There were no credible links between Iraq and Osama bin Laden in the September 11 terrorist outrages in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, the independent commission investigating the attacks has found.
But it has found that Pakistan, now a US ally in the war against terrorism, supported bin Laden and gave him a haven.
The commission said bin Laden met a leading Iraqi official in 1994 but it found "no credible evidence" of a link between Saddam Hussein's government and bin Laden's al-Qaeda group.
In a report based on research and interviews by the commission staff, the panel said bin Laden explored possible co-operation with Saddam, even though he opposed the Iraqi leader's secular regime.
Agence France-Presse said the report stated: "A senior Iraqi intelligence official reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting bin Laden in 1994."
It said bin Laden asked for space to establish training camps and help in securing weapons.
The report said there were also reports of contacts with Baghdad after bin Laden returned to Afghanistan "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship".
"Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties exist between al-Qaeda and Iraq," the report said. "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda co-operated on attacks against the United States."
The report also said that Pakistan broke with Afghanistan's Taliban regime only after September 11, even though it knew the Taliban was hiding bin Laden.
"The Taliban's ability to provide bin Laden a haven in the face of international pressure and UN sanctions was significantly facilitated by Pakistani support," the report said.
"Pakistan benefited from the Taliban-al-Qaeda relationship, as bin Laden's camps trained and equipped fighters for Pakistan's ongoing struggle with India over Kashmir."
The New York Times reports that the commission has found that the Pentagon's domestic air-defence command was disastrously unprepared for a big terrorist attack on US soil and was slow and confused in its response to the hijackings, according to officials who have read a draft of the commission's findings.
They said the draft, which has been circulated in recent days among commission members and at the Pentagon in preparation for public release today, summarises the response of the military, the Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies with this passage: "On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen. What ensued was a hurried attempt to create an improvised defence by officials who had never encountered or trained against the situation they faced."
The report, they said, suggests that a more organised response by the North American Aerospace Defence Command might have allowed fighter pilots to shoot down American Flight 11 before it plummeted into the Pentagon complex.
Instead, the report finds, an emergency order from the Vice- President, Dick Cheney, authorising the hijacked planes to be shot down did not reach pilots until after the last of the four commandeered jets had crashed into a field in western Pennsylvania.
US general told to treat Iraq prisoners 'like dogs'
Tuesday, the 15th of June 2004
The United States general in charge of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was told by a military intelligence commander that detainees should be treated like dogs.
General Janis Karpinski, who was responsible for the military police who ran prisons in Iraq when pictures were taken showing prisoners being abused, said she and her soldiers were being made scapegoats for abuse ordered by others.
In the interview with BBC radio, Gen Karpinski said Gen Geoffrey Miller, who was sent to Iraq from the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, had ordered new procedures in cell blocs where Iraqis were interrogated.
"He said, at Guantanamo Bay we've learned that the prisoners have to earn every single thing they have," Gen Karpinski said.
"He said they are like dogs and if you allow them to believe at any point they are more than a dog then you've lost control of them."
The United States has charged low-ranking military police officers commanded by Gen Karpinski with abuse after several of them appeared in photographs abusing detainees.
The photographs and other reports of abuse have led to hearings in the US Congress and fuelled international outrage.
Gen Karpinski, who has been suspended from her command for failings at Abu Ghraib but not charged with any crime, said military police would not have taken Iraqis out of their cells to pose them for photographs without being told to do so.
"I was absolutely sickened by those images and I couldn't even fathom a guess as to what happened to these people to make them go so far away from what they had been trained to do.
"I will say I know my military police personnel ... well enough to know they believed they were following instructions from a person authorised to give them instructions," she said.
"We don't know yet who the individuals were that convinced them that what they were doing was to enhance the effort overall to find Saddam."
Gen Karpinski said Gen Miller told her he planned to "Gitmo-ize" the treatment of detainees, using a colloquial term for Guantanamo.
"He said every time we remove them from a cell (at Guantanamo) there's two MPs (military police) that accompany them. They have ankle chains on, they have wrist chains on and they have a belly chain on," she said.
"That was the first time I said to Gen Miller, 'Sir, your conditions at Guantanamo Bay are different from our conditions here in Baghdad and throughout Iraq.' You have 800 MPs to guard 640 detainees. We have 1,300 MPs to guard almost 14,000 detainees."
Asked if she was "out of the loop" she said: "I was in my own loop. I was not in the loop that General Miller was creating.
"The intelligence operation was directed. It was under a separate command and there was no reason for me to go out to look at Abu Ghraib at cell bloc 1a or 1b or visit the interrogation facilities."
Pentagon finds Bush not bound by torture laws: report
Monday, the 7th of June 2004
A Pentagon report has concluded President George W Bush was not bound by laws prohibiting torture and United States agents who might torture prisoners at his direction could not be prosecuted by the Justice Department, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
The findings were part of a classified report on interrogation methods prepared for Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by top civilian and uniformed military lawyers who also consulted with other agencies, the newspaper said.
The report was compiled after commanders at Guantanamo Bay, complained in late 2002 that they were not getting enough information from prisoners through conventional methods, according to the WSJ.
The document outlined US laws and international treaties forbidding torture, and why those restrictions might be overcome by considerations for national security or legal technicalities.
The WSJ said it reviewed a March 6, 2003, draft of the report.
The draft argues that because nothing is more important than "obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens," normal strictures on torture might not apply".
The report contended the President has the authority as commander-in-chief to approve almost any physical or psychological actions during interrogation, up to and including torture.
It is not known if President Bush has ever seen the report, the newspaper said.
The Bush administration has said it supports the Geneva Conventions and humane treatment for detainees.
According to the newspaper, a Pentagon official said some military lawyers objected to some of the proposed interrogation methods but that they ultimately signed on to the final report in April 2003, shortly after the war in Iraq began.
The newspaper said it had not seen the full final report, but that people familiar with it say there were few substantial changes in legal analysis between the draft and final versions.
Hicks and Habib told Australian officials of US abuse, Senate hears
By Cynthia Banham, and Louise Dodson in Washington
The 4th of June 2004
One of the Australians being held at Guantanamo Bay, Mamdouh Habib, complained to consular officials last year that his detention was "torture", foreign affairs officials admitted yesterday.
The second Australian, alleged Taliban fighter David Hicks, told ASIO officers in May last year he had been beaten in late 2001 when he was taken into custody in Afghanistan.
The revelations were made at a Senate estimates hearing in Canberra yesterday at which foreign affairs officials said the US had launched a formal investigation into the treatment of Mr Hicks and Mr Habib while in US custody. Until now, government ministers have downplayed allegations that they were mistreated, insisting the claims were only made by their lawyers after the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal erupted in April. Mr Habib's complaints were made in November 2003 during a visit by Australian consular officials.
