More than eight years after then prime minister John Howard and foreign minister Alexander Downer promised Australians our involvement in the War On Iraq would be short and sweet, the last of our troops on the ground there are finally heading home :
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Heath Ledger Was Right About The War On Iraq
"It's Not A Fight For Humanity, It's A Fight For Oil"
Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.
Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change.
The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.
The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq "post regime change". Its minutes state: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity."
The 20-year contracts signed in the wake of the invasion were the largest in the history of the oil industry. They covered half of Iraq's reserves – 60 billion barrels of oil, bought up by companies such as BP and CNPC (China National Petroleum Company), whose joint consortium alone stands to make £403m ($658m) profit per year from the Rumaila field in southern Iraq.
Lady Symons, 59, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank that cashed in on post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts.
Rupert 'Always Wrong On Iraq' Murdoch knew all about the deal making on Iraq's oil future, and could barely keep his trap shut, boasting a month before the war :
"The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be US$20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country."
A bit later, after publicly giving his full and solid backing to the war, Rupert Murdoch explained why, in his deluded old man fantasy world, the War On Iraq was likely to fuel economic recovery :
"We're keeping our heads down, managing the businesses, keeping our profits up. Who knows what the future holds? I have a pretty optimistic medium and long-term view but things are going to be pretty sticky until we get Iraq behind us. But once it's behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus than anything else..."
People actually believed that. They really, really did.
At least, until the truth about Australia's ongoing involvement in the War On Iraq became a little clearer in 2007 :
Amusingly, it was Rupert Murdoch's own Australian media empire that spread this bit of truth far and wide. At least they did for a few hours, until Don't Make Rupert Angry censorship survival instinct kicked in and they tried to make their own headlines disappear and went delete crazy on one of the biggest stories of the past decade.
The phone calls from John Howard's office to the head office of Rupert Murdoch's News Limited in Sydney yesterday were less than pleasant.
The News.com.au website, the main portal for Murdoch's network of Australian newspaper websites, reaching some more than 1.5 million Australian readers per day, ran a number of headlines claiming John Howard had said that oil was now a key reason to stay in Iraq. Some of the headlines said the Iraq War was a war for oil. Just like all those protesters back in early 2003 claimed it would be.
By the time Howard moved to deny he said anything such thing, it was too late. The story was out, columns and articles had been written and sent to the printers for today's news racks, and there was no going back.
John Howard's office knew there was little point trying to get Fairfax newspapers to retract their stories, in print or online. Howard Admits War For Iraq's Oil was the story many journos for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age had been waiting more than four years to write.
But Howard knew the Murdoch media were likely to play ball. If not in print, then at least online, where news.com.au now reaches more Australians than the same company's newspapers do, in print.
But even until the early afternoon today, almost 24 hours later, some of the Murdoch websites were still carrying 'Howard Says Iraq War For Oil' headlines and stories, even though the main news.com.au site had rewritten headlines and stories, inside its own archive, and published the following correction....oh sorry, clarification :
An earlier version of this story from the Australian Associated Press incorrectly reported the Prime Minister as saying oil was a reason for Australia's continued military presence in Iraq.
He said "energy", but as we all know, "energy" is "oil" when it comes to the Middle East, unless Howard is thinking about cutting natural gas deals with Iran sometime soon.
The phone calls from Howard's office to News Limited HQ clearly worked.
News.com.au chose to blame Australian Associated Press for supplying the wire news story that claimed Howard had admitted to a war for oil in Iraq.
Here's the pre-furious phone calls from Howard's office Uncorrected Version as it appeared online yesterday : And here's the spiffy new Corrected Version : Note that the sub headlines now put the words relating to 'Iraq War For Oil' squarely in the mouth of defence minister Brendan Nelson, when it was also Howard who publicly talked of needing to "secure" energy resources in Iraq and the Middle East.
The sub headlines were also edited to remove the dead giveaway line 'Another Reason Is To Uphold Prestige Of US, UK', to be replaced with the far more Freedom And Democracy Agenda-friendly 'We'll Stay Until Iraq No Longer Needs Us, Says PM'.
But perhaps more importantly, note that on both the 'corrected' and 'uncorrected' stories above, the byline clearly reads "By Staff Writers And Wires".
AAP may have supplied a story that claimed Howard said Australia had an interest in staying in Iraq to secure future oil supplies, which is, of course, exactly what he said, but unless the byline is a total lie, more than one journo rewrote or added to the text and headline and sub headlines before it went online. Hence "by staff writers and wires".
But to Howard's utter horror, that correction, sorry clarification, only made it onto the story on the main news.com.au site.
The calls for clarifications to the story must not have gotten through to other city newspaper editors and staff in Murdoch's network. Unless, of course, they chose to ignore the clarifications because the story didn't need any clarifying at all. It was true.
And if that was the case, then good on them for not following directions from head office, via the Howard office.
