to my respectful emailed request for a written response from Prime Minister Howard submitted last Thursday 29 April as per below. I note that I have yet to receive a response from Mr Howard, and respectfully re-submit my request now.

Jack Robertson

*

From: Willie Herron. To: Jack Robertson. Date: 4 May 2004.

Dear Mr Robertson,

Apologies for the delay in responding to your email. My response to you is “The AFP are investigating this issue so it is inappropriate to make any comment”.

Regards, WH

***

2. JACK AND DOWNER

From: Jack Robertson. To: The Foreign Minister’s Office. Date: 29 April 2004

Attention Foreign Minister’s Press Officer Chris Kenny

Dear Mr Kenny,

I write a Meeja Watch column for Margo Kingston’s SMH online Web Diary. I’m currently preparing a story for the website regarding the alleged leak of a Top Secret ONA intelligence analysis in mid 2003 to journalist Andrew Bolt, who allegedly referred to information it contained in a Sun-Herald article of 23 June. The story is based upon new claims made by the report’s primary author, former ONA analyst Andrew Wilkie. Mr Wilkie has made the following claim on record, which I intend to publish on Margo Kingston’s website:

“I know for sure that it’s on the record in ONA that – [deleted for Webdiary to avoid compromising the AFP investigation] – asked for and received an additional copy of that report only days before the Bolt article.”

I now respectfully seek the Foreign Minister’s written response to the following question:

1. Did the Foreign Minister’s office ask for and receive an additional copy from ONA of a Top Secret report concerning humanitarian aspects of an invasion of Iraq (compiled by Andrew Wilkie and first issued in late 2002/early 2003) some time in June 2003?

 

*

From: Jack Robertson. To: The Foreign Minister’s Office. Date: 4 May 2004

Attention Foreign Minister’s Press Officer Chris Kenny.

Dear Mr Kenny,

I refer you to my respectful emailed request for a written response from Foreign Minister Downer submitted last Thursday 29 April as per below. I note that I have yet to receive a response from Mr Downer, and respectfully re-submit my request now.

Jack Robertson

*

From: Chris Kenny. To: Jack Robertson

Date: 7 May 2004

I have responded clearly and directly to you in a phone call. *

Chris Kenny, Media Adviser, Minister for Foreign Affairs

* In our telephone conversation (29 April) Mr Kenny told me that it was not appropriate to comment on the issue since it was the subject of an AFP investigation, and also that �these rumours� had been around for a while, and it was �old news�.

***

3. JACK AND ONA, WILKIE’S FORMER EMPLOYER

From: Jack Robertson. To: Mr Peter Varghese. Date: 30 April 2004.

Dear Mr Varghese,

I write a Meeja Watch column for Margo Kingston’s SMH online Web Diary. I’m currently preparing a story for the website regarding the alleged leak of a Top Secret ONA intelligence analysis in mid 2003 to journalist Andrew Bolt, who has recently confirmed to me that he referred directly to a copy of that report while writing an article for the Melbourne Herald-Sun which was published on 23 June. The story is based upon new claims made by that classified ONA report’s primary author, former ONA analyst Andrew Wilkie.

Mr Wilkie has made the following claim on record, which I intend to publish on Margo Kingston’s website:

“I know for sure that it’s on the record in ONA that – [deleted for Webdiary to avoid compromising the AFP investigation] – asked for and received an additional copy of that report only days before the Bolt article.”

I respectfully seek an ONA written response to the following questions:

1. Is it on the record in ONA that – [deleted to avoid compromising the AFP investigation – asked for and received from ONA a copy of Andrew Wilkie’s December 2002 analysis of humanitarian aspects of an Iraq invasion at some time in June 2003?”

2. Since 23 June 2003, have you or any other members of ONA been interviewed by the Australian Federal Police in relation to an alleged leak of this report to the journalist Andrew Bolt?

3. Has the AFP team currently investigating that alleged leak to date sought and been given by ONA full access to the ONA records regarding all movements of this report in June 2003?

*

To: Mr Peter Varghese, Director-General. Office of National Assessments. Date: 4 May 2004.

Dear Mr Varghese,

I refer you to my respectful emailed request for a written response from ONA sent last Friday 30 April as per below. I note that I have yet to receive a response from ONA, and respectfully re-submit my request now.

Jack Robertson

***

4. JACK AND THE AFP

From: Jack Robertson. To: Ms K—-, AFP. Date: 30 April 30, 2004.

Dear Ms K—-,

As per as phone conversation of this morning, below please find a copy of the email I sent to the AFP National Media Centre this morning. I would be grateful if AFP were to provide a written AFP response to the questions below. Naturally I understand that with regard to the security and privacy aspects of any on-going investigation, the AFP may be unable to respond as fully as I might like. Not-with-standing the specific queries below, however, I would be very appreciative – especially with a keen view to helping ensure AFP retains the high level of confidence the public has maintained in it as an investigative body since the excellent Bali bombing results – if AFP could provide me with as full an update on the status of the alleged Bolt leak investigation as is possible.

Ms K—-, thank you very much for your time and courtesy,

Jack Robertson

*

From: Jack Robertson. To: National Media Centre, Australian Federal Police, via public website national media contact email address. Date: 30 April 2004. Attention Ms Jane O’Brien, Co-ordinator Media Manager (Canberra Head Office). Attention (subject): Enquiries regarding the AFP investigation into an alleged leak of ONA material to journalist Andrew Bolt in 2003

Dear Ms O’Brien/to whom it may otherwise concern,

I write a Meeja Watch column for Margo Kingston’s SMH online Web Diary. I’m currently preparing a story for the website regarding the alleged leak of a Top Secret ONA intelligence analysis in mid 2003 to journalist Andrew Bolt, who has recently confirmed to me that he referred directly to a copy of that report while writing an article for the Melbourne Herald-Sun which was published on 23 June. I understand that an AFP investigation into this alleged leak is on-going.

In light of new allegations about the ONA record of the handling and distribution of copies of that report in June last year, recently made to me on-record by the report’s primary author the former ONA analyst Andrew Wilkie and which I intend publishing on Margo Kingston’s website, I respectfully seek an AFP written response to the following questions:

1. Has the AFP team investigating the alleged leak of the report to date interviewed the journalist Andrew Bolt about the leak?

2. Has the AFP team investigating the alleged leak to date sought and been granted full access to the ONA records covering the distribution and handling of the report in June 2003?

3. Has the AFP team investigating the alleged leak to date interviewed any staff in either the Prime Minister’s or Foreign Minister’s offices?

Jack Robertson

*

From: Jack Robertson. To: Ms K—-, Australian Federal Police. Date: 4 May 2004.

Dear Ms K—,

I refer you to my emailed request for a written response from the AFP sent to you for forwarding to Ms Jane O’Brien (or whom it may other concern) last Friday 30 April as per below. Ms K—, I note that I have yet to receive a response from AFP. I note also that you are not directly responsible for providing me with a response and apologise for troubling you again, but beg your kind indulgence in respectfully re-submitting my request to the appropriate AFP media officers.

Yours sincerely, and with warm thanks for your trouble,

Jack Robertson

*

From: Ms K—-. To: Jack Robertson. Date: 4 May 2004.

Hi Jack,

I haven’t forgotten you. I will attempt to assist you with your enquiry as soon as possible, and hopefully get back to you tomorrow. Kind Regards

Ms K—-, Australian Federal Police

 

*

 

From: Jack Robertson. To: Ms K—-, AFP. Date: 7 May 2004. Information copies: The Honourable Phillip Ruddock, MP, Attorney-General, Mr Kevin Rudd, MP, Opposition spokesperson for Foreign Affairs

(NB: Information copies via email; see exclusion note below; NB: I also note for the record and with my warm thanks the courteous and professional assistance AFP public servant/officer Ms K—- has to the best of her ability and sphere of responsibility provided me so far.)

Dear Ms K—,

I refer you to my emailed request for a written response from the AFP sent to you for forwarding to Ms Jane O’Brien (or whom it may other concern) last Friday 30 April, and resubmitted via you on Tuesday 4 May as per below.

Ms K—-, I note once again that I have yet to receive a response from AFP. Once again I note that you are not directly responsible for providing me with a response and apologise for troubling you again, but respectfully re-submit my request to the appropriate AFP officers. I also now further request advice ASAP from the AFP regarding the following:

It is my intention to publish on Margo Kingston’s Webdiary at some point in the future the following allegation that may relate to the alleged ONA leak, one that has been made to me on-record by former ONA analyst Andrew Wilkie. I am currently seeking a response to this allegation from the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and ONA. Mr Wilkie has told me (the substance of this allegation has been OMITTED from Mr Ruddock’s and Mr Rudd’s information copies):

“I know for sure that it’s on the record in ONA that — [deleted for Webdiary to avoid compromising the AFP investigation] — asked for and received an additional copy of that report only days before the Bolt article.”

Ms K—, I would be grateful if you could advise the relevant AFP officers that I am determined to publish this allegation in the public interest if I am unable to assure myself as a citizen that the investigation into this leak is being pursued by AFP with full vigour. however, I am also anxious not to compromise the AFP’s on-going investigations in any way. To that end, not-with-standing my other outstanding queries below, can AFP please advise me as a matter of priority of their response to the following two questions:

Question One: Will it compromise the on-going AFP investigation into the alleged leak of the Top Secret ONA report to journalist Andrew Bolt if I publish on Margo Kingston’s Webdiary Mr Wilkie’s allegation as above?

Question Two: If so, does the AFP formally request me NOT to publish the allegation as above at this stage?

Ms K—-, please advise the relevant AFP officers that in the interests of not compromising any on-going investigation I will readily comply with any explicit AFP written request regarding this allegation at this stage, but that I also reserve the right to make public note – without divulging allegation details – on Margo Kingston’s Webdiary of any such request from AFP.

Ms K—, please take care to advise the relevant AFP officers that I have also forwarded information copies of this email (LESS allegation details) – to Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock and Opposition Foreign Affairs spokesperson Kevin Rudd, the latter of whom I understand from recent media reports has also recently written to AG and AFP expressing his concern at the lack of progress of the Bolt leak investigation.

Finally, Ms K—-, please accept my apologies again for communicating with AFP via your email address and for taking what you may regard as the liberty of placing on the record (via information copies) with both Government and Opposition my on-going pursuit of some – any – information from AFP regarding this matter. I am well aware that you are not directly responsible for this matter, but I am anxious to ensure that my various requests are dealt with appropriately and promptly.

Yours sincerely, and with warm thanks for your trouble again,

Jack Robertson

***

From: Ms K—–. To: Jack Robertson. Date: 7 May 2004

Hi Jack,

Many thanks for your enquiry. Unfortunately the only comment I’m able to provide is: “As this is an ongoing investigation, it would be inappropriate to make any comment about the enquiries being conducted or provide any other information relating to this investigation”.

Kind Regards

Ms K—–, AFP

***

5. JACK AND THE YANKS

From: Jack Robertson. To: His Excellency Mr J.T. (Tom) Scheiffer, Ambassador of the USA to Australia. Date: 4 May 2004. Attention: Press Officer(s), US Embassy Canberra

Your Excellency,

I write a Meeja Watch column for Margo Kingston’s SMH online Web Diary. I’m currently preparing a story for the website regarding the alleged leak of a Top Secret Office of National Assessments (ONA) intelligence analysis in mid 2003 to Melbourne journalist Andrew Bolt, who allegedly referred to classified information it contained in a Sun-Herald article of 23 June 2003. My story relates to new allegations that have been made to me on record, which may have some bearing on the circumstances and nature of the alleged leak, and which I intend to publish on Ms Kingston’s website this week.

Your Excellency, I understand that as this matter is the subject of an on-going Australian Federal Police domestic investigation the American government may prefer not to comment specifically on it. Never-the-less, since the alleged leak may be of some importance with regard to the on-going security and intelligence relationship between the United States and Australia, I respectfully submit the following questions and would be warmly grateful for any response Your Excellency is able to provide.

1. I understand that under the terms of the ANZUS alliance, American and Australian intelligence agencies routinely ‘share’ sensitive information, and that as such, it is possible that the alleged leak of the ONA report represents a potential security breach not only for Australian intelligence agencies but for those of the United States as well.