A spokesman for the Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, said Mr Hicks's allegations were raised by ASIO for the first time only "a couple of weeks ago" after he asked for "a full review of what was on the department's files".
Mr Ruddock's spokesman said Mr Hicks's complaint was followed up with the Americans but because there was so little information it "did not go anywhere".
When Mr Habib was asked to elaborate on what he meant by torture, the foreign affairs officials said, he had referred to flu and TB vaccinations he had been given and air conditioning which was too cold. Ian Kemish, a foreign affairs official, said Mr Habib also "complained about being mocked on arrival in Guantanamo Bay".
He said Mr Hicks described his treatment at Guantanamo Bay as "fair and professional", saying he had been "grateful to Australian officials for their interest in his welfare". Mr Hicks and Mr Habib have been held in US custody without charge for more than two years.
Sources believe the laying of US charges against Mr Hicks is expected to coincide with the visit by the Prime Minister, John Howard, to Washington.
Just before his meeting with the US President, George Bush, at the White House last night, Mr Howard said he wanted Mr Hicks and Mr Habib brought to trial.
Mr Howard also said he would press Mr Bush for an answer to allegations that the two men were assaulted while in captivity.
Mr Hicks's Australian lawyer and his father, Terry, have called for an inquiry into claims the two were mistreated while in US custody.
Washington: United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally approved four special interrogation techniques used on two al-Qaeda operatives held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who then talked about the terrorist network and its plans, the commander of US forces in Latin America said today.
Army General James Hill, who heads the US Southern Command, declined to describe the techniques. He said other detainees might "figure out a way to resist those techniques" if they were disclosed.
But Hill specifically denied that police dogs have been used to intimidate detainees during interrogations at Guantanamo, contrary to a sworn statement by an Army intelligence officer under investigation in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq.
In the statement, as reported May 26 by The Washington Post, Col. Thomas Pappas, commander at Abu Ghraib when abuses of detainees occurred, said the use of dogs was urged by Major General Geoffrey Miller in a 2003 visit to Iraq.
Miller, who was then the commandant at Guantanamo Bay and has since been put in charge of Abu Ghraib, has denied the allegation through a spokesman.
Hill said a dog on a leash had once been used at Guantanamo to intimidate a detainee into giving up a jagged piece of metal that could have been used as a weapon. But "dogs have never been used at Guantanamo for interrogation purposes. Period," he said.
"What works with interrogation is rapport between the interrogation team and the guy that they're interrogating," he said. "Harshness - any kind of beating, or clearly what you saw in the incredibly obscene pictures from Abu Ghraib - that doesn't work."
Rumsfeld approved the special interrogation techniques after lengthy study by an inter-agency committee of a longer list of possible methods submitted by Hill's staff, Hill said.
The secretary okayed fewer techniques than suggested and requires Hill to inform him a week in advance any time he plans to use them. Hill said he had only done so twice.
Hill described one of the two captives on whom the techniques have been used as "a very high-value target detainee at Guantanamo that had direct knowledge and linkage to 9/11."
This detainee - identified previously by Pentagon officials as Mohamed al-Qahtani of Saudi Arabia, believed to have been involved in the September 11 plot - "had been trained in resistance techniques and was using them" in interrogations, Hill said.
After the methods were used on him, the general said, "He gave us some pretty good stuff and continues to do so."
Hill said the second detainee on whom the techniques were used was an "al-Qaeda operative of high intel value" who also has provided "good information" in interrogations.
Detention facilities at the US military base at Guantanamo hold people suspected of belonging to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Missing New Zealander in Iraq was in US custody: report
Tuesday the 25th of May 2004
A New Zealander whom authorities here feared had gone missing in Iraq was held incommunicado in United States Army custody for three months of interrogations, the New Zealand Herald says.
Software developer Andreas Schafer, 26, vanished in March, sparking high-level inquiries by New Zealand with US authorities that repeatedly denied knowledge of him.
The Herald says it has contacted Mr Schafer in Amman, Jordan, where he said Iraqi police in Diwaniya, south of Baghdad, had initially detained him in early March and they handed him to the United States.
"I was then held for nearly three months and interrogated by the US Army on several occasions," he told the Herald in an email.
"Each time they questioned me they said it was the first they had heard I was being detained and that the investigation was starting from the beginning."
The report added that Mr Schafer was released a week after the British Consul got involved.
Mr Schafer had been working on software in Afghanistan for non-government organisations and had decided to go to Iraq early this year to continue the same work.
The US embassy in New Zealand, which had denied knowledge of Mr Schafer, has not commented on the latest report.
A former detainee at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba says American guards tortured Australian man, Mamdouh Habib.
British citizen Tarek Degoul was released from the military prison earlier this year and says Mr Habib was punched and kicked, photographed naked and filmed by US guards.
There have also been reports today that Australia's David Hicks was tied up and beaten, when he was in the hands of the US military in Afghanistan.
Mr Habib's wife says her husband has not written to his family because interrogators told him his wife and children were dead.
Mr Degoul told Channel Seven he arrived in Guantanamo Bay the same day as Mr Habib.
"I could see him being dragged by chains that were attached to his feet and him screaming from agony," he said.
"From beginning to end it was pure humiliation."
Mr Habib's lawyer Stephen Hopper says the British man saw the abuse from his cell.
"He clearly saw what was going on," he said.
"He saw five people go into the prison cell, spray Mr Habib with mace, use their hands and fists, and kick and punch him.
"Then drag him out by chains that were around his feet out of the cell and down the corridor until he lost site of him."
The alleged Australian Taliban fighter David Hicks received a prolonged beating from US military personnel during an interrogation soon after his capture in Afghanistan.
Accounts given to the Herald by several sources reveal that Mr Hicks was beaten extensively during at least one interrogation, and was shackled and denied sleep for long periods.
His lawyer, Stephen Kenny, gave no details of the abuse but said it was sanctioned by higher authorities and "not just the work of individual guards".
The revelations raise new questions about the length and extent of US maltreatment of prisoners and what the Australian Government knew about them.
Transcripts of the Hicks interrogation were taken and it is believed there is also video and photographic documentation. Mr Hicks was captured by Northern Alliance fighters, who also beat him, the Herald has been told. He was then handed to the US.
Mr Hicks spent time on US Navy warships, where interrogations took place.
Australian troops were in Afghanistan at the time, including at the Bagram airbase, north of Kabul, where Mr Hicks stayed before being sent to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He has been detained there as an "unlawful combatant" for more than two years without charge.
The Australian Defence Force "wasn't involved in the incarceration or interrogation of detainees", a spokesman said last night, but was unable to answer questions from the Herald posed 10 days ago about whether its forces were aware of US abuses of prisoners and any mistreatment of Mr Hicks.
Mr Kenny said there had been no allegations that Australians participated in the violent interrogations that "breached the Geneva convention" but that Mr Hicks had been "mistreated" by US forces soon after his capture in late 2001.
