The rewriting of history is common place. Lawrence Freedman claims: “It is also still widely assumed that the (Blair) Labour government deliberately spread a false assessment about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to justify the war. This allegation has been disproved in every serious investigation, including that of the Iraq Inquiry.”
As far as Australia goes … Prime Minister John Howard was advised by his own Australian intelligence agency (ONA) that there was no evidence for WMDs in Iraq … read speeches to the parliament by Andrew Wilkie, the Australian intelligence analyst (for Office of National Assessments ONA) and later MP for the Tasmanian seat of Denison.
Following his resignation from ONA Wilkie said: Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction program is very disjointed and contained by the regime that’s been in place since the last Gulf War. And there is no hard intelligence linking the Iraqi regime to al-Qaeda in any substantial or worrisome way.”
Wilkie opposed Australia’s contribution to the 2003 invasion of Iraq under the Howard government.
He argued in parliament that the Iraq War was based on a “lie“.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was an offensive war where Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld under under deeply flawed neoconservatism, advocated for the use of America’s military might to pursue America’s national interests by supporting regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan. The 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Poland and a coalition of other countries was a violation of the United Nations Charter, the bedrock of international relations in the post-World War II world.
Support the Rally for Peace this year on Palm Sunday!
Ian Curr
24 Feb 2023n
Palm Sunday Rally 2023 in Meanjin