Question: a) does the American government view with concern the alleged leaking of the ONA report into the Australian public domain last year, and b) if so did the American government formally convey that concern to the Australian government last year when the leak first came to light?

2. Last week the Australian Opposition spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Mr Kevin Rudd reportedly (Sun-Herald, 2 May) wrote formally to the Australian Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock expressing his concern over the apparent lack of progress the AFP is making in the investigation of this alleged leak.

Question: Again given the on-going nature of the ANZUS alliance intelligence-sharing arrangement, does the American government share Mr Rudd’s concern at this apparent lack of progress?

3. Can the American government assure the Australian people that a failure of the AFP investigation to trace and prosecute to the full extent of Australian domestic law the person or persons responsible for this alleged leak will in no way have any future detrimental impact on the breadth, scope, timeliness and security classification of that sensitive information currently made available by American agencies to Australian agencies under the terms of the ANZUS alliance, and particularly any such future information relating to potential terrorist threats on Australian soil or against Australians citizens overseas?

Your Excellency, with warm thanks for your time and expressions of ANZUS goodwill to your nation’s soldiers currently serving alongside ours in Iraq.

Jack Robertson

***

Webdiarists NB: I�ve decided not to publish Wilkie�s information just yet, even though the AFP were not even prepared to advise me of whether or not this would actually compromise their investigation. (This is supposedly why the Senate Estimates Committee didn�t press ONA boss Peter Varghese on the ID of the report recipient in February this year; it�s now nearly four months later, and you�ve got to start to wonder at what point we�re going to be allowed to know.)

Wilkie will publish his claim fully himself in his forthcoming book Axis of Deceit (PanMacmillan, June/July) – so keep in mind when he does that the Prime Minister�s office, the Foreign Minister�s office, ONA, the Attorney-General and Mr Kevin Rudd, and the Australian Federal Police will have ALL known of that information since at least May. (In the case of ONA, they�ll have known all along of course, and as for the PM and Mr Downer, I find it impossible to believe that the ONA internal record wasn�t one of the first places they checked way back in late June 2003, when Bolt�s article appeared.)

So when the �mainstream press� Canberra pundits express their �shock and horror!� at Wilkie�s next revelation (and when Mr Howard and Mr Downer say: �Oh, but I wasn�t told!� yet again), direct everyone in the Canberra Bubble to this website, and ask senior media leaders like Kelly, Shanahan, Grattan and O�Brien WHY none of them kept at this AFP investigation story long enough to elicit the information all by themselves, way back in September 2003 when the �SCANDAL!!!� first broke.

This is what Knightley means when he says: “It was big news and now it�s tapered off and disappearing. Newspapers lose interest…”

But perhaps that�s not quite the whole story here, either. Oh dear, here I go getting all Loony-Lefty conspiratorial again. Then again., as Margo wrote earlier, pretty much anything is possible in these crazy days.

***

One Letter to the Future � Mr Glenn Milne�s Curious Reminiscences

Dear Australian Mainstream Press, circa tomorrow, next week, some time soon (I hope),

On 29 September 2003, one of your senior leaders – Glenn Milne, political writer for The Australian(and until recently Channel Seven) – wrote a very curious Op Ed piece on Tasmanian Governor Richard Butler. I�ll reprint the relevant Wilkie bits here (unfortunately it�s not archived online anywhere free):

*

Canberra ready to open the door on Richard Butler�s Past

JIM Bacon has a problem coming down the line he probably doesn’t even know about yet.

The Tasmanian Labor Premier’s decision to appoint one of the ALP’s favoured sons, former chief UN weapons inspector Richard Butler, as governor of the island state was always fraught. How fraught, Bacon may be about to find out. According to senior federal Government sources, Butler is now the subject of a series of freedom of information inquiries from media organisations (including The Australian) regarding his behaviour during his often controversial career in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The department will, of course, comply strictly with the terms of the relevant act in deciding which documents to release. But such decisions are always informed by the attitude of the government of the day to such FOI requests. And this government is of a mind to have as much information on Butler as it can in the public domain …

The third factor counting against him in Canberra is that many officials in DFAT believe Butler was afforded special protection and preferment during his time in the department, largely under the Hawke-Keating Labor governments. As well as being Gough Whitlam’s former principal private secretary, he was also married, at one stage, to Hawke’s education minister Susan Ryan. His son’s second name is Gough. The Government’s stance has also hardened in the wake of Opposition demands for police action against the leaker of the so-called �Wilkie memo�.

This concerns Andrew Wilkie, the Office of National Assessments’ analyst who resigned in a blaze of publicity claiming Howard was joining the invasion of Iraq under false pretences. A memo Wilkie wrote on Iraq was subsequently leaked to conservative Melbourne columnist Andrew Bolt who openly referred to the top-secret document in his Herald Sun column. A police investigation, egged on enthusiastically by the Opposition, is under way. Clearly, Labor believes the source of the leak will be found in the offices of either Howard or Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. The Opposition, however, was calling for no such investigation when, in 1999, then foreign affairs spokesman Laurie Brereton was leaked a Defence Intelligence Organisation briefing that revealed the Indonesian military was collaborating with pro-Jakarta militia in East Timor …

In short, neither Downer nor some elements of DFAT are well disposed to Labor on questions of principle. And this is at a time when they are considering the FOI requests regarding Butler’s behaviour.

The FOI requests are understood to relate to two particular episodes in Butler’s career, which prospered after a period in the doldrums with his appointment by then foreign minister Bill Hayden as ambassador for disarmament. While in that position, Opposition MPs demanded the government table the cost of the post. It turned out the then Labor government was spending almost $800,000 a year maintaining Butler in Geneva, including domestic servants costing $1800 a week. The embarrassing revelations helped ensure the post was scrapped only five years after it was established. In total, Butler and his support staff cost the taxpayer millions of dollars. There are many within DFAT who have always darkly hinted there was much more information available regarding Butler’s expenses, if only you knew where to look.

The second area subject to FOI requests is believed to be Butler’s term as ambassador to Thailand. This is, potentially, a much more damaging period. While there Butler faced allegations of sexual harassment…

Time to ask some more awkward amateur questions. This time of the �mainstream� press:

1. How are those News Limited Freedom of Information requests going, Glenn Milne (or Dennis Shanahan or Paul Kelly or Michael Stutchbury or any other senior News Limited journalist)? Do you Murdochians plan to tell us about Butler�s �dark� past any time soon?

2. Or were you only hinting at those FOI requests, Glenn, as part of a �friendly message delivery service� on behalf of some government player inside the Canberra Bubble, who�s a bit worried about being done for busting the Crimes Act?

3. Is this why the Bolt leak is running dead as a story, senior members of the Australian Press Gallery? Is it that you and all the most senior politicians in Canberra on both sides know that there�s been so many skeletons dumped in so many closets across the last two decades of incestuous games, covers-up, back-scratching, leaks and inside dealings that nobody wants to set the house of cards tumbling?

4. Is it true that ever since some of you senior journalists helped Bob Hawke knife Bill Hayden way back in 1983, those incestuous games have been growing gamier in smell? Is that why none of you want the Bolt leaker to get �done�? Because then the Brereton leaker would get �done�, too, and then maybe Butler would get �done�, and he�d take half of Keating and Hawke�s Cabinets down with him, too – including dear old Richo, who of course is in a bit of strife elsewhere just now, too, and he knows where just about every skeleton in Australia is closeted? Including those that might rattle all you �senior political correspondents� right to the professional eyeballs? Is all that about right? Or close, Glenn? Were you simply warning Labor (and everyone else who�s anyone in Canberra) off the story on behalf of your government sources and contacts?

No? Just me being conspiratorial again? Fine. Then let�s hear all about Governor Butler�s �dark� past in your very next column please, Glenn Milne. What was that about Thailand again? What was that about all those FOI requests, Rupert?

Come on, then. We�re waiting. (We�re VERY �publicly interested� in Governor Butler�s past). Oh, and let�s also have someone senior and influential in the Press Gallery � Malcolm Farr say, since he�s not terribly busy just now, apparently – pick up the phone tomorrow, next week, some time soon in your collective journalistic future – and impolitely ask Mr Howard, Mr Downer, Mr Varghese, AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty, Attorney General Ruddock and Kevin Rudd, MP, when we, the Australian public who pay them all, can expect to hear a PUBLIC progress report on the Bolt leak investigation that is a little more information-rich than: �Since this is an on-going investigation, it is inappropriate to comment at this stage.�

It�s almost a year now since someone inside the Canberra Bubble smashed the Crimes Act and breached national security at exactly a time when my little brother was on a battlefield getting shot at in the name of �national security�. That person was almost certainly the authorised recipient (or someone acting as proxy middleman for them) who asked for and received a copy of Wilkie�s report just a few days before 23 June. An �authorised� recipient means a senior government, military or public service official with a TOP SECRET, AUSTEO security clearance, and I�m sorry, but there just ain�t that many who fit the bill if you can narrow down what part of the Canberra Bubble they work in.

That person�s name is also written down on a piece of official paper inside ONA.

So I now want to know who that person was, Australian Press Gallery. The AFP has had a bloody year to investigate, and I�m fed up with waiting for a progress report. I want to know who asked ONA for that single copy. I want to know why they needed a six-month out-of-date, pre-invasion report in late June 2003. I want you � the �free� press – to find out who then leaked it to Andrew Bolt, too.

Then I want someone�s head to roll. For once. I want our honourable military, public service and especially our intelligence professionals protected from security breaches, political exploitation, buck-passing, can-carrying and general anti-democratic abuses of this Canberra Bubble game-playing kind. How about you, Glenn Milne? You�re the one who seems to know which Manuka swillhouse dunnies the gobbier Deep Throats hang about in these days.

It�s decision time, Australian Mainstream Press. At Webdiary we media nobodies have been bashing out heads against your Canberra Bubble for four long years, and often over mouse poo like phone cards and budget leaks and polly perk rip-offs – but this time our weak leaders got us drawn into an involvement in an illegal, immoral, unnecessary and possibly unwinnable �war� that you could well have helped us (and them) avoid if you�d only done your jobs properly. You all need to stop excusing your professional inadequacies and failures with ironic chatter and knowing Boomer sophistication, and start doing something about them.

So I�ll end my latest open letter appeal by asking the senior, more cynical among you � who just might remember such late colleagues from your own idealistic youths � a question I first posed way back in November 2000:

I urge you all to think about Greg Shackleton�s last report from Balibo at least once every day of your increasingly-complex working lives. My heart swells with pride at being a Human Being every time I watch it. As a Reporter, where do you stand in relation to it?

Yours sincerely,

Webdiary Meeja Watch

This piece was first published in the Sun Herald yesterday.

 

When I started reporting politics in the late 1980s, prime ministers and ministers lied as a last resort. Fifteen years later, government deceit is just another way to win a political debate or destroy a political opponent. How come?

Sir Robert Menzies once said that political systems have much more frequently been overthrown by their own corruption and decay than by external forces. And that is what’s happening in our democracy, in large measure because of the total breakdown of our democratic tradition of ministerial responsibility and a frank, non-partisan public service.

Here’s how it used to work. One duty of senior public servants was to keep ministers fully informed of important developments and ensure they did not unintentionally mislead the public. Ministers demanded that service because if they misled the people and did not immediately correct the record, they were duty-bound to accept responsibility and resign.

Under this system, public servants and ministers had a great incentive to be meticulous with the facts. If a minister made a false statement, public servants would immediately advise him or her. If a minister had to resign because of the failure of the public service to keep him informed, more than one public service career would also be over. It was a virtuous circle, encouraging ministers and public servants to take their duty to tell the people the truth very seriously.

Under John Howard, the virtuous circle has been replaced with a circle of self-interest which expels the people and destroys their right to know. Here’s how the new system works.

A minister lies or misleads to score a point. His public servants do not advise him of the error. If the lie is discovered, the minister says he won’t resign because his public service didn’t tell him. The head of his department takes the rap and gets a gold star. Public servants down the pecking order quickly learn that unwelcome information is to be bottom-drawered.