"Circumstances surrounding it indicated to me that there was a high level of involvement by officers and commanders," Mr Kenny said. He said he was unable to comment on the nature of the alleged abuses because of a gag imposed by the US.
Australian intelligence authorities interviewed Mr Hicks in Bagram but the transcripts have not been made available to Mr Kenny for "national security reasons". Nor have transcripts or any video or photographs from the interrogations been made available by the US military.
Australia has accepted US assurances that Mr Hicks and another Australian at Guantanamo Bay, Mamdouh Habib, have been treated in accordance with international law. "We'll look at any new allegations," a spokesman for the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said. "The problem is that the lawyers of Hicks and Habib weren't saying this before, not until the incidents [of abuse of prisoners] in Iraq."
The US and Australian governments believe that Mr Hicks had close links to terrorists. His family and lawyer deny this and portray the former Adelaide man as an adventurer and devout Muslim who was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Well before the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq rocked the US, allegations of deaths and abuse at Bagram came to light, resulting in charges being laid.
The International Committee of the Red Cross wrote a report on the treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan. It was sent to the White House but not to Australia, Mr Downer's spokesman said.
The former US ambassador to Israel claims the United States picked the wrong target when searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Former ambassador Martin Indyk has told Four Corners that Pakistan's nuclear black market would have been a better choice of US-led efforts against terrorism.
In February, Pakistani scientist Dr AQ Khan confessed to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. "We went to war in Iraq ostensibly to take care of the threat of state-sponsors of terrorism giving their weapons of mass destruction to terrorist organisations, what it looks like we really should be concerned about is these kinds of informal networks of scientists with access to nuclear material," he said.
Mr Indyk says the US was prepared to let Dr Khan off lightly because it needed Pakistan's cooperation in its campaign against terrorism.
The claims will be aired on the ABC's Four Corners program tonight.
Private commandos shoot back on the Iraq firing line
The 18th of April 2004
Ex-military commandos armed with M4 rifles are fighting insurgents in Iraq as part of a private contracting force, many of them hired by the US-led coalition, raising some deep concerns.
About 15,000 personnel from private military firms (PMFs) were operating in Iraq, making them more numerous that even the biggest US ally, Britain, estimated Peter Singer, author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. At least 30 to 50 had been killed in action, he wrote in a report for the Internet news magazine Salon.com.
Among the companies, Mr Singer said, Erinys was charged with guarding Iraqi oil fields, while Northrop Grumman subsidiary Vinnell, MPRI and Nour USA had been training and equipping the new Iraq army. "It is more a coalition of the billing than of the willing," Mr Singer said. Since the personnel were not army, lawmakers and the American people were largely unaware of the scale of the private companies' role, he said.
That role was shockingly highlighted when insurgents ambushed four Blackwater USA employees on March 31 in the flashpoint town of Fallujah. Bodies were shown to millions on television being pulled out of a burning vehicle, hacked by angry Iraqis, dragged behind a car and strung up on a bridge.
"The graphic images of the unprovoked attack and subsequent heinous mistreatment of our friends exhibits the extraordinary conditions under which we voluntarily work to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people," said a statement by Blackwater. A company spokesman, Chris Bertelli, said the group had 450 people in Iraq, most armed with the 5.56 mm M4 rifle. Employees there - many ex Navy SEALs or Army Rangers - were restricted to rifles of a calibre up to 7.62 mm. "Almost all of them are weapon-carrying," Mr Bertelli said.
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Through KBR, Halliburton has a huge contract to support the army with everything from catering to construction, and a separate contract to help rebuild the oil industry. The company, once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, was named this week in a purported statement by Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
"We must take into consideration that this war brings billions of dollars in profit to the major companies, whether it be those that produce weapons or those that contribute to reconstruction, such as the Halliburton Company, its sisters and daughters," the statement said, according to the BBC Caversham monitoring service. "Based on this, it is very clear who is the one benefiting from igniting this war and from the shedding of blood. It is the warlords, the bloodsuckers, who are steering the world policy from behind a curtain."
Thirteen of the most powerful US opposition senators have asked Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to explain the role of civilian contractors in Iraq. A letter from the politicians follows the killing and mutilation of four US security contractors in Fallujah on March 31.
In the letter to Mr Rumsfeld dated April 8, but released on Friday, the senators expressed concern about "private armies operating outside the control of governmental authority". The letter - signed by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, former first lady Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts - also questioned if there were adequate numbers of US troops in Iraq. "The shocking deaths of four American security contractors in Fallujah have revealed the growing role that private security contractors are playing in Iraq," the letter read.
It said contractors, often former soldiers, operate in a fashion similar to special forces, but they are not under US military control and not subject to rules governing the conduct of American forces. "It would be a dangerous precedent if the United States allowed the presence of private armies operating outside the control of governmental authority and beholden only to those who pay them," the letter said. "In the context of Iraq, unless these forces are properly screened by United States authorities and are required to operate under clear guidelines and appropriate supervision, their presence will contribute to Iraqi resentment." It said that such delegating raised "serious questions."
"The presence and number of these private security personnel again raise the question of the adequacy of United States troop levels in Iraq," it stated. It closed by requesting a full tally of the number of privately armed non-Iraqi security personnel operating in Iraq, and urged Mr Rumsfeld to adopt written guidelines for their use.
US violates human rights at Guantanamo: Spanish judge
Saturday the 3rd of April 2004
The US military prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, violates the human rights of the nearly 600 prisoners detained there who have no access to lawyers, leading Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon said on Friday.
"None of the fundamental human rights that the prisoners should have is respected," said the judge whose extradition request kept Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet under house arrest in London for 503 days. "These persons must be placed at the disposal of civilian judges immediately," he said during a lecture given at the invitation of Costa Rica's Supreme Court. The United States calls the Guantanamo detainees "illegal combatants" suspected of fighting for Al Qaeda or the Taliban.
Mr Garzon also criticised the US reaction after September 11, 2001, which was to pass repressive anti-terror legislation. "It restricts fundamental freedoms in the broadest sense, contrary to the US tradition."
The United States "has gone overboard, become intolerant and deprived people of their fundamental liberties," he said.
The police and judicial systems are critical to the battle against terrorism, he said, but they cannot use the same weapons as terrorists.
A top defence analyst has told a parliamentary hearing that Australia is starting to look like the United States's ally that cannot say no. Former Defence Department deputy Paul Dibb was giving evidence to the Canberra hearing and believes the alliance with the United States is at a crucial turning point.
Professor Dibb says the 50-year-old alliance is essential for Australia's intelligence capability, purchasing weapons and military logistics. However, he says leading Australians are starting to question whether a new balance in the alliance has to be struck as the US has become more demanding. "The alliance has become much more demanding. I think in some ways we've now caught the tiger by the tail," he said. "The questions I'd like to discuss more carefully 'in camera' is under what conditions might we have to say no to the United States and what that might mean for the alliance relationship."