We saw a couple of classic examples of Howard’s way last week. Recently, a former inmate at Guantanamo Bay stated that Australian David Hicks had been tortured by his American captors. Hicks’s lawyer said the same. Howard rubbished the claims, saying Hicks had never told Australian Government visitors any such thing.

Good point, we, the people, thought.

Last week, a Senate inquiry discovered that Hicks had told ASIO a year ago that he had suffered beatings at the hands of the Americans. Will Howard resign? No. He hadn’t been told. Would the head of ASIO resign for not advising Howard he was wrong? No. On what basis did Howard make his false claim? He probably didn’t ask for a brief, but assumed what suited him because he hadn’t been told otherwise. Why not? Because the public service knew Howard wanted to create no waves with the Americans so they didn’t tell. Easy, isn’t it?

As an invader of Iraq, Australia has legal and moral responsibilities to ensure that prisoners of war are treated humanely.

Our soldiers in Baghdad knew last November that the Americans were torturing POWs in Abu Ghraib. In the old days, such important information would have reached government quick smart.

Yet Howard and Defence Minister Robert Hill told us after the torture photographs shocked the world last month that they knew nothing until then. That meant that when Howard and Hill visited Iraq this year and spoke to American commanders they did not raise the matter. Or so they say. Both said they should have been told.

If Howard and Hill are telling the truth, in the old days Defence Department Secretary Ric Smith and Defence chief General Peter Cosgrove would have resigned pronto. No excuses.

Instead, when the story broke that Australia had known and investigated, and given legal advice to the Americans last year, Smith and Cosgrove put out a statement denying it outright, and Howard assured Parliament the story was a lie.

But it was true! It took the Senate two days to drag the truth out of Smith and Cosgrove. Did Howard resign? No. Did Smith and Cosgrove resign? No. Instead Hill praised them as great men. Everyone gets off scot-free again, except the poor bastard at the end of the food chain: our main man in Baghdad, Major George O’Kane, whose career is finished.

I reckon the media has to adapt to the new system. We can’t just report what the leaders say as fact any more. Everything they say must be reported as a claim unless they can state what their evidence is and have confirmed the facts with the public service.

As the system becomes more corrupt, its watchdogs must get more aggressive. If we don’t, the public won’t have a hope in hell of getting near the truth of what is being done in our name without our consent.

Harry Heidelberg is a Webdiary columnist.

 

“Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.” 1984 George Orwell

We feel numb because the unimaginable horror story has become reality. When you don’t know whether to laugh, cry or throw a brick through the window, you become numb. Eventually the emotion will out. It was always objectionable but somehow understandable when other parts of the world succumbed to the netherland of the big lie. We’d read about Fascism and Communism but we’d never experienced it directly and we knew we never would. It was there all along: our moral superiority. Bad things don’t happen in our sunny English speaking world.

The Americans have always been overt in expressing their moral superiority. They were an exceptional society founded under God. The British had centuries of tradition, continuity and relative stability. The Australians knew it so deeply in their hearts, that there wasn’t even a need to crow about it. Why crow about givens? We know we’re a decent people and we invented the “fair go”. We’d never engage in grand conspiracies. We had no need to and it was never really our style anyway.

The D-Day commemorations in Normandy this weekend will be a reminder of our shared history. The bonds of the member countries of the English speaking world are incomparable and apparently unshakable. When does it become unhealthy though? When do the bonds become shackles? All the signs are there for anyone who cares to glance for longer than a nanosecond. One sign could be that two of our “sisters”; Canada and New Zealand are at odds with us. There wasn’t a lot of ambiguity about D-Day though.

Now we seem mired in ambiguity and the worst part of all is that our leaders are burying us in the stuff. So what is our mire made of? Bullshit. In the ultimate nightmare scenario, 1984 and Animal Farm have merged to become the compendium we call 2004.

Some might say that there’s a cloud over D-Day. A commemoration is about remembering. There’s no cloud over that day. It was the beginning of the end of terror in Europe. This continent stands today as the European Union. The world has never seen nations come together like this. A bold enterprise affecting the daily lives of 450 million people.

Creating a new Europe has been a long and difficult road and we’re only part way along it. The pathfinders of the new united Europe were dismissed last year by the Americans as being “Old Europe”.

At the conclusion of World War II, the POW conventions in Geneva were drafted. The UN was formed and these days it is all treated as frankly blah. There was a reason for it though. Countries like ours were at the forefront of these endeavours. We had a clear vision founded on core beliefs that had served us well.

One of our own, Doc Evatt, was elected Secretary General of the United Nations in 1948. Imagine how he would have felt to be the leader of the UN when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was passed? This was Australia walking tall. Not in a brash or ungainly way but in a stubborn attempt to find the right way ahead.

We’ve lost our way and it’s possible to find inspiration in our past in order to set ourselves right again. We do have a duty to set ourselves right again because our leaders will not do it for us. When our leaders start to sound like “Squealer” in Orwell’s Animal Farm, the time has come to take our country back.

Squealer said, “Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure. On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”

The words we hear from our leaders are a daily diet of lies, spin and hypocrisy. You know it is unravelling when they start contradicting themselves on the same day.

We’re not dumb farmyard animals and we’re not going to be taken for a ride, we’re not going to be patronised.

We are living in dangerous times and its becoming harder to breathe. Many of us don’t like the media but right now we need them more than ever. Truth is our only source of oxygen. We still need the media to help us find it. No one else will help us.

Societies based on lies and led by individuals with no moral compass will inevitably collapse. History tells us this and there is no better weekend than this one to remember that.

Lest we forget.

Blogjam creator Tim Dunlop is back! Thanks to David Tiley and Terry Sedgwick for filling in.

 

 

There’s a lot of election stuff out there in blogland at the moment, which is how it will probably go for the rest of the year. Good thing too because it gives us some insight into how ordinary citizens are thinking about the upcoming choice. My impression is that people on the sensible left can smell Coalition blood, even though they are not particularly thrilled about the prospect of a prime minister Latham. Those on the right are keeping their fingers crossed and no doubt scanning the political horizon looking for another Tampa to sail into view, or counting on John Howard to build one out of gay marriage and whatever other wedge scraps he can find lying around on the floor at Kirribilli and paddle it to shore himself.

 

 

Having said that, no-one is willing to declare victory or defeat this far out from an election that hasn’t even officially been announced. (Remember, the election isn’t on until the prime minister notifies the Governor General, and it’s starting to look like the PM has forgotten which cupboard he locked Major General Jeffery in.)

 

 

So off we go.

 

 

Taking time out from giving decidedly dodgy footy tips, Virulent Memes backs into the pack this week to provide his view of the upcoming Federal election, suggesting that “it might well come down to the stench of the Howard government playing against the untried economic credentials of Latham and Co”. Which sounds about right to me, though there is obviously more to it than that, much of which is covered in the rest of the post. As we say in the blogosphere, read the whole thing.

 

 

Over at Public Opinion, Gary surveys recent politicking and concludes, “The ALP reckon that with the Howard Government in freefall they can win the election, if they just hang on, stay together and talk in unison from the same script,” though Gary begs to differ. He’s also concerned about the lack of coverage being given to key issues in the mainstream media.

 

 

Recent polls get a working over at Back Pages, who tells the ALP, “Don’t Panic” about the latest Newspoll, “a gobsmacker, presenting a 6 point election winning 2pp lead for the Coalition (53/47), which also has a 10 point lead on the primary count (47/37)”. Christopher and his kind commenters reckon it is probably a rogue poll, though conservative Andrew Norton can’t help but get a little light-headed that it might represent a change in fortune for his team. He nonetheless concludes, “I will be very surprised – though pleasantly surprised – if the Coalition sees 53% 2-party preferred again until well into a Latham government.”

 

 

Another rightie, Scott Wickstein, also thinks it’s a rogue while the Gnu Hunter compares recent newspaper accounts, takes them as proof of leftwing bias, and ends by quoting and agreeing with John Howard.

 

 

One of the election-related topics to light up the blogs and their comments boxes in the last day or two has been the revelation that the stuff Mr Howard and his government told us about what and when Australian officials knew of the torture and abuse in Abu Ghraib prison. Steve Wadeconfides that he’d like to see the Howard government returned but is more than a little concerned: “Perhaps this government of ours will learn the hard way that trying to put it over the people isn’t appreciated.” Well, Steve, that’s entirely up to people like you. Remember, even Hitler got the trains to run on time.

 

“My take on it is simply to point out the obvious, that John Howard has finally turned into Paul Keating. Having come to power on a promise to be more “in touch” with “ordinary Australians”, this is just the latest example of the the Howard Government being caught out misleading them. Once is a mistake. Twice is clumsy. To make it a defining feature of your reign is just plain contemptuous.

John Quiggin believes Mr Howard’s explanation that he was simply given incorrect information, but pointedly points out, “In the light of the ‘children overboard’ business and the more recent humiliation of Mick Keelty, what officer would be foolish enough to pass bad news of this kind on to his or her superiors?” Indeedydodahday.

Elsewhere, Southerly Buster provides a handy-dandy guide to the government’s SOP: “1. Deny everything. 2. Admit it when it becomes unavoidable. 3. Insist you never got the papers. 4. Blame everything on the troops.”

On the other handy-dandy, some bloggers think it is all a media beat up. At Chrenkoff, Arthur is upset that the Greens are concerned about issues other than the environment (why, he doesn’t say) and wonders in regard to the Abu Ghraib story mentioned above, “How low can the media go in their attempt to get the Government on this issue? My guess is, very low.” Well guessing is one thing, Arthur: how about some evidence? And please try and keep in mind that the prime minister has admitted the error.

And could we go a week without the right having conniptions about the latest Media Watch story or the ABC in general? No we could not. Tim Blair gets the ball rolling, though Rob Corr thinks Tim has misunderstood the claim that was made. And as usual, Uncle is not happy with how the ABC is doing its job – which is why he started blogging in the first place I presume. Rob Corr runs the blue pencil over Uncle’s jottings.

Speaking of the ABC, rightwingers Paul and Carl find something to praise about an ABC program, presumably because it catered to their biases.

That other favourite target of rightwing spleen, the Oscar and Canne Film Festival award-winning film-maker Michael Moore (who I believe is also in line for a Nobel Peace Prize, a sainthood and a lovely motherhood award)also gets a good working over this week. Mike Jericho takes delight in a story that Moore wasn’t invited to a film festival in his hometown, while Evil Pundit has some fun with Moore via his photoshop bag of tricks.

Bargarz also asserts his membership of the reflexively anti-Moore crowd by noting that a Brisbane cinema “rushed to get their message (of congratulations) on the marquee”. He seems to take this as self-evidently beyond the pale.

I doubt there’s a political blogger in the world who isn’t in it at least partly because of their dissatisfaction with the way the mainstream media do their job. Ken Parish takes them task over a non-political issue, coverage of the Falconio trial in the Northern Territory:

 

“Joanne Lees will be hunted down like Osama bin Laden and �Nick� subjected to torture by media. Why? Because Ms Lees refused to play the media game � a game by the way where all goal posts are placed by the media. Her crime? The Yorkshire lass who set off for the trip of a lifetime had the misfortune to become a victim of crime, then a victim of media speculation. What�s worse, she didn�t take a media handling course before she was catapaulted into this extraordinary nightmare.”

 

Remember, Ken is a genius, as is evidenced in posts like this.

Elsewhere, the Evil Pundit ventures into the realm of political philosophy, and although I disagree heartily with his conclusion and with the logic he uses to get there, it’s good to see such topics being broached. The issue at hand is “Free speech and its enemies” and it has generated a lengthy discussion thread which you might want to join.

It was also good to see the prime minister’s attempts to ban gay marriage being given some serious attention by the right of the blogosphere. Well, one blog anyway. Alan Andersondiscusses both the definitional issues and the matter of adoption as presented within the legislation and says that “Regardless of your views on these issues, the legislation doesn’t make sense.” I hope someone does him the courtesy of taking up his arguments. Alan is also unhappy about the government having an environmental policy, calling the prime minister’s latest announcement a “pointless Liberal capitulation to the Green movement.” Come on, Alan, do you really think the prime minister considers it pointless?

Finally, a get-well-soon message to long-time blogger and Geelong journo, Bernard Slattery, who has had some difficulties with his eyes of late.

This is a legal opinion by Professor Donald Rothwell, the Challis Professor of International Law at the Sydney Centre for International and Global Law, Univesirtyy Sydney, on Australia’s obligations in Iraq under the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war. For some background on what’s at stake, see Avoiding the Geneva Conventions: how Australia does the job.

 

INTERNATIONAL LEGAL OBLIGATIONS IN POST WAR IRAQ UNDER GENEVA CONVENTION III AND GENEVA CONVENTION IV AS THEY RELATE TO THE TREATMENT OF PRISONERS AND DETAINEES

INTRODUCTION

1) On or around 20 March 2003 the Coalition military forces of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States commenced operation “Iraqi Freedom” in the territory of Iraq. These operations were conducted, according to Australia and the United Kingdom, under the auspices of several United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, including UNSC Resolution 1441.

2) Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States are all parties to the four 1949 Geneva Conventions. In addition Australia is also a party to 1977 Geneva Protocol I. Consistent with the principles of international humanitarian law, the armed conflict in Iraq was conducted on the basis that the Geneva Conventions, the Geneva Protocols, and the related principles of customary international law as reflected in the Conventions and Protocol applied during the conflict.

3) On 1 May 2003, US President George W. Bush Jr. declared that active hostilities in Iraq had come to an end. This was a view apparently shared by Australia and the United Kingdom as members of the coalition.

4) Since May 2003, Iraq has remained under occupation. The relevant legal regime governing that occupation is Geneva Convention IV Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Geneva IV).

5) The United Nations Security Council has, since March 2003, adopted a number of Resolutions concerning the situation in Iraq. These Resolutions include: 1483 (2003) – adopted on 22 May 2003; 1500 (2003) – adopted on 14 August 2003; and 1511 (2003) – adopted on 16 October 2003.

6) The effect of the UNSC Resolutions has been to address the obligations of the occupying powers under Geneva IV, the post-war reconstruction of Iraq, the oil-for-food program adopted under previous UNSC Resolutions, the maintenance of the security situation in Iraq, and the post-war transition to a new Iraqi government.

AUSTRALIA AS AN OCCUPYING POWER

7) Upon entering Iraq in March 2003, Australian forces were engaged in a mission to disarm the Iraqi armed forces and to control the civilian population. These operations raised a multitude of issues under both the Geneva Conventions and Protocols and international humanitarian law in general.

8) Australia, as a party to the military operations in Iraq has assumed obligations under Geneva IV as an Occupying Power, a fact effectively acknowledged by Prime Minister Howard on 10 April 2003.

9) Immediately after entering Iraq, Australian forces began to exercise the authority of an Occupying Power including the taking of prisoners, the maintenance of security in villages, towns, and cities, the protection of civilian infrastructure, and the day-to-day management of essential services (eg. Australia’s role in air traffic control at Baghdad airport). There is no evidence, however, that Australian forces had any primary responsibility for any detention facilities or prisons.

10) Geneva III applies from the outset of any conflict or occupation (Article 6) and to “all cases of partial or total occupation” (Article 2).

11) The application of Geneva IV ceases “one year after the close of military operations” (Article 6), with the exception of those Occupying Powers which exercise the functions of government in which case several core provisions of Geneva IV continue to apply until that role has ended (Article 6).

12) UNSC Resolution 1483 acknowledged the role of the UK and US as occupying powers under unified command following a letter from those two States to the President of the Security Council.

13) UNSC Resolution 1483 requests the UK and US acting as the “Authority” to act consistent with the Charter of the UN and relevant international law, and to promote the welfare of the Iraqi people including the restoration of security and stability (UNSC Res 1483, para 4)

14) In addition, UNSC Resolution 1483 also calls upon “all concerned to comply fully with their obligations under international law including in particular the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907”.

15) In October 2003, UNSC Resolution 1511 authorised the creation of a multinational force under unified command to contribute to the security and stability of Iraq (‘the Iraq stabilization force’). Australia, along with approximately 32 other UN member States have contributed to this force under US command. The mandate of the Iraq stabilization force will continue under UNSC 1511 until early 2005 when a constitutional conference is planned for Iraq.

16) As one of the three principal States which commenced military operations in Iraq in March 2003, including the occupation of Iraq, Australia as a party to Geneva IV acquired obligations as an Occupying Power.

17) While the Preamble of UNSC 1483 expressly recognizes the UK and US as Occupying Powers and designates them as the “Authority”, the Resolution does not purport to be exhaustive in its recognition of States with obligations under the Geneva Conventions and indeed expressly recognizes that other States are present in Iraq.

18) Consistent with Geneva IV, Article 6, it may be argued that Australia’s obligations as a Occupying Power ended on or around 1 May 2004 that being one year after the declared close of military operations.

19) However, the better view would be that:

a) In view of the ongoing military operations throughout Iraq since May 2003, including the very extensive military operations during April 2004, there has yet to be “a general close of military operations” as envisaged by Article 6;

b) Even if there has been a “general close of military operations”, Australia the UK and the US continue to occupy Iraq and have a significant role in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).

20) Under Geneva IV, Article 6, Occupying Powers remain bound by several provisions relating to the protection of civilians “for the duration of the occupation” to the extent that they exercise the “functions of government”. In particular, Occupying Powers are prohibited from causing the physical suffering of protected persons in their hands.

PRISONERS OF WAR AND THE APPLICATION OF GENEVA CONVENTION III

21) Unlike the 2001 Afghanistan conflict, there was little debate over the application of Geneva III during the 2003 Iraq War. It was conceded by all parties to the conflict that prisoners taken would be entitled to the protections of Geneva III.

22) Under the provisions of Geneva III, there are extensive provisions governing the internment and treatment of POWs. In particular, POWs are to be humanely treated and protected against acts of violence or intimidation (Article 13), and in all circumstances are entitled to “respect for their persons and their honour” (Article 14).

CIVILIAN DETAINEES AND THE APPLICATION OF GENEVA CONVENTION IV

23) Since the commencement of the 2003 Iraq War, civilians have also been detained by coalition forces. Civilians are not entitled to the protections of Geneva III as prima facie they are non-combatants nor do they meet the definition of a POW as found in Geneva III, Article 4.

24) Civilians detained by Occupying Powers in Iraq are however protected under the provisions of Geneva IV which contains extensive provisions regarding the treatment of detainees and prisoners.

25) Occupying Powers are entitled to enforce the penal laws of occupied territories, and also adopt additional provisions which are considered essential to enable the Occupying Power to fulfil its obligations including the maintenance of orderly government of the occupied territory (Geneva IV, Article 64).

26) Civilians accused and detained for investigation arising from criminal acts within the Occupied territory are capable of being placed on trial before the courts of the occupied territory, or properly constituted non-political military courts (Geneva IV, Articles 64 and 66). No sentence can be pronounced against a civilian except after a regular trial (Geneva IV, Article 71).

27) Civilians convicted of offences in Iraq are to be detained in Iraq. Geneva IV accords them certain rights including conditions of food, hygiene, and medical attention (Article 76).

28) Geneva IV makes it clear that the parties to the Convention are prohibited from causing the physical suffering of protected persons who are in their hands (Article 32). This prohibition applies not only to murder, torture and other maltreatment “but also to any other measures of brutality whether applied by civilian or military agents.” No physical or moral coercion, including murder or torture, may be exercised against protected persons in order to obtain information from them (Article 31).

29) Geneva Convention IV also makes provision in Article 5 for civilians (protected persons) who are suspected of engaging in activities hostile to the security of the State. Those persons are not entitled to claim the rights and privileges under the Convention. However, it is made clear that such persons are to be treated with “humanity”, which would clearly suggest that are protected from acts of torture and murder. While the obligation upon Australia is less clear in this instance of where it has detained persons who are engaging in such hostile activities (insurgents, terrorists etc), as a party to Geneva IV Australia has an obligation to ensure the Convention provisions are met.

TRANSFER OF PRISONERS OF WAR AND CIVILIAN DETAINEES

30) Geneva Convention III provides for the transfer of prisoners of war (POW) from a Detaining Power to an Accepting Power under Article 12. That Article makes clear that once prisoners are transferred the Accepting Power is to treat those prisoners in accordance with the provisions of the Convention and responsibility falls upon Accepting Power to meet those Convention obligations.

31) A Detaining Power which transfers POWs is not absolved of responsibility for the prisoners. The Detaining Power should:

a) At the time of transfer of POWs seek an assurance that the prisoners will be treated in accordance with the provisions of the Convention;

b) Upon becoming aware that the Accepting Power is not meeting its Convention obligations “take effective measures to correct the situation” or it may request the return of the prisoners.

32) Geneva Convention IV deals with civilians in occupied territories. The Convention refers to civilians as ‘Protected Persons’ (as opposed to combatants and non-combatants actively engaged in an armed conflict). Article 45 is in similar terms to Article 12 of Geneva Convention III. Protected Persons may be transferred by a Detaining Power to another Power who is a party to the Convention. Upon making the transfer the Detaining Power must be satisfied that the other Power will apply the terms of the Convention to those persons.

33) Australia, as a Detaining Power is not absolved of responsibility for any civilian detainees which it has transferred to either the US or UK. Under the terms of Geneva IV, upon becoming aware that the other Power is not meeting its Convention obligations it is to “take effective measures to correct the situation” or it may request the return of the prisoners.

34) The 23 March 2003 Agreement for the Transfer of Prisoners of War, Civilian Internees, and Civilian Detainees entered into between Australia, the UK and US is to be read consistent with Geneva Convention III and Geneva Convention IV (see clause 1). That Agreement provides for the procedures to be put in place for the transfer of prisoners and detainees between the parties, but does not derogate from the provisions of the Conventions, nor could it derogate from the provisions of the Convention from a perspective of international treaty law.

35) On 22 March 2003, the ADF reported that HMAS Kanimbla while patrolling offshore Iraq had taken up to 50 Iraqi POWs which were subsequently transferred to another Party.

36) Australia has ongoing obligations under Geneva III and Geneva IV for those POWs it detained and transferred to either the US or UK during the conflict period between March-May 2003, and for any civilians which it has detained since March 2003 to the present and transferred to either the US or UK.

37) Australia’s obligations towards both POWs, civilian detainees and civilian prisoners do not turn on whether Australia was, is, or remains an Occupying Power in Iraq.

WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

38) The Geneva Conventions make reference to those acts which constitute war crimes under the Conventions. These acts may be subject to internal military discipline, national prosecution by the States whose personnel commit these crimes, or prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in cases where the ICC has jurisdiction and the prosecutor commences prosecution or where a State party refers a matter to the Court.

39) Grave breaches of Geneva III includes acts of:

Wilful killing;

Torture or inhuman treatment; and

Wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health (Article 130).

40) Grave breaches of Geneva IV include acts of:

Wilful killing;

Torture or inhuman treatment; and

Wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health (Article 147).

41) On the facts as they are currently available, there would seem to be compelling evidence that war crimes have been committed in Iraq through the murder and torture of Iraqi prisoners and detainees.

42) The 1998 Rome State of the International Criminal Court (ICC Statute) confers jurisdiction upon the ICC with respect to certain crimes (Article 5).

43) War Crimes are defined in the ICC Statute as being those which have been committed “as part of a plan or policy as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes”. War crimes include grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and extend to:

Wilful killing;

Torture or inhuman treatment; and

Wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health.

44) Australia and the UK are parties to the ICC Statute; the US is not a party to the ICC Statute. Under both Australian and UK law, both countries have an obligation to prosecute nationals suspected of having committed war crimes as defined by the Geneva Conventions and the ICC Statute.

INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS STANDARDS AND OBLIGATIONS

45) In addition to principles of International Humanitarian Law, it is also arguable that the following international instruments are also applicable with respect to civilians detained in Iraq: 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights; 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and 1984 Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Torture Convention). These instruments contain numerous provisions for the protection of prisoners, including the prohibition of torture.

46) Australia, the UK and US are parties to all of the above instruments, though in some instances subject to reservations.