Three Britons released from the Guantanamo Bay detention centre say they were regularly beaten while in US custody, backing similar allegations by two other British detainees.
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Despite their lengthy detention and although four of the men were briefly held by British police when they returned, none has been charged with any crimes.
A Briton flown home from US captivity in Guantanamo Bay says conditions were so inhuman that animals in the prison camp were given better treatment than the detainees, the Daily Mirror newspaper reported on Friday.
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"After a while, we stopped asking for human rights, we wanted animal rights. "In Camp X-Ray my cage was right next to a kennel housing an Alsatian dog ... he had a wooden house with air conditioning and green grass to exercise on. "I said to the guards, 'I want his rights' and they replied, 'That dog is a member of the US Army'."
Held in captivity for two years, Mr Harith also said he was assaulted with fists, feet, knees and batons after refusing a mystery injection.
The former chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has called on Australia to be more independent from the US when deciding "questions of war and peace".
Dr Blix, in a rare foray into national politics, said it was only right that the Prime Minister, John Howard, had been "paying some price" for supporting the US invasion of Iraq, though he accepted it was difficult for Canberra to stand up to Washington.
In an interview with the Herald to mark the publication of his memoirs, Dr Blix said: "It may not be easy to be independent vis-a-vis the US because they are so tremendously powerful, but [Australia] ought to be."
He said it would be entirely "improper" for any country to bow to US pressure on an issue of war on the basis of gaining favourable treatment or assistance in some other area. "The US might well go to some small country and say, 'Look, you don't have [an] interest in Iraq, but you have one big interest in the world and that is to be friendly to us, so are you going to vote for your interest or not?' "
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Dr Blix said that, despite Australia's interest in a close relationship with the US, it had a greater responsibility to the world when judging whether a country would be subjected to war.
While he accepted that Mr Howard, like the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had not acted in bad faith, it was obvious he had preferred to listen to misleading and flawed intelligence reports rather than what UN inspectors were saying.
Much of the intelligence supplied to Western leaders had been based on information supplied by Iraqi defectors who "often come up with things interrogators want to hear" or satellite images subsequently shown to have "weaknesses".
The Pentagon has published detailed proposals for assessing whether to release suspects being held by the United States in Guantanamo Bay prison camps.
Under the proposals, each detainee will be able to present their case for release once a year to a review panel made up of three military officers.
The prisoner's family and government may also provide information to help the panel reach its decision, but the detainee will have no access to a lawyer.
Human rights groups have criticised the plan.
Amnesty International said a review board may be suitable for adjudicating a contested parking ticket but is not acceptable for deciding the fate of men being held for years without charge or trial.
Australia's alliance with the US would have weakened "very substantially" if the Government refused to go to war against Iraq, the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said yesterday.
The claim came as new questions were raised about the legality of the Iraq war following the findings handed down by the parliamentary intelligence committee on Monday.
Talking of the weight the Government placed on the strength of the alliance when deciding the merits of the war, Mr Downer said Australia could ill-afford any fracture in relations with the global superpower.
"It wasn't a time in our history to have a great and historic breach with the United States," Mr Downer said yesterday. "If we were to walk away from the American alliance it would leave us as a country very vulnerable and very open, particularly given the environment we have with terrorism in South-East Asia, the North Korean issue." Mr Downer said the Government believed the threat posed by Saddam Hussein justified war at any rate but added that the strength of the US alliance was a big consideration.
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The parliamentary report on prewar intelligence published on Monday found that the Federal Government went beyond the advice of Australia's spy agencies when it described the Iraqi threat as "grave and gathering".
While the Government did not manipulate or embellish its intelligence, it chose to use US and British intelligence views on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at the expense of its own agencies, the bipartisan report found.
Moreover, the report said, the legal case for war was "only sanctioned under international law when the danger is immediate" and the "existence of programs alone does not meet that threshold".
Officials in Washington have confirmed that detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba might be kept there for security reasons even if they are acquitted by military tribunals.
If found guilty, the detainees could be held beyond any sentence laid down by the tribunals.
Three human rights groups say the Pentagon has denied their request to observe upcoming military tribunal trials of foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First sought to send representatives to observe the trials but the Pentagon responded that it planned to provide courtroom seating only for certain journalists and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Opium output hit a record high in Afghanistan in 2003, with another increase expected this year in the war-torn country that does not have any other real exports, a conference was told on Sunday.
Two years after the ruling Taliban were ousted from power by a US-led coalition, opium production has skyrocketed as farmers crank up output, threatening efforts to strengthen the government and establish a proper economy.
The Taliban outlawed opium cultivation and had almost stamped out the practise.
Afghan output now accounts for two-thirds of world opium production and officials have voiced concern because it is spreading to areas in the country where it has not been grown before.
"The conference is looking at income alternatives, demand reduction and law enforcement," said Adam Bouloukos, deputy representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
UNODC has estimated that the output could be worth $US2.3 billion, compared to Afghanistan's official exports of $US40 million to its neighbour Pakistan.
It estimates that Afghan opium production last year hit 3,600 tons, up six per cent over the previous year, and said that surveys of farmers show a further increase is likely this year.
The United States intelligence services did not fail on Iraq - it was the Administration that failed, writes Sidney Blumenthal.
Before he departed on his quest for Saddam Hussein's fabled weapons of mass destruction last June, David Kay, chief of the Iraq Survey Group, told friends that he expected promptly to find the cause of the pre-emptive war. But on January 28, Kay appeared before the US Senate to testify that there were no WMDs. "It turns out that we were all wrong," he said. President Bush, he added helpfully, was misinformed by the whole intelligence community which, like Kay, made assumptions that turned out to be false.
Within days, Bush declared that he would, after all, appoint a commission to investigate. Kay's testimony was the catalyst for this U-turn, but only one of his claims is correct: that he was wrong. The truth is that much of the intelligence community did not fail, but presented correct assessments and warnings, that were overridden and suppressed.
On virtually every single important claim made by the Bush Administration in its case for war, there was serious dissension. Discordant views - not from individual analysts but from several intelligence agencies as a whole - were kept from the public as momentum was built for a congressional vote on the war resolution.
Precisely because of the qualms the Administration encountered, it created a rogue intelligence operation, the Office of Special Plans, located within the Pentagon and under the control of neo-conservatives. The OSP roamed outside the ordinary process, stamping its approval on stories from Iraqi exiles that the other agencies dismissed as lacking credibility, and feeding them to the President.
At the same time, constant pressure was applied to the intelligence agencies to force their compliance. In one case, a senior officer who refused to buckle under was removed.
Bruce Hardcastle was a senior officer for the Middle East for the Defence Intelligence Agency. When Bush insisted that Saddam was actively and urgently engaged in a nuclear weapons program and had renewed production of chemical weapons, the DIA reported otherwise. According to Patrick Lang, the former head of human intelligence at the CIA, Hardcastle "told (the Bush Administration) that the way they were handling evidence was wrong". The response was not simply to remove Hardcastle: "They did away with his job," Lang says. "They wanted only liaison officers... not a senior intelligence person who argued with them."
When the US State Department's bureau of intelligence and research (INR) submitted reports which did not support the Administration's case - saying, for example, that the aluminium tubes Saddam possessed were for conventional rockets, not nuclear weapons, or that mobile laboratories were not for WMDs, or that the story about Saddam seeking uranium in Niger was bogus, or that there was no link between Saddam and al-Qaeda - its analyses were shunted aside. Greg Thielman, chief of the INR at the time, told me: "Everyone in the intelligence community knew that the White House couldn't care less about any information suggesting that there were no WMDs or that the UN inspectors were very effective."
When the CIA debunked the tales about Niger uranium and the Saddam/al-Qaeda connection, its reports were ignored and direct pressure applied. In October 2002, the White House inserted mention of the uranium into a speech Bush was to deliver, but the CIA objected and it was excised. Three months later, it reappeared in his state of the union address.
Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, is the author of The Clinton Wars.
The United States Government has released three children who had been held at its military prison in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, for more than a year.
The Pentagon says the three boys, aged from 13 to 15, have been flown to their home country, which was not named.
Steven Watts, a lawyer from the Centre for Constitutional Rights, in New York, which has been acting to enforce the detainees' legal rights, says it is understood there is still one child in detention at Guantanamo, which is a breach of America's international obligations towards children.
"First obligations stem from the United States ratification of a treaty under the Convention for Rights of the Child, and under that convention they have an obligation to immediately release, rehabilitate and reintegrate children caught up in the course of armed conflict," he said.
Mr Watts also says there are detainees in Guantanamo as old as 70.
Dr David Kay has stepped down as leader of the US hunt for banned weapons in Iraq and says he does not believe the country had any large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons.
In a direct challenge to the Bush administration, which says its invasion of Iraq was justified by the presence of illicit arms, Dr Kay has told Reuters he had concluded there were no Iraqi stockpiles to be found.
Prime Minister John Howard and British PM Tony Blair joined US President George W Bush in ordering the war to oust Saddam Hussein on grounds Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to world peace.
Bush wanted Iraqi invasion pre-Sept 11: Ex-treasury secretary
Sunday the 11th of January 2004
Former US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill says in a new book that President George W Bush entered office in January 2001 intent on invading Iraq and was in search of a way to go about it.
Mr O'Neill, fired in December 2002 as part of a shake-up of Mr Bush's economic team, has become the first major insider of the Bush administration to launch an attack on the President.
He likened Mr Bush at Cabinet meetings to "a blind man in a room full of deaf people," he said in excerpts from a CBS interview to promote a book by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty.
To go to war, Mr Bush used the argument that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had to be stopped in the post-September 11 world. The weapons have never been found.
"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," Mr O'Neill said in the CBS 60 Minutes program interview scheduled to be aired on Sunday.
"For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the US has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap," Mr O'Neill said.
CBS released excerpts from the interview on Friday and Saturday. The former treasury secretary and other White House insiders gave Mr Suskind documents that in the first three months of 2001 revealed the Bush administration was examining military options for removing Saddam Hussein, CBS said.
"There are memos, one of them marked 'secret' says 'Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq'," Mr Suskind told CBS.
Another Pentagon document entitled "Foreign suitors for Iraqi Oil Field Contracts" talks about contractors from 40 countries and which ones have interest in Iraq, Mr Suskind said.
Mr O'Neill was also quoted in the book as saying the President was determined to find a reason to go to war and he was surprised nobody on the National Security Council questioned why Iraq should be invaded.
"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it," Mr O'Neill said.
"The President saying 'go find me a way to do this'."
US Secretary of State Colin Powell has defended the case made by the Bush Administration for war in Iraq after the publication of a damning new report. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a non-partisan think tank, has examined a range of evidence and says it is clear Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD) after the mid-1990s, nor did it pose an immediate threat to international security.
Mr Powell says he stands by the speech he gave to the United Nations last year, laying out America's case against Iraq. "It said that there was that capability within Iraq and they were doing these kinds of things, and they [Carnegie] believe that we perhaps overstated it, but they [Carnegie] did not say it wasn't there," Mr Powell said.
The report's authors say the Bush Administration systematically exaggerated the evidence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. One of the authors of the Carnegie Endowment report says Bush Administration officials most likely pushed intelligence agencies to find evidence to back their view that Iraq presented a danger.
The report finds United Nations inspections had worked far better than realised and that the US intelligence process failed. It says the evidence shows Iraq had dismantled its weapons of mass destruction program by the mid-90s and that the US Government misrepresented the level of threat Iraq posed.
The Carnegie Endowment relied on declassified intelligence reports and material from the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in reaching its conclusions.
From the political point of view, this year was dominated by the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, in which Australia was intimately involved. Almost everything about this invasion was unsettling and strange.
The Anglophone democracies invaded Iraq on the legal basis of certain United Nations Security Council resolutions, despite the fact the Security Council was opposed to the invasion. The invasion was mounted in order to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction, which now appear not to exist. When the weapons could not be found, the occupying powers began to argue that their non-discovery was of no great consequence as the real purpose of the invasion had been to remove a monstrous tyrant from power.
Last year, the United States had revolutionised international law by arguing that preventive wars could justly be waged against "rogue states" possessing weapons of mass destruction. This year, when a rogue state was invaded but no WMDs were found, international law was revolutionised a second time, with the claim that the US and its allies had the right to go to war not in self-defence and as a last resort but to rid the world of tyrants and to introduce democracy.
This year, the Americans began acting in the international arena in whatever way they pleased. As Owen Harries pointed out in his excellent Boyer Lectures, it is in a genuinely new era, of US hegemony, that we must now learn to live.
While it proved relatively easy to remove Saddam Hussein, to introduce even the foundations of democracy proved a considerably more difficult task. With the abolition of the Iraqi army and police force, law and order simply broke down. Largely because of robbery, rape and murder, 94 per cent of Iraqis surveyed said they now felt less secure than they had under the gruesome regime of Saddam.
Iraq had no democratic traditions on which to draw. In addition, it was divided between secular and religious segments of society; between Sunni and Shia branches of Islam; between an Arab majority and a long-repressed Kurdish minority.
There is no form of government more difficult to create than a federal system of democracy for a people divided on religious and ethnic lines. Yet impoverished and occupied Iraq is now expected to succeed in such an impossible task.