STATUS OF OCCUPYING POWER POST 30 JUNE 2004

47) On 30 June 2004 it is planned to transfer sovereignty back to the Iraqi people. The exercise of Geneva Convention occupying power status post-30 June would be inconsistent with the notion that post-war Iraq has regained its sovereignty. Occupying Power status will therefore cease after this date.

48) Foreign military forces can remain in Iraq post 30 June 2004 at the invitation of the new Iraqi government. For Australia to reply upon this basis to justify its continuing military operations in Iraq it would require a formal request from the new Iraqi government.

49) It can be argued that continued foreign military presence in Iraq by the ‘Stabilization Force’ is authorised under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1511 adopted in October 2003. Whilst at all times recognizing Iraqi sovereignty, Resolution 1511 envisaged the creation of an interim Iraqi government, the holding of democratic elections, and the gradual restoration of full powers to national and local institutions. The first part of that timetable will be complete by 30 June 2004 handover. However the current UN mandate will continue until elections are held, though the Security Council will meet to review the operation of the multinational force prior to October this year.

50) UNSC Resolution 1511 does not adequately address post 30 June relationship between the members of the international ‘Stabilization Force’ and the Iraqi interim government. A new UNSC Resolution would be desirable to resolve this ambiguity.

51) It can be anticipated that the post 30 June interim Iraqi government would most likely not support the type of military force against its citizens of the kind used by the US in Falluja in April and May 2004. A new UNSC resolution would allow for clearer constraints on the use of force by international ‘Stabilization Force’ multinational forces as they engage in security and stability operations alongside newly trained members of an Iraqi Army and in cooperation with the Iraqi government.

CONCLUSIONS

52) At a minimum Australia assumed obligations under Geneva IV as an Occupying Power until 1 May 2004. However, it is arguable that in view of the continuing military operations and Australia’s ongoing engagement with the CPA, Australia and the other Occupying Powers remain bound by the core provisions of Geneva IV. These require detained civilians to be treated humanely. Protected persons may not be subject to coercion in order to obtain information (Article 31). In addition civilians must not be subjected to torture or other measures of brutality (Article 32).

53) Although it does not appear that Australia has at any time assumed responsibility in Iraq for detention facilities or prisons for either POWs or protected persons, Australia has an obligation under Geneva III and IV with respect to POWs, civilian prisoners and civilian detainees which it transferred to either the US or UK.

54) Australia is also under an obligation to “ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances” (Article 1). Arguably as an Occupying Power with ongoing obligations under Geneva IV, Australia has a special responsibility to ensure that other Occupying Powers respect their obligations under Geneva IV in relation to protected persons.

55) In addition to Geneva IV, the Occupying Powers are bound by the provisions of several human rights instruments, including the Torture Convention which applies to “any territory under [their] jurisdiction” (Article 2(1)). These standards remain binding and applicable irrespective of the status of the Occupying Powers according to the provisions of Geneva IV.

56) Occupying Power status will cease on and around 30 June 2004. However international forces may remain in Iraq after that day under the authorisation of UNSC Resolution 1511, though it would be desirable for a fresh UNSC Resolution to be adopted to clarify the relationship between those forces and the interim Iraqi government, the legal status of those forces, and limitations upon their use of force.

G’day. I feel that knowing the detail of prisoner of war law is the key to emerging evidence that Australia has connived in the abandonment of the Geneva Conventions. The government seems to have attempted to contract out of its solemn responsibilities under the Conventions by not knowing, or pretending not to know, what the Americans have been doing in Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons. It’s like children overboard – just about every public servant in Canberra knew long before election day 2001 that no kids had been thrown overboard, but somehow, some way, a corrupt pact between senior public servants and the government allowed the latter to argue that it had never been told. Rewards followed for the public service and government staff conspirators.

Today I publish the official document setting out the agreement between the invaders – The U.S., the U.K. and Australia on the Geneva Conventions in Iraq. We learned in Senate Estimates this week that an unwritten side deal was made between Australia and America that when our soldiers detained an Iraqi, we would hand him over to any American we could find and pretend the American had detained him, thus artificially avoiding our obligations as the “detaining power” to ensure that the “transferring power” not torture our prisoners of war (see the postscript to Did our government lie to us to protect America?) This was taken, it seems, to ludicrous lengths. For example, Australians on HMAS Kanimbla detained and transported Iraqi prisoners, but Cosgrove argued in Senate Estimates that somehow, some way, the prisoners were actually detained by “US coastguard personnel”.

We have also sought to avoid our responsibilities by claiming that Australia is not an “occupying power”, which imposes obligations to protest at abuses which come our to our attention and, if necessary, request the return of prisoners we’ve detained to our custody. See Our ‘special responsibility’ betrayed at Abu Ghraib for the legal opinion of one of Australia’s leading international lawyers, Professor Don Rothwell, that Australia IS an occupying power. Most international lawyers agree, and it will come as no surprise that the government has not released its legal advice to the contrary.

In my view, one reason for the cover-up of Australia’s knowledge is the desire to avoid the appearance of having abandoned the Geneva Conventions, when Australian military lawyers were intimately involved in preparing untenable legal assertions that torture at Abu Ghraib did not breach the Conventions. Australian officers also played the central role in dealing with the Red Cross during its visits to Abu Ghraib.

Rothwell is one of many international lawyers incredulous that military lawyers would not have immediately reported as a matter of utmost urgency to Canberra the details of multiple serious breaches of the Geneva Conventions detailed by the October Red Cross report. Remember, that report preceded more shocking abuses in November photographed for the world by some of the perpetrators. And remember that the Americans only got stuck into at least appearing to clean up their torture palace in January, after a brave American soldier slipped some torture pornography under a senior officer’s door. Could we have made a difference? Maybe not, but it had to be worth a bloody good try.

The Australian military knows very well that the safety of Australian prisoners of war could depend on our record – indeed, that our compliance with the Geneva Conventions is the only real power we have to reduce the risk of torture of our people.

Was there an instruction to close eyes? Or did the entire public service know, after Howard’s refusal to protest in any way about the illegal detention of Hicks and Habib in Guantanamo Bay that they’d be hung, drawn and quartered if they dared tell Defence Minister Hill, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer or Attorney-General Amanda Vanstone about it? It is so convenient that Howard now says he SHOULD have been told and that OF COURSE he’d have protested if he had. Far too convenient.

Because of what is claimed to be the failure of these minister’s departments to draw the pending debacle at Abu Ghraib to political attention, Robert Hill can smugly give evidence in Senate Estimates suggesting that Australia complies not only with its legal obligations, but its ‘moral’ – remember that word? – responsibility to ensure to the best of its ability that the Geneva Conventions are complied with by our partners in war.

He acknowledged that the abuses reported by the Red Cross in October last year were serious, and continued:

“Our interest is really the interest of a party that believes in the Geneva Convention and humanitarian treatment of individuals, not only according to the law but in the spirit of those documents. We talk at a political level…to other parties who have authority or influence in these issues.”

So we’re assured that if they’d been told, Hill and Howard would have queried the senior American military and occupation officers they met in Iraq this year before the scandal broke. Believe that, and you believe pigs fly. The fact that there are no casualties in the public service or the government after this debacle is testament to Howard and co’s real feelings on the subject.

The interest of this government is always about appearance, not reality. Let’s hope no Australian ends up paying an awful price for that policy.

AN ARRANGEMENT FOR THE TRANSFER OF PRISONERS OF WAR, CIVILIAN INTERNEES, AND CIVILIAN DETAINEES BETWEEN THE FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND, AND AUSTRALIA.

This arrangement establishes procedures in the event of the transfer from the custody of either the US, UK, or Australian forces to the custody of any of the other parties, any Prisoners of War, Civilian Internees, and Civilian Detainees taken during operations against Iraq. The Parties undertake as follows:

1. This arrangement will be implemented in accordance with the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War and the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, as well as customary international law.

2. US, UK, and Australian forces will, as mutually determined, accept (as Accepting Powers) prisoners of war, civilian internees, and civilian detainees who have fallen into the power of any of the other parties (the Detaining Power), and will be responsible for maintaining and safeguarding all such individuals whose custody has been transferred to them. Transfers of prisoners of war, civilian internees, and civilian detainees between Accepting Powers may take place as mutually determined by both the Accepting Power and the Detaining Power.

3. Arrangements to transfer prisoners of war, civilian internees. and civilian detainees who are casualties will be expedited, in order that they may be treated according to their medical priority. All such transfers will be administered and recorded within the systems established under this arrangement for the transfer of prisoners of war, civilian internees, and civilian detainees.

4. Any prisoners of war, civilian internees, and civilian detainees transferred by a Detaining Power will be returned by the Accepting Power to the Detaining Power without delay upon request by the Detaining Power.

5. The release or repatriation or removal to territories outside Iraq of transferred prisoners of war, civilian internees, and civilian detainees will only be made upon the mutual arrangement of the Detaining Power and the Accepting Power.

6. The Detaining Power will retain full rights of access to any prisoners of war, civilian internees, and civilian detainees transferred from Detaining Power custody while such persons are in the custody of the Accepting Power.

7. The Accepting Power will be responsible for the accurate accountability of all prisoners of war, civilian internees, and civilian detainees transferred to it. Such records will be available for inspection by the Detaining Power upon request. If prisoners of war, civilian internees. or civilian detainees are returned to the Detaining Power, the records (or a true copy of the same) relating to those prisoners of war, civilian internees, and civilian detainees will also be handed over.

8. The Detaining Powers will assign liaison officers to Accepting Powers order to facilitate the implementation of this arrangement.

9. The Detaining Power will be solely responsible for the classification under Articles 4 and 5 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War of potential prisoners of war captured by its forces. Prior to such a determination being made, such detainees will be treated as prisoners of war and afforded all the rights and protections of the Convention even if transferred to the custody of an Accepting Power.

10. Where there is doubt as to which party is the Detaining Power, all Parties will be jointly responsible for and have full access to all persons detained (and any records concerning their treatment) until the Detaining Power has by mutual arrangement been determined.

11. To the extent that jurisdiction may be exercised for criminal offenses, to include pre-capture offenses, allegedly committed by prisoners of war, civilian internees, and civilian detainees prior to a transfer to an Accepting Power, primary jurisdiction will initially rest with the Detaining Power. Detaining Powers will give favorable consideration to any request by an Accepting Power to waive jurisdiction.

12. Primary jurisdiction over breaches of disciplinary regulations and judicial offenses allegedly committed by prisoners of war, civilian internees, and civilian detainees after transfer to an Accepting Power will rest with the Accepting Power.

13. The Detaining Power will reimburse the Accepting Power for the costs involved in maintaining prisoners of war, civilian internees, and civilian detainees transferred pursuant to this arrangement.

14. At the request of one of the Parties, the Parties will consult on the implementation of this arrangement.

Done at Camp As Sayliyah, Doha, Qatar on this 23rd day of March 2003.

For the United States of America: John P. Abizaud, LTG, USA, United States Central Command

For the United Kingdom of Great Britain And Northern Ireland: B.K. Burridge, Air Marshall, United Kingdom National Contingent Commander

For and on behalf of Australia: M. R. McNarn, Brigadier, Commander Australian National Headquarters

The plot thickens. The chief of the defence force General Cosgrove has been caught misleading the people yet again. He told Senate Estimates this week that Australia had an agreement with the Americans that they would detain POWs in Iraq on our behalf so we could avoid our responsibilities under the Geneva Conventions to ensure they were not tortured. Today, �Defence Minister� Robert Hill � the bloke so desperate to avoid the truth coming out about our increasingly obvious complicity in American war crimes at Abu Ghraib that he banned the key witness, Major O�Kane, from telling his story – admitted there was no such agreement.

 

There was an agreement for Afghanistan, a vastly different war – which the ADF now can�t find, Hill says – but nothing for Iraq. That means there is no legal basis for us to palm off our responsibilities. That means, perhaps, that the agreement made for Iraq on March 23, 2003requiring detaining powers to meet their Geneva Convention obligations stands. And that would mean that we did have a duty to protect the 59 Iraqis even Hill admits Australians captured from American torture, and that we did have a duty to do what we could to stop the blatant American breaches of the Geneva Conventions once they came to our attention last November. (Although we do anyway according to most international lawyers – see Our ‘special responsibility’ betrayed at Abu Ghraib.)