By the end of this year what was always obvious to common sense became clear, namely that the plan to create a model Western-style democracy in Iraq was little more than a fantasy of the neo-conservative imagination.
Next year it seems likely that the US will begin to withdraw troops prematurely from Iraq in order to help the re-election of President George Bush. If the Iraqis are lucky, a relatively benevolent dictatorship, most likely led by a Shia strongman, might emerge. If they are unlucky, Iraq will begin to descend into disorder of a fearsome kind.
From the Australian perspective, one of the most intriguing questions of 2003 is why the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq caused so many political headaches for Tony Blair and even George Bush but left John Howard untouched.
One obvious explanation is the lack of Australian casualties. Another is the success of Howard's hints that the intelligence deceptions on which the war was based were the entire responsibility of our great and powerful friends. Yet another is the present supineness of parts of the Australian media, with the successful intimidation of the ABC and the Murdoch stranglehold over the tabloid press.
Most important, however, is the fact that for the greater part of this year, Australia remained a country without an effective Opposition.
Towards the end of the year, this finally changed. Mark Latham is probably the most right-wing leader the ALP has ever had. On economic questions he is a low tax, neo-liberal. On political questions he has shown consistent contempt for the values of the inner suburban, chardonnay socialist set. Yet to the Howard Government Latham might prove a genuine threat.
Because of his youth and vibrancy, Latham has made the Prime Minister, quite suddenly, seem old. He has the ability to interest ordinary Australians, in a way Simon Crean never had. Latham's larrikinism and his bad language amuses people; it will probably be forgiven if he can convince them he has consigned these habits to the past. After two years no one knew what Crean stood for. Already, because of his self-dramatising capacity, everyone knows that Latham hopes to provide opportunities for less affluent Australians. As the next election is likely to be decided in the poorer outer suburban or country town electorates where Hansonism was once strong, the prospect of a Latham Labor government in 2004 is slim but real.
For me, this year has been overshadowed by the continuing, cruel and completely purposeless Howard Government treatment of the 10,000 or so unfortunate human beings who, between 1999 and 2001, sought refuge in Australia from the tyrannies of Saddam Hussein or the Taliban or from the Iranian theocratic state.
A little under 9000 of these people, found to be genuine refugees, are being asked to prove for a second time their protection needs. If they fail, most face deportation to the chaos and the danger of post-invasion Afghanistan or Iraq.
Hundreds of those whose asylum claims, for one reason or another, originally failed, but who are too frightened to return to their homelands, have now been languishing in Australia's detention prisons for several years. A further 300 or so asylum seekers have spent the past two years in hell, imprisoned in the tropical detention camp on Nauru. Among the detainees in Australia and Nauru are more than 200 children, whose lives have slowly been destroyed.
The mercilessness of the Howard Government policy has been revealed by two brutally frank judicial comments in recent weeks. In the High Court, the Solicitor-General, David Bennett QC, pointed out that there was no reason in law why asylum seekers might not be detained "until hell freezes over", that is to say, for the remainder of their lives. In the same court, Justice McHugh pointed out that there was no legal impediment to the repatriation of asylum seekers, even to certain death.
In Australian history the disconnectedness between law and justice has rarely been stated with such little embarrassment.
Of all Western societies, Australia is now almost alone in having no asylum claims from unauthorised arrivals. Since Tampa, there has been, quite simply, no asylum seeker "problem" here. By offering permanent homes to refugees on temporary visas and to those presently indefinitely detained in Australia or on Nauru, absolutely nothing would be lost - but 10,000 lives would be redeemed. Surely for 2004 this is not too extravagant a hope.
Saddam held by Kurds, drugged and left for US troops: report
Sunday the 21st of December 2003
Saddam Hussein was captured by US troops only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for American soldiers to recover him, a British tabloid newspaper has reported.
Saddam came into the hands of the Kurdish Patriotic Front after being betrayed to the group by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam's son Uday, leading to a blood feud, reported the Sunday Express, which quoted an unnamed senior British military intelligence officer.
US orders RAAF planes to spy on Iran without Australian approval
By Brian Toohey
21st of December 2003 Australian Orion aircraft have followed US military orders to spy on Iran without first getting approval from Defence Minister Robert Hill.
The Government has announced that two specially equipped RAAF Orion P3C planes are flying surveillance missions over Iraq. However, The Sun-Herald has learned that the planes were diverted by US military commanders earlier this year to gather electronic intelligence on Iran.
According to Canberra sources, Senator Hill was angered by the RAAF's agreement to fly the mission against Iran without clearing such a sensitive decision with him first.
The Government has stressed that all Australian military units deployed in Iraq and the war against terrorism must always remain under Australian command. Senator Hill declined to answer specific questions from The Sun-Herald about the controversial decision, which would normally require prior ministerial approval.
In this case, the deployment of the Orions against Iran went well beyond standard surveillance operations against Iraq or possible terrorist movements in the Persian Gulf.
A senior defence source said "Hill was entitled to be consulted from the start on such a politically delicate decision even if he was expected to eventually agree. I don't know what went wrong."
The Government is keen to maintain a good working relationship with Iran for commercial and immigration reasons.
In a stinging rebuke of the Bush Government, a United States appeals court has ruled the US cannot imprison "enemy combatants" captured in Afghanistan indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay and deny them access to lawyers.
"The Government's position is inconsistent with fundamental tenets of American jurisprudence and raises most serious concerns under international law," judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in the decision.
"We simply cannot accept the Government's position that the Executive Branch possesses the unchecked authority to imprison indefinitely any persons, foreign citizens included, on territory under the sole jurisdiction and control of the United States, without permitting such prisoners recourse of any kind to any judicial forum, or even access [to] counsel."
One of the San Francisco judges writes that it is the duty of courts to prevent the Executive branch from "running roughshod over the rights of citizens and aliens alike, especially in times of national emergency".
Only two of the 600 prisoners at Guantanamo have so far been granted access to a lawyer. The first was Australian David Hicks.
The Pentagon overnight assigned a military defence lawyer to a second detainee, Yemeni national Salim Ahmed Hamdan. Like Mr Hicks, he has not yet been charged with anything.
Judge blasts US for 'monstrous failure of justice'
26th of November 2003
One of Britain's most senior judges today condemned the US for its "monstrous failure of justice" in holding prisoners at the US base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Law Lord Johan Steyn will say in a speech in London, released to Channel 4 news, that the prisoners are being held illegally.
"The purpose of holding the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay was and is to put them beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts, and at the mercy of victors," Steyn will say.
.......
Their treatment has appalled human rights groups who believe the prisoners will be deprived of a fair trial.
"The procedural rules do not prohibit the use of force to coerce prisoners to confess," Steyn's speech said.
"The blanket presidential order deprives them all of any rights whatsoever. As a lawyer brought up to admire the ideals of American democracy and justice, I would have to say that I regard this as a monstrous failure of justice."