Bloody hell!! Sometimes, just sometimes, politicians who want the people to believe the opposite of the truth get trapped by their own spin. Let�s hope it�s not too late for our proud and honourable military tradition to be saved. Come on, whistleblowers, now�s your best chance to clean out the yes men from defence ‘leadership’ and expose the political monsters who�ve misused and humiliated the force ever since �Tampa� and children overboard and relentlessly co-opted it to bolster their political fortunes.

For those of you who remember your ‘unthrown children’ history, the progress of this scandal is deja vu. Last time, Howard ordered an inquiry by his own department, which, of course, produced a cover-up of the cover-up. So the Senate called an inquiry, which found out lots, but couldn’t nail the real culprits – Reith and co – because the government banned staffers and key public service witnesses from giving evidence. We’re at the second stage now – the farce of a Defence force and department ‘Fact Finding’ inquiry into themselves. Why not an independent inquiry to get the bloody truth! Because truth hurts a government which ditched truth as a concept a long time ago. Revolting.

Tonight, long time Webdiarist Peter Funnell in Canberra, an ex soldier whose Dad was a POW in World War 11, lets fly.

***

Peter Funnell

Look mate, I have written this while I am white hot. It may not be worth much, but I reckon I know what these buggers have been up to. Whenever I think it can’t get any worse with the Howard Government, they top their last effort. Where is all this taking our nation? You know, sometimes things get so bloody broken they don’t go back together. How much more of this crap is there to find.

I am not a lawyer, but I was soldier for a long time. My father was a POW of the Japanese and I met plenty of his POW mates over many years. I can’t imagine any of them supporting what has gone on in Iraq jails while we helped hold the keys to the doors. This is how I see it.

It begins with illegal arrangements at Guantanamo Bay, arrangements that are so unfathomable that the US courts have great difficulty working out the status of those inside and whether they have rights in the US legal process. The US does not call them prisoners of war, they are detainees. The “detainees” were out of sight if not out of mind and the practices that would follow in Iraq were established there, then exported as acceptable operational practice to operations in Iraq.

As participants in the Afghanistan war, we were a party to all of this process. Two of our citizens are detainees. The Australian Government has made no effort to challenge this grotesque distortion of the accepted intentions conventions for the handling of those enemy combatants captured during operations. Our Government has now most reluctantly acknowledged the plight of our citizens, concealing their real intentions behind the proposition that there is nothing they can do. They care to do nothing.

It is against this background that the framework for operations where POWs were concerned in Iraq was established. Bad, wrong and illegal was about to get worse.

The real operational problem for the Australian military is that some elements of the forces deployed in Iraq would be very likely to capture Iraqis in battle. It could happen tonight if the small protection element gets into a fire fight with militia or others who may try to attack the personnel they are there to protect. They will go straight to the US yet you can bet there will not be a US soldier in sight at the time of capture. The whole business is too cute by half. But I get ahead of myself.

Australian military commanders obviously did not want to have full responsibility for POWs. That is to say, they did not want to run POW holding camps, so they made arrangements to had them over to the US who were going to establish these facilities. All correct so far – someone had to do it. (Margo: It now seems they didn’t – why not?! Did they agree on something they didn’t want to put in writing?) As expert contributors to Webdiary clearly point out, Australia still had continuing obligations to those they captured and handed over. It is inconceivable to me that these obligations were not known to Australian military commanders and planners. The Minister’s hazy recollection of an arrangement indicates it was planned for and covered in briefings.

I would suggest that the Army legal corps officers in place with the coalition headquarters knew exactly what was required in these matters. The conventions with regard to handling of and obligations to POWs are not hard to read and comprehend. The handling arrangements for POWs is a standard component of battlefield orders down to the smallest infantry unit – the rifle section. It is that basic!

But things had changed. The operational framework for POWs and their subsequent handling and interrogation was now well established. That is not to say that any one individual would support the foul goings on in the Iraqi prisons, but it does mean that everyone had become accepting of the US led approach to the abandonment of those parts of the international conventions for the handling of POWs that no longer suited. This was a juggernaut in motion.

When I first heard that an Australian army officer from the legal corps had been to the prison and made comment up his chain of command and that the information had not got to Minister or government I thought � that poor bastard, he’ll be hung out to dry. He’s conveniently expendable.

This is a fit up! When Cosgrove did his usual arm-in-arm with the Minister and PM and damned the officer with faint praise by referring to him as a junior officer (not correct by any means), I just knew the fix was in. The mystery to me was why the defence department Secretary and the Chief of the Defence Force were prepared to let defence and the ADF take such a fierce hit, to be made to look so deceitful, unprofessional and untruthful. Why?

The idea that some misguided military officer stuck the crucial October Red Cross report delivered by O’Kane after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in the bottom draw of a filing cabinet and no one was the wiser is not believable.

Revelations about the army officers concerned did in Iraq plumbs darker possibilities. The fact that more than one officer visited Abu Ghraib many times can only be interpreted two ways. They were alarmed by what they saw and kept going back to verify the situation, or they understood the operational environment and were part of the wider process by which it all happened. It seems these officers were involved in preparing responses to the Red Cross, they were on the inside of this business.

It’s astonishing, for it clearly implies that this really was something to which we were a willing party.

This is where the credibility gap widens enormously. The likelihood that this aspect of the war in Iraq was confined to a few (like who by the way?) is just so much crap. It’s not the way the Army or the ADF works. People have to tell and do and they tell others that need to know.

If the CDF really didn’t know, he should leave the Service tomorrow. If the Secretary didn’t know, he should find other employment. If they knew and concealed it they have no excuse. If they knew and concealed it because they mistakenly thought they were acting in the nations or the ADF’s best interests, they were wrong and have no right to hold the offices they presently occupy.

The truth is probably as simple as it is dangerous for our democracy. It’s not unreasonable to conclude the worst. There has been too much spin, and it�s been too hard to get information out of these the flow accordingly, or that the same senior leadership is grossly incompetent. The lone incompetent is not a runner!

Nothing excuses the PM, his Minister for Defence and his Minister for Foreign Affairs. Nothing. But their fate can be settled at the next election, as it should be.

The Nuremberg defence is ever present. Our PM relies on his version of it – he was never told, so he is not to blame. It’s no excuse. It’s a rotten betrayal of everything that is good about our nation, but it does illustrate just how far down the slippery slope we have come in the Howard years. You see versions of this �going along to get along� in every Federal department.

Every time I hear the Minister(s) or the PM talk of this rotten business, they are so quick to say none of our troops were involved in the mistreatment of the POWs. That is probably true, but it was never the question. It makes me ill to hear the pathetic cowering and whining.

You see, we are responsible; because we callously or stupidly dismissed our obligations to those people we captured in battle, disarmed and had imprisoned. We are responsible! It is shameful.

The only good to come out of it all is that our Parliamentary system of accountability did work, because a few good Senators got stuck in and demanded answers. There is hope yet.

G’day. The latest Iraq scandal to engulf the government is bloody difficult to get your head around so I thought I’d set out my preliminary understanding and seek your input. Calling all legal experts on the Geneva Conventions and what our obligations are under them!!! For a great Aussie timeline, see southerlybuster. We need to blend a timeline of events in America with those in Australia too. Then, the transcript of Howard’s press conference yesterday, where, for once, the press gallery wiped the floor with a bloke who is very close to being exposed, finally, as a Prime Minister without shame leading a bureaucratic hierarchy without honour. For my first take on the scandal, see Did our government lie to us to protect America?

To begin, the fact is that The Sydney Morning Herald’s Tom Allard’s breaking story on Thursday inArmy knew months ago has proved accurate in almost every detail, including Australia’s involvement in drafting interrogation technique protocols in Abu Ghraib, investigating abuses and drafting replies to the Red Cross. Layer upon layer of denials of his story by Howard, Hill, Cosgrove and Smith have been stripped away in the days since, partly because the Herald later revealed the official reply to the Red Cross last year, the draft of which the government also had in its possession. You’d think Tom would have got such a detailed, accurate story from someone in government who knew what he or she was talking about, which would mean Australia has its Abu Ghraib whistleblower, like the junior US soldier who blew the whistle at Abu Ghraib and the person who leaked General Taguba’s devastating report to Seymour Hersh. So you’d assume that whoever leaked the truth to Allard knew there was disgusting stuff happening in government to cover it up. Could the Herald know and the government, the defence force and the defence department not know? We’re supposed to buy this?

1. The Red Cross – the authority authorised by the United Nations to act as custodian of the Geneva Conventions against torture of prisoners of war – reported to Baghdad military HQ in October last year that serious breaches of 12 articles of the Conventions were taking place, detailing men being forced to walk the corridors naked wearing women’s underwear on the their heads and being handcuffed to cell doors. Robert Hill now admits this. Yet on the day of Tom’s story, Howard denied it in Parliament, saying the October report referred only ‘food clothing and communication opportunities’ and that Australian officers in Baghdad military HQ knew nothing of serious breaches until January.

2. Several Australian military officers were involved in preparing a response to the October report. Australia’s Major George O’Kane and an unnamed Colonel visited Abu Ghraib several times after the report was received in 2003 to investigate the allegations. In fact, Australian military legal officers acted as the liaison between the Red Cross and the Coalition of the Willing on its report, and O’Kane drafted the response to its October report, which denied that the Geneva Conventions were completely applicable to prisoners in Iraq and insisted that the Red Cross cease making unannounced inspections. And the worst of the torture, from what we know so far, occurred in November, 2003, AFTER Australia knew breaches of the Geneva Conventions were rife at Abu Ghraib.

3. Australia, as a signatory of the Geneva Conventions, is legally and morally bound to abide by them. An agreement between the invading powers – The US, The UK and Australia – confirmed that the Geneva Conventions would apply to prisoners of war in Iraq. Question: Once Australia was aware of breaches, were its legal obligations triggered? If so, is that why the government pulled out all stops to deny knowledge of the breaches before the photos were published in April? And if so, WHY did O’Kane and his superiors in Baghdad not send a red light warning to Australian immediately? Or did they?

4. To me, the crucial piece of evidence indicating that we’re not talking about mere stuff up here is that after weeks of a purported investigation after the torture photos were publicly released, ADF chief Cosgrove and defence department chief Smith certified in a joint statement last Friday that “No Defence personnel were aware of the allegations of abuse or serious mistreatment before … January” and that “it is understood from Major O’Kane that the October report raised general concerns,” NOT abuses (in retrospect, the “it is understood” weasel words give the game away). Therefore, Australia did NOT have a copy of the October Red Cross report, which DID document serious abuses detailed serial abuses of the Geneva Conventions.

Yet Defence Department chief Ric Smith testified yesterday that he was told that same Friday night of “two working papers” prepared by the ICRC (the International Red Cross) which had been in the hands of a senior ADF officer since early May since their delivery to him by O’Kane himself. In these circumstances, ALL department secretaries and ALL defence chiefs, unless there are hidden agendas yet to be revealed – would IMMEDIATELY inform the Prime Minister through the Defence Minister that he may have misled Parliament. Failure to do so would normally result in instant dismissal, for good cause. TWO DAYS LATER, John Howard repeated the false story onSunday Sunrise, repeatedly, falsely, denying that Defence had the October report. He said the Red Cross had refused a government request for a copy, and so Howard’s ambassadors would now ask the USA and the UK for a copy. He was super, super meticulous in saying, over and over, that he was relying on the Smith/Cosgrove advice. For example, “I haven’t seen the report and I’m told once again – and I’m relying on what the Defence Department tells me – that they don’t have a copy of it either.” In retrospect, classic weasel words used routinely by politicians covering themselves.

Placing a Prime Minister in such a humiliating position would, in normal circumstances, be a clear dereliction of duty by Smith and Cosgrove unless, as I say, there were undercurrents which have not yet come to light. If John Howard is telling the truth – that he knew nothing of war crimes in Abu Ghraib until he saw the photos along with the rest of us and that he learned only late Sunday that he’d been misinformed about the knowledge of the government – he’d have dealt with the unacceptable behaviour of Smith and Cosgrove, whether by design or ludicrous incompetence, by sacking them if they failed to resign.

But no. At his press conference yesterday he said: “If you’re asking me whether I have confidence in them, yes of course I do. I have great confidence in the three of them.” (Hill, Cosgrove and Smith).

It gets worse. Smith now claims more than 10 officers worked all weekend to work out the exact status of the “working documents” (And yes, they did include the damning October Red Cross report). Why the hell didn’t they just ask O’Kane???

Smith claims they’d finally worked it out by Sunday, so he and Cosgrove would, of course, immediately issue a correction. NO. They waited until lunchtime Tuesday, after more than a day of exhaustive questioning by Senate Estimates kept dragging truth out of obfuscation and misleading evidence and forced revelations of the involvement of yet more Australian officers in the Red Cross visits to Abu Ghraib and their aftermath last year, to do so. Sorry guys, it won’t wash.

This saga stinks to high heaven. I’d bet my bottom dollar that there’s much more to this than meets the eye. I’d really appreciate stuff from lawyers who know about the Geneva Conventions to tell Webdiary what THEY think is going on.

***

THE PRIME MINISTER THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP, PRESS CONFERENCE, PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA, MONDAY, MAY 31, ON THE EVE OF HIS TRIP TO SEE HIS MATE GEORGE BUSH

JOURNALIST: Mr Howard, will you apologise to the Parliament and the Australian public for misleading them over Australian knowledge of the extent of serious abuses of prisoners in Iraq?

PRIME MINISTER: I did not mislead the public or the Australian public or the Australian Parliament. The advice that I gave the Parliament and the public was based on the advice I’d received from the defence department.

JOURNALIST: The Defence Department now concedes that advice was wrong.

PRIME MINISTER: Well, that’s what I will be indicating, as I have already, that everything I’ve said was based on the advice of the Defence Department. I did not set out to mislead anybody. It is impossible in a situation in which I am placed for me to have direct personal knowledge. I wasn’t in Baghdad. I have to rely on the advice of the department. I regret very much that I was given the wrong advice, I regret that very much.

JOURNALIST: Mr Howard, why didn’t you insist on being better briefed, especially when the man involved who had all the knowledge was just down the road? (Major O’Kane.)

PRIME MINISTER: Well, I’m sorry, Michelle, it is simply not possible for somebody in my position to talk to every single person in a department. Its just that is an unreasonable proposition. It is not unreasonable for a prime minister to rely on a written brief from a department in relation to a matter, I do it every day. And if in future I have to personally sit down and talk to each person in a department who provides that written brief and to interrogate the people in that department my job becomes quite impossible.

JOURNALIST: – at least one minister have known before April?

PRIME MINISTER: Not according to the advice that I have, no.

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, what do you think about the quality of that advice? I mean, what does it say about the competency of defence, given they had these reports with a senior defence official on May 11 and what does it say about the motives of defence that they didn’t bring it to the attention of the Government until Sunday as I understand?

PRIME MINISTER: Let me say this I am very unhappy that I was misinformed by the Defence Department, so is the Defence Minister. I have, as you know, an extremely high regard for the men and women in the Australian Defence Force. We’re dealing here with what was clearly an inadequate briefing, not only of me, but bear in mind that the Chief of the Defence Force and the Secretary of the Defence Department themselves were equally poorly served by the advice they received from the Department.

JOURNALIST: Are you confident that it won’t happen again?

PRIME MINISTER: Jim, I can’t give a guarantee that a department in the future wont give inaccurate advice to a Minister. I can’t, I can’t.

JOURNALIST: What are you doing to ensure that it doesn’t happen again?

PRIME MINISTER: Well the Minister will be, at my request, making a detailed statement to the Senate when it meets again about the chain of events, the knowledge of and involvement in and communication with the ICRC (Red Cross) , the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority), communications back to Australia and the timelines involved in all of that. I have asked the Defence Minister to make that detailed statement to the Senate. But I’m plainly unhappy because the information I gave, I believed to be correct, and it was based on a brief I had from the Defence Department. And this proposition that I have to sit down with individuals who originate that advice, particularly when I have to preposition any advice I give with the comment that this has come from the department, I mean no Prime Minister has the capacity, given the other demands on his time, to do that.

JOURNALIST: If you had known then, would you have expressed your concerns…

PRIME MINISTER: Had I known what?

JOURNALIST: If you had known about this earlier, would you have expressed your concerns at the time to the Americans?

PRIME MINISTER: Well if I had known, if I had known what back in October? Well I didn’t know about it until April. That remains…

JOURNALIST: (inaudible)

PRIME MINISTER: Well I mean, look I would have done the right thing, and of course if I had have known about it, of course I would have expressed my concern. Of course I would have.

JOURNALIST: (inaudible) didn’t go up the chain and back to Canberra in October when it was first clear that there were serious problems and allegations being raised about the conduct of the coalition in Iraq…

PRIME MINISTER: Well the response…

JOURNALIST: …so we could have done the right thing?

PRIME MINISTER: Well ok, well one question – can we have questions and not speeches? The response that has been given to that question, and it has been asked, is that it wasn’t passed up the chain because it didn’t involve Australians. It was believed that the issue was being responded to and dealt with by the Americans, particularly in relation to the January report. And as I understand it, and I choose my words carefully, as I understand it, the working papers that were referred to in the Senate in October, which clearly contained references to unacceptable behaviour and unacceptable treatment of prisoners, that they fed into the February report. The February report, as I am told, has been commented upon in the Senate by Senator Hill and General Cosgrove and Mr Smith. The February report, when presented to the relevant people, caused a great deal of concern, and that the response of the British and the Americans was satisfactory to the Red Cross, and that is another reason why it is claimed, it is said, that the material was not passed up the line.

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, will you apologise to the Sydney Morning Herald after you said that we conflated reports and were involved in a despicable slur?

PRIME MINISTER: Well I withdraw the claim that you deliberately conflated the report, if you feel I made that claim. I do not withdraw what I regarded as the more serious allegation or implication in the story, when you said that a claim by Senator Hill that quote, as best I can remember, there was no association of Australians with the abuses, I think that is a paraphrase of it, that that might appear to be misleading.

JOURNALIST: But the association I was referring to was the deep involvement of…

PRIME MINISTER: Well can I say if you say that somebody is associated with an abuse, it means that they are in some way an active participant in it. The idea that because you’re investigating something, youre associated with it, is the equivalent of saying that a police officer investigating a robbery is in some way associated with it. That was the bit…

JOURNALIST: But the report also clearly says that he did not witness, endorse or participate.

PRIME MINISTER: Yes, but you use the expression associated and I think that… I thought then that was unfair, I still think it’s unfair, and I think its very important that I stick up for the reputation of the Australian Defence Force, because however what is being written and reported may be explained, the danger is that some will imply a guilt by association, and to my knowledge no men or women in the Australian Defence Force have been in any way involved in abuse or have in any way condoned that abuse, and that is why I feel quite strongly about this.

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, what’s the point of having Australian military officers attached to the coalition command in Iraq if they don’t keep their own Government and their own department and their own hierarchy informed, abreast of developments?

PRIME MINISTER: Jim, that generally is a fair observation and its one of the things that in the aftermath of this, that I will be expecting a response to.

JOURNALIST: Do you think its a bit peculiar, Mr Howard, that a couple of Labor Senators can get all this information out in a day and a half, and the Prime Minister couldn’t get it, being charitable, in the last two weeks?

PRIME MINISTER: Yes, but Michelle, in the last two weeks there have been a lot of other things that I have been dealing with, and the truth of the matter is this that there has been never any allegation of Australian involvement, never. There is no suggestion of Australian involvement. The allegations are against the Americans. Theyre not against Australians. I mean you… many of the questions are asked as if the inquiry is whether or not Australians were involved. Were talking here about knowledge of allegations in the context of those allegations being responded to by the people against whom the allegations were made, and I think the context of that, with respect, is being missed by some people, yourself included.

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, is the O’Kane affair another example of the bureaucracy telling the Government what it wants to hear to suit its political ends?

PRIME MINISTER: That is an absurd proposition Tom. I mean there is no reason why I wouldn’t want to know the full story on this, no reason at all, absolutely no reason at all. I first became conscious of these allegations about behaviour by the Americans and to some extent the British, although just exactly what happened in relation to the British appears unclear, after I came back from Baghdad. I mean to give you an illustration of my state of mind, nobody mentioned this to me when I was in Baghdad. I met General Abizaid when I was in Baghdad, I met General Sanchez when I was in Baghdad, I met Paul Bremer when I was in Baghdad, I met two people in the Iraqi Governing Council, I met the Australian Commanding Officer in Baghdad I met all of these people and nobody mentioned it to me. The journalists who were travelling with me didn’t pick it up. I mean if it was all around and it was the subject of a lot of conversation, and if there were widespread concern about it, why wasn’t it mentioned to me? (MARGO: Because there was a cover up!!!)

JOURNALIST: (inaudible) failure of Defence to appropriately brief you, what do you Prime Minister then…

PRIME MINISTER: Look I don’t know the answer to that.

JOURNALIST: And for their failure to…

PRIME MINISTER: Mark, I don’t know. I am unhappy. I mean I don’t enjoy being misinformed. I am very unhappy with it.

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, are you satisfied…

PRIME MINISTER: But I am, you know, I am equally… I can’t in this, you know, early winter morning or afternoon just sort of declare precisely why it happened. Of course I’ve asked Senator Hill…

JOURNALIST: You’re obviously telling us how unhappy you are about it. From your preliminary inquiries, what reason…

PRIME MINISTER: It’s too early. They are too preliminary because bear in mind that over the past couple of days the three people principally concerned and to whom I would speak have been tied up in Senate Estimates. I mean, I had the opportunity last evening of having a very brief discussion with Senator Hill, with General Cosgrove and Mr Smith before I went off to have a Monday evening chat with Kerry O’Brien.

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, are you satisfied with the way those three people have handled this?

PRIME MINISTER: If you’re asking me whether I have confidence in them, yes of course I do. I have great confidence in the three of them.

JOURNALIST: …down the line to the junior people who cant speak for themselves?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, Michelle, I’ll find out what happened and before then I’m simply not going to respond to those sorts of questions…

JOURNALIST: General Cosgrove (inaudible)…?

PRIME MINISTER: Look, I’m not going to canvass what General Cosgrove said to me. I have a tremendous regard for General Cosgrove. I think he’s one of the outstanding military figures that this country has had for a number of years and I have very strong regard for the administrative skills of Mr Smith and, of course, Senator Hill is a very close and very senior member of my Cabinet…

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, in view of what we know now about these matters is the Australian public entitled to hear directly from Major O’Kane what he saw and what he thought about what he saw and to whom he reported it?

PRIME MINISTER: I think it’s appropriate that the normal procedure in relation to these things be followed and that is being followed and what Senator Hill has said and done in relation to this is similar to the attitude that has been taken by Ministers on both sides of politics when similar situations have arisen. Thank you.

OK. We can�t believe the Prime Minister. We can�t believe the Defence Minister. We can�t believe the head of the Australian Defence Force. We can�t believe the head of the Defence Department.

 

But we already knew that, didn�t we? We knew that for sure after the children overboard inquiry revealed Howard, Reith, Admiral Barrie and Allan Hawke as serial liars, dissemblers and/or cover up artists. We KNOW that our public service ethics lie in ruins, across the board. We know that our senior public servants no longer see themselves as having any duty to the public interest, and that their �duty� is solely to protect the government�s political interests. They�ve sold their souls, no less, and by doing so have sold the soul of Australia.

So there�s nothing new in the Abu Ghraib cover up in that sense. What�s new, or at least newly exposed, is the systemic downgrading of human rights behind the scenes � even the protection for prisoners of war established after World War II in disgust at the treatment of POW�s by the Japanese. I put these human rights above all others in a purely practical sense, because an absolute insistence on compliance by civilised nations is all that protects our soldiers and our citizens from horror if they are captured by our enemies. It allows us to prosecute perpetrators hard, with the full force of international law, and it�s that threat that weighs on the minds of our enemies if they capture us. Breaches of the Geneva Conventions are called war crimes.