Israel has modified United States-supplied cruise missiles to carry nuclear warheads on submarines, giving the Middle East's only nuclear power the ability to launch atomic weapons from land, air and under the sea.
Bush Administration and Israeli officials say the move bolsters Israel's deterrence capacity in the event that Iran develops nuclear weapons.
Guantanamo creating mental health problems: Red Cross
Saturday the 11th of October 2003
The International Committee of the Red Cross has made an uncharacteristically frank attack on the United States Government for its ongoing detention of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.
Two Australians, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, are among the 600 people being held at the facility.
Red Cross officials have just returned from an access visit to the US military facility, and say most prisoners are worried about the open-endedness of their detention and their lack of legal representation.
The Red Cross says it is creating major mental health problems.
Lawyer claims Hicks, Habib tortured at Guantanamo Bay
Wednesday the 8th of October 2003
An Australian lawyer working with prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba says he has no doubt Australians David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib have been tortured. Richard Bourke has been working with detainees at Camp X-ray for almost two years.
"People sometimes argue about the definition of torture, what they are doing clearly comes within the definition of torture under the international convention, but they are engaging in what amounts to torture in the medieval sense of the phrase," he said.
He says reports of torture are being leaked by American military personnel and backed up by former prisoners.
Among the reports he is investigating are claims of prisoners being tied to a post and having rubber bullets fired at them and that they were forced to kneel in the sun until they collapse.
Pilger claims White House knew Saddam was no threat
Tuesday the 23rd of September 2003
Australian investigative journalist John Pilger says he has evidence the war against Iraq was based on a lie which could cost George W Bush and Tony Blair their jobs and bring Prime Minister John Howard down with them.
A television report by Pilger aired on British screens last night said US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice confirmed in early 2001 that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had been disarmed and was no threat.
But after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 that year, Pilger claimed Rice said the US "must move to take advantage of these new opportunities" to attack Iraq and claim control of its oil.
Pilger uncovered video footage of Powell in Cairo on February 24, 2001 saying, "He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours."
Two months later, Rice reportedly said, "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."
Powell boasted this was because America's policy of containment and its sanctions had effectively disarmed Saddam.
Pilger claims this confirms that the decision of US President George W Bush - with the full support of British Prime Minister Blair and Howard - to wage war on Saddam because he had weapons of mass destruction was a huge deception.
Pilger interviewed several leading US government figures in Washington but said he did not ask Powell or Rice to respond to his claims.
"I think it's very serious for Howard. Howard has followed the Americans and to a lesser degree Blair almost word for word," Pilger told AAP before his program was screened on ITV tonight.
"All Howard does is say 'well it's not true' and never explains himself.
"I just don't believe you can be seen to be party to such a big lie, such a big deception and endure that politically.
"It simply can't be shrugged off and that's Howard's response.
"Blair has shrugged it off but Blair is deeply damaged. It's far from over here, there's a lot that is going to happen and much of it could wash onto Howard.
"And it's unravelling in America and Bush could lose the election next year.
"I've not seen political leaders survive when they've been complicit in such an open deception for so long."
Howard last week dismissed an accusation from Opposition Leader Simon Crean that he hid a warning from British intelligence that war against Iraq would heighten the terrorist threat to Australia.
In his report, Pilger interviews Ray McGovern, a former senior CIA officer and friend of Bush's father and ex-president, George Bush senior.
McGovern told Pilger that going to war because of weapons of mass destruction "was 95 per cent charade."
Pilger also claims that six hours after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he wanted to "hit" Iraq and allegedly said "Go Massive ... Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
He was allegedly talked down by Powell who said the American people would not accept an attack on Iraq without any evidence, so they opted to invade Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden had bases.
Pilger claimed war was set in train on September 17, 2001 when Bush signed a paper directing the Pentagon to explore the military options for an attack on Iraq.
US President George W Bush has clarified his administration's position on links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, amid American confusion over the issue.
In a recent justification of the war on Iraq, Vice-President Dick Cheney emphasised relationships between Saddam Hussein and militant Islamic groups. However a recent opinion poll in the United States found that 70 per cent of those polled believe that Saddam Hussein himself was involved in the September 11 attacks.
Under questioning today, Mr Bush says that has not been proven. "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in September the 11th," he said.
"What the Vice President said is that he has been involved with Al Qaeda." Mr Bush went on to say that he had no doubt that Saddam Hussein had links with Al Qaeda affiliated groups in Iraq, such as Ansar al-Islam. Critics of the Bush administration have accused it of deliberately encouraging public confusion over the issue.
The US wants to be the sheriff of the world. Donald Rumsfeld has proposed a world police force trained and lead by the us.
Bringing a new meaning to the term US Marshal.
The United States would train and lead an international police force, bypassing traditional peacekeeping bodies such as the United Nations and NATO, under a proposal by the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
The plan, involving thousands of Americans permanently assigned to peacekeeping, would also be a major reversal by the Bush Administration, which has strongly opposed tying up its troops in such operations.
"I am interested in the idea of our leading, or contributing to in some way, a cadre of people in the world who would like to participate in peacekeeping or peacemaking," Mr Rumsfeld told defence industry leaders in Washington last week.
One defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "It's something that is being discussed in a very serious way by some very serious people right now."
Australian, US and British special forces took control of a quarter of Iraq before the war was officially launched on March 20, allied forces commander General Tommy Franks said yesterday.
In an extraordinary statement that suggests Australians were engaged in the war prior to Prime Minister John Howard officially committing troops, General Franks said more than 50 12-member special forces units secretly entered the Iraqi desert before hostilities began.
On the first night, they took out 50 observation posts along the borders with Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. On the second night, they destroyed another 50.
General Franks told journalists that war planners were worried Iraq might launch Scud missile attacks on Israel and Jordan from its western desert, so US, British and Australian forces had to infiltrate the area as quickly as possible to prevent a wider Middle East conflict.
The statement means that when Mr Howard was saying in mid-March that no decision had been taken on whether to commit Australian troops, they were already on the ground in active combat.
In his address to Parliament on March 18 he formally announced Australia had "joined a coalition, led by the US, which intends to disarm Iraq of its prohibited weapons of mass destruction".
Opposition foreign affairs minister Kevin Rudd said General Franks's remarks showed the inconsistencies of Mr Howard's pre-war comments. "On the question of truth, it's now time for the Prime Minister to please explain," he said.
Still no weapons of mass destruction found. But I saw Colin Powel point at aerial photographs and say there are weapons of mass destruction here.
So if the US knew were those weapons are, why haven't they found them?
Monday 12-5-3
Before Iraq was attacked the Bush administration showed us aerial photographs and said the Iraqis are making weapons of mass destruction here. The invasion was completed weeks ago and still the US has not found those weapons of mass destruction. But they knew where some were!