The defence force knows this better that anyone else, and that�s why our soldiers are trained thoroughly in the Geneva Conventions.

So let�s look at the real scandal revealed this week in Senate Estimates. Let�s examine the behaviour of Howard, Hill, Cosgrove and defence department chief Ric Smith. If Howard is innocent, all the rest of them are as guilty as sin, and all should leave public life in shame. None will.

JOHN HOWARD

Howard says he knew NOTHING about prisoner abuse by the Americans until April, when the public saw the photos. NOTHING. Imagine a Prime Minister concerned with Australia�s reputation as a member of the Coalition of the Willing and the utter necessity of winning the Iraqi people�s hearts and minds to win the war.

He wonders why he didn�t know, right? Surely the Americans would have briefed us long ago. And we have officers in Baghdad HQ. What did they know? If nothing, then lines of communication between the Coalition partners are seriously flawed. Were any of our soldiers involved in investigating the abuses, had any reports been sent up the line? He would have liked to have been in the loop by Anzac Day at least, when he was in Iraq being briefed by the heavies of the occupation who knew all about it. He listed them all yesterday: �I met General Abizaid when I was in Baghdad, I met General Sanchez when I was in Baghdad, I met Paul Bremer when I was in Baghdad, I met two people in the Iraqi Governing Council, I met the Australian Commanding Officer in Baghdad � I met all of these people and nobody mentioned it to me.�

Item one on his agenda, if he’s in good faith – find out who knew what and when, and if nothing, then why not, and if so, why the hell wasn�t he told?

Note that Howard didn�t even lodge a formal protest with the Americans when the torture was revealed. Without any inquiries of our forces, it seems, he blindly ran the George Bush �few rotten apples� line now so thoroughly discredited by subsequent revelations in America.

ROBERT HILL

At yesterday�s press conference, Howard was asked: �If you had known about this earlier, would you have expressed your concerns at the time to the Americans?�

Howard: “Well, I mean, look I would have done the right thing, and of course if I had known about it, of course I would have expressed my concern. Of course I would have.”

So why the bloody hell wasn�t he told � if he wasn�t?

On May 11, Robert Hill persistently avoiding answering direct questions in the Senate on when he knew of the February 2004 Red Cross report � the one which details the torture and abuse � the war crimes � which were in April revealed to the rest of us via the photos. �Defence� knew in February, he said at first. And finally:

�The government became aware of that report in February. I accept the responsibilities that flow from that.�

Why did Hill prevaricate? Most likely answer � he had been briefed but did not want to say so. And what responsibilities might flow from that? Labor knew one of them, and Labor�s defence spokesman Chris Evans said it to Hill�s face: �So you lied to the ABC?�

On May 5 on the 7.30 Report, Hill denied any knowledge of the abuses before he saw the pictures:

�If this had of come to my knowledge other than through the public domain, I would have made my inquiries and expressed my views.�

The Howard defence!! But he did know, it seems, two months before, and did nothing. Why not??? And if he did know, what can we make of this comment in the same interview?

�Well it’s a bad story, it’s a bad story in that it doesn’t reflect the values that we are seeking to apply in Iraq and secondly it’s a bad story in that it’s certainly counter productive to winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.�

So, Howard says he should have been told. Hill didn�t tell him. Yet Hill will now brief the Senate on what happened and when. It�s all so old hat, isn�t it? Just before the election Peter Reith was told in no uncertain terms by the acting defence force chief Angus Houston that NO CHILDREN WERE THROWN OVERBOARD. Reith SAYS he didn�t tell the PM, allowing him to continue the falsehood until election day. Then, Reith�s successor Robert Hill masterminds the cover up at the unthrown children inquiry, banning a department officer who handled the photos which Reith falsely used to prove the lie from giving evidence. And Cabinet bans Reith�s staffers from giving evidence. And Reith refuses to give evidence. And all of his staff are rewarded with plum posts, as is Reith. The rot set in then, and the defence force�s integrity has been rotting away ever since.

If Howard is telling the truth that he should have been told, then he should sack Hill if he knew and wouldn�t tell him.

Let�s assume � as we have a right to do since Hill won�t say � that Hill knew in February. Why didn�t Hill tell the PM, if we believe the PM that he wasn�t told? The usual protect-the-prime-minister�s arse reason? I hope so. Because the other two explanations don�t bear thinking about.

The first is that he – or, if he didn’t know, senior officers in the military and the defence department – didn�t think the matter was important. That is simply impossible to believe. Howard himself had admitted that the scandal has refelected badly on Australia, as a member of the Coalition.

The second is that the defence force, the defence department, and perhaps Hill, were involved in a systematic cover up to try to protect the Americans. Remember, after the photos, Bush and co madly insisted that a few reservists had got out of control and that was it. It took a few days before Seymour Hersh blew that out of the water by publishing the scathing report of General Tagula, and ever since the rotten apples lie been buried with more and more evidence that America deliberately avoided its obligations under the Geneva Conventions. So read O’Kane role attracts US legal teamsin today�s Sydney Morning Herald and have a think about it:

US defence lawyers for some of the prison guards at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq facing court-martial will attempt to obtain documents written by the Australian military lawyer Major George O’Kane about abuse complaints by the International Committee of the Red Cross while he was working in coalition headquarters in Baghdad.

“We’re very interested in this Australian officer,” said Gary Myers, the lawyer representing Sergeant Ivan Frederick, a military police officer.

“We have already asked for the relevant documents in a discovery request,” he said. Major O’Kane’s numerous reports to his Australian commanders about his dealings with the ICRC between November and January is one of the few clear paper trails that has emerged in the Abu Ghraib scandal despite weeks of hearings by the armed services committee of the US Senate.

Major O’Kane worked in the legal office attached to the head of the US-led coalition forces in Iraq, General Ricardo Sanchez, when the Red Cross made detailed complaints about abuses at Abu Ghraib and another Iraq detention centre, Camp Cropper.

Those complaints were given to the legal office, headed by a US colonel, Marc Warren, over two months before photographs of torture at the jail were uncovered and handed over to US army investigators.

Most of the US military police who have been charged over the abuse depicted in the photographs say they were instructed by military intelligence officers to “loosen up” detainees for interrogation and were encouraged in their behaviour.

Evidence to Senate hearings in Canberra this week confirmed that two working papers from the Red Cross spelling out its concerns about Abu Ghraib and Camp Cropper were given to Major O’Kane in November.

As a result, Major O’Kane visited Abu Ghraib on December 4 to discuss the allegations with US military police and military intelligence officers.

Until the Senate hearings, Major O’Kane’s activities had not surfaced anywhere in the US media or during lengthy evidence given to the US Senate Armed Services Committee, which has been investigating the scandal.

On May 19 General Sanchez told the committee he was unaware until February that the Red Cross working papers had been sent to his headquarters in November. He said the papers were sent to his staff legal officer, Colonel Warren, but he did not recall seeing them. Colonel Warren said the Red Cross reports were handled by his legal staff but came into the office “in a haphazard manner”.

However, Senate committee evidence from Australian military officers in Canberra this week suggests that Major O’Kane handled the Red Cross complaints more systematically…�

Any chance, you reckon, that the lot of them covered up everything about Australia�s deep involvement in investigating the abuses and replying to the Red Cross to help the American defence force cover-up?

GENERAL COSGROVE AND RIC SMITH

There is nothing on record to indicate Hill did anything to get the facts from February. He did so in April after the release of the photos. And the result, after weeks of �investigation�? A series of bare faced lies, or an utterly incompetent investigation by Cosgrove and Smith which should result in their instant dismissal. As late as Sunday, Howard claimed Australia couldn’t acess last year’s Red Cross report, when Defence already had it! For proof, read Tom Allard�s backgrounder atSearch that failed to find the answers.

These men should have demanded a sweep of all available documents. They should have taken personal charge of the investigation. They should have interviewed relevant officers. What did Cosgrove do? Remove a picture of Major O�Kane visiting Abu Ghraib, for one thing. It tells the story, doesn�t it. Wipe out evidence of the Australian connection.

Remember, this cover-up unravelled only after the Sydney Morning Herald revealed that O�Kane was involved in investigating abuses at the prison, and helped draft the response to the Red Cross last year. So cover-up 2 � last year�s Red Cross report didn�t detail the abuses. Then the Herald proved that was false. And still, Cosgrove and Smith refused to lay out the truth, for nearly TWO DAYS of questioning in Senate Estimates until they had no choice.

I reckon it was a cover up from minute one. God knows what pressure O�Kane was put under to gild the lily and cop the blame. But Robert Hill is making damn sure we don�t get to hear from O�Kane. He is banned from giving evidence.

We do know that he helped prepare a response to the Red Cross last year which denied any breaches of the Geneva Conventions and even suggested it might not apply, in defiance of public pledges by America and Australia that they did apply. The response was legal rubbish, just as the government�s �legal advice� from low level compliant public servants that invading Iraq was legal was rubbish. Funny, isn�t it, that O�Kane is being scapegoated now. Small fry, just like the little people who the Pentagon is trying so hard to scapegoat for the Abu Ghraib atrocities.

Let�s be frank. The government has never taken responsibility for its decision to invade Iraq. Pay the insurance premium to the Yanks, but cut and run quick before the hard work begins and ensure Australian hands LOOK clean when bad things happen. Support whatever the Yanks say publicly and don�t raise a word of protest behind the scenes. Of course we are complicit in the American�s cover-up of the abuses and their extent before April. Of course we are.

We�ve lost our pride, Australia. And we�ve lost our moral authority. Howard wants to APPEAR faithful to our beliefs and our ideals while tossing them in the toilet. And his courtiers � Cosgrove, Smith, Hill and the rest of them, will do whatever it takes to preserve the illusion.

***

POSTSCRIPT

Webdiarist Mark Sergeant dug up this vignette of how we want to avoid all responsibility in Iraq.

In Senate Estimates yesterday, Cosgrove explained the surprising fact that our SAS boys hadn�t taken one Iraqi prisoner, despite their frontline role even before the war was officially declared.

You know why? Because when our blokes took someone into custody, we organised it so an American pretended to do so. If we�d taken someone in, we�d be responsible to ensure they were treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. This way, we washed our hands of them.

Here�s an extract from Hansard, pages 114 and 115:

Senator CHRIS EVANS: So there is a captain or a major leading the SAS contingent�20 or so of them and one American NCO is with them. But you tell me that the legal device you have agreed with the Americans has that one American NCO legally capturing those Iraqis, and that the SAS soldiers commanded by an Australian officer have no responsibility in that regard…

Gen. Cosgrove: Exactly, and we did it knowing that, in certain circumstances, there would be a larger number of Australians and a relatively small number of US or UK personnel present. Had there not been US, UK, et cetera personnel present, and had there been a need to detain the people in question, then the agreement that Senator Brown refers to [that the detaining power is responsible] would have been activated.

Senator CHRIS EVANS: And your evidence is that, on all occasions when Australians led contingents that captured Iraqis, there was at that time an American or UK person with them who took responsibility immediately for those prisoners?

Gen. Cosgrove: That is correct – I think, in each case, US servicemen.

Senator BROWN: How was that agreement arrived at?

Gen. Cosgrove: By practice to ensure that countries like Australia, which, by their very organisation, were not set up for the holding or processing of detainees, would not have a chain of custody when we had to send them into another person�s system…

Senator BROWN: But even where Australians alone capture somebody in Iraq, isn�t it true that, under this arrangement, they hand them across to the UK or the US and abrogate responsibility as the –

Gen. Cosgrove: – No, they carry the responsibility. If you read the instruction, they are supposed to monitor the further treatment, processing, care et cetera of the detainee.

Senator BROWN On what occasions has that provision come into play?

Gen. Cosgrove: It did not come in at all… under the arrangements that we had entered into, and by the circumstances of the event, there were US personnel available and present to become the detaining power.

Senator CHRIS EVANS: Is that based on legal advice?

Gen. Cosgrove: Yes.