Not only that, the search is now winding down ( see the article below ) without finding any.
Since the attack on Iraq was predicated on it’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, the question must be asked, why?
It seems to me that either the reason given for the attack was a lie or there is something seriously wrong with the US’s ability to find weapons that they know the location of.
US winding down WMD hunt: report
American officials in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction (WMD), are reported to be planning to wind-down their operations after failing to find evidence of Saddam Hussein's alleged illegal programs.
The Washington Post newspaper says the team of experts leading the search is expected to leave Iraq next month.
Members of the team have told the newspaper they no longer expect to find stocks of chemical munitions.
the group directing US searches for weapons of mass destruction is winding down operations without finding proof that Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms.
The 75th Exploitation Task Force has been described from the start as the principal arm of the US effort to discover banned weapons. The group's departure, expected next month, marks a failure in one of the main objectives of the war.
The group directing all known U.S. search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms, according to participants.
The world now has one day’s notice. There was a summit to decide this; however our Prime minister was not there!
That’s right, he has sent our troops to the Middle East where even though they are under Australian command they will be doing the US’s bidding. But he was not at the summit that effectively decides when the troops in the Middle East will be used.
If our troops co operate with US troops in an attack on Iraq soon, Howard’s non attendance at this summit is proof of his lackeydom.
Saturday 15-3-3
Our Prime Minister has spent the last few days trying to convince us that it is right and just to attack Iraq.
He has conceded that there is no evidence that Iraq has supplied weapons of mass destruction to terrorist and that there is no sign that they are likely to in the future.
However the argument he puts forward is summarized thus:
1. Most terrorist organizations want weapons of mass destruction.
2. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
Therefore Iraq may supply weapons of mass destruction to terrorists in the future.
Therefore they must be disarmed. But they are not fully cooperating.
Therefore we must invade them.
Sorry, but this logic too tenuous. It's like revoking your driving licence now, because, even though you have never done it before, next year you might drive after drinking.
Thursday 13-3-3
Just saw this week’s 4 Corners, interesting.
Neo Conservatives are often Jewish, from Eastern Europe and usually pro Israel. What they all have in common is that they have moved from the left wing to the right wing and are continuing to move further to the right. Many are in positions to influence the current President Bush.
In 1996 they presented recommendations to the Israeli government. Thankfully the Israeli government rejected that advice as being too radical.
In the 1990s the Neo Conservatives formed an alliance with the Republican hard right and that report presented to Israel is now being acted on by the US. After Iraq, the next target is Iran and then Syria. All have weapons of mass destruction ( as does the US and UK ) and help terrorists.
It was a US company that sold seed stock for biological weapons to Iraq during Sadam’s war with Iran.
The current President Bush is less like his father than he is like Reagan. Remember the Empire of Evil?
Colin Powell has managed to slow down the attack on Iraq, it was nearly attacked in 2001. And it is a victory for Colin Powell for the US to even bother with the UN Security Council. Most in the administration believe it is not relevant to US national policy.
It is now US policy to be the only super power. They must have hegemony.
A war against Iraq would be illegal! And guess what, Australian servicemen could be prosecuted for carrying out their orders. US servicemen would not be.
It seems to me that our leaders should actually consider the welfare of Australians and Australia and not politically correct furphies, international pressure or the president’s wishes.
I wonder, have they deployed their militaries around some public places because of an increased threat level or is it because the invasion of Iraq will start soon?
Anthrax injections.
Some of our service personnel have refused injections of anthrax serum. Good on them! There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that the cocktail of drugs given to service personnel for the 90/91 Gulf War has caused massive long term medical problems.
Here’s part of what Chief of Navy Vice Admiral Chris Ritchie has to say:
“3. WHY DO I HAVE TO SIGN A CONSENT FORM FOR THIS VACCINATION AND NOT FOR ANY OTHERS?
BTHE USE OF A CONSENT FORM IS ALSO NORMAL PRACTICE WHEN A VACCINE IS ADMINISTERED WHICH HAS NOT BEEN LICENCED FOR GENERAL USE IN AUSTRALIA BY THE THERAPEUTIC GOODS ADMINISTRATION (TGA). THIS IS THE CASE WITH ANTHRAX VACCINE, WHICH HAS NOT BEEN LICENCED BECAUSE THE INCIDENCE OF THE DISEASE IN AUSTRALIA IS LOW. THE VACCINE HAS HOWEVER BEEN AUTHORISED FOR ADF PERSONNEL BY THE TGA, AS WELL AS FOR THOSE LIKELY TO BE AT RISK IN AUSTRALIA, SPECIFICALLY VETERINARY SURGEONS.”
“1.THE FOLLOWING IS ADDITONAL INFORMATION ON IMPORTANT ISSUES RELATING TO ANTHRAX VACCINATION, PROVIDED TO ANSWER QUESTIONS ARISING FROM NAVY PEOPLE.
B.WHAT IF I AM EXPOSED TO ANTHRAX BEFORE I HAVE COMPLETED THE FULL COURSE OF VACCINATIONS? A GOOD LEVEL OF PROTECTION IS PROVIDED BY THE FIRST INJECTION OF VACCINE. THIS LEVEL IS BOOSTED AND MADE LONGER LASTING BY SUBSEQUENT INJECTIONS. IF YOU ARE EXPOSURED TO ANTHRAX BEFORE COMPLETING THE FULL COURSE OF INJECTIONS, YOU WILL BE TREATED WITH A COMMONLY AVAILABLE ANTIBIOTIC MEDICATION. THIS IS A COURSE OF ACTION THAT IS PROVEN TO BE EFFECTIVE.”
That’s right the vaccine is not licensed for use in Australia, I wonder why. And if you are exposed to Anthrax commonly available antibiotics have proven effective.
Wednesday 12-2-3
Bin Laden has released another tape. He again advocates fighting the Great Satan, the US, UK and often extended to anyone who aids them in any way. I would probably also be upset and vocal if someone made a deliberate attempt to kill me. In 1998 President Clinton authorised US intelligence services to capture or assonate him. Incredibly the US Navy fired 70 cruise missiles ( sounds like a misprint, doesn’t it ) at the location of his satellite phone, and missed him.
Russia is activating another regiment of ICBMs. Why have the US or UK not publicly complained about this? ICBMs only have one use.
Tuesday 11-2-3
I am convinced that Iraq is not abiding by the treaty it signed in 1991. Iraq has supported terrorist in the past eg the PLO. And it could well be helping Bin Laden et al. However war is a last resort, or should be. People get killed and maimed in war! Why not give UN peace makers a try? How is Iraq a direct threat to continental US?
I can see how having UN support for a war makes it more convincing. But the US invaded Afghanistan without a UN resolution. And we helped them. The reason given for this invasion was to capture Bin Laden! Isn’t that a task for police? But they still have not found him.