The below pages were all still online through the Murdoch online stable at 10-11am today, and later.
Australia's biggest selling daily newspaper, The Herald Sun, ran the following editorial today, hitting the presses before it could be pulled, and staying online, unchanged, well into the late morning :
The Tasmania Mercury still had this up on their site at midday :
And the Murdoch site in Perth still had this posted after midday today :
Even though the story of Howard's Iraq Oil Slick was running up hundreds of comments an hour on websites around Australia, any mention of it was gone from the news.com.au front page by 10.30am this morning.
Over at Murdoch's flagship 'The Australian' newspaper website, at least three key columnists weighed in supporting Howard's claim that he didn't say what he said, and it really didn't matter even if the prime minister and the defence minister did say what they said. Which they did.
Just to jog your memory, here's a reminder of what John Howard had to say about claims that the, then, still coming War On Iraq was about something other than WMDs and deposing Saddam Hussein back in February, 2003 :
"No criticism is more outrageous than the claim that US behaviour is driven by a wish to take control of Iraq's oil reserves."
And here's what the Murdoch media's favourite political whipping post, Greens Leader Bob Brown had to say in that same week, in 2003 :
This is not Australia's war. This is an oil war. This is the US recognising that, as the economic empire of the age, it needs oil to maintain its pre-eminence.
Back then, 76 percent of Australians were opposed to a War On Iraq.
By midday today, the Australia In Iraq For The Oil scandal was making international news, in a big way.
And the hundreds of headlines from around the world were immune to Howard's attempt to reframe his own comments, and those of his defence minister. They went in hard, using Howard as the first leader of a Coalition Of The Drilling country to finally admit the truth about a war so blackened and poisoned with so many lies :
Some of those same news sites ran Howard's attempts to deny that he said what he said, but his retraction was given mostly backwater coverage. Those international editors knew, like some editors of Murdoch's Australian newspapers knew, that Howard was trying to scam them.
Like he tried to scam the entire nation back in late 2002 when he said he hadn't decided whether or not he would send troops to Iraq, when they were already in the Gulf. And in early March, 2003, when Howard said he hadn't decided yet whether or not commit troops to the coming war, when some of those already deployed troops had already written letters to their children in case they died during the fighting.
So when are we going to have an investigation into the real reasons why Australia became involved in the War On Iraq?
When are we going to have an investigation into Howard government foreign minister Alexander Downer's meetings with some of the world's biggest oil companies in 2002-2004?
When are we going to have an investigation into the false intelligence circulated so enthusiastically by the Howard government and the Murdoch media back in 2002 and early 2003?
Taxpayers who were swindled of almost $20 billion over eight years for the War On Iraq deserve the truth.
The thousands of Australian soldiers who served in Iraq, the hundreds physically & psychologically wounded, those who committed suicide after they got back, the families ruined, deserve nothing less than the truth.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Australian journalist John Pilger in interview for his revelatory, truth-telling new movie 'The War You Don't See' :
A short collection of clips from the movie about the government lies the mainstream media pumps out, decade in and decade out, to mindwash people into believing war is not only, repeatedly, necessary, but utterly patriotic :
'The War You Don't See' doesn't have an Australian cinema or TV airing release date, which seems strange. Surely the million or so Australians who marched against the War On Iraq in 2003 would be exactly the kind of audience who'd want to see a movie like this.
Plus the millions more who have since learned the truth of the Australian government & Murdoch media lies, myths and deceptions about the Iraq & Afghanistan wars over the past seven years.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
A first look at The Screaming Jets' Dave Gleeson in FTW :
Finishing the FTW (Fuck The War) movie is why it's been tomblike around here lately. The above clip is from one of the quieter moments in the movie, set during the 2003 protests against the War On Iraq, when the anti-war activist played by Gleeson goes to the pub for a beer while he waits for his kidnap victim, tied to a chair in his cellar, to recover consciousness.
Right now I'm working out how best to make use of interviews with protesters shot during a string of early 2003 marches. It's amazing how many people, including school students, at those protests made more accurate predictions about the chaos, terrorism and mass death that would unfold in Iraq than than our leaders, or our leading commentators.
FTW will be released on DVD and digital download in late October.
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Another teaser for 'FTW', coming to DVD and download late October.
Friday, December 04, 2009
Abbott Redefines The Lies That Led To The Deaths Of 5000 American Soldiers And 100,000 Iraqis
The GodBott on the 2002 lies about Iraq WMDs and the alleged threat to Australia posed by Saddam Hussein, from ABC News :
".....whether something is a lie depends not on what turns out subsequently to be so, but on your state of mind."
Presumably Abbott thinks that rule applies even if your prime minister had personally committed Australians troops to an illegal War On Iraq within days of 9/11, and literally signed onto the war in February 2002, regardless of the WMD threat, or lack of one.
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Monday, November 23, 2009
If Tony Blair Is A War Criminal, Then So Is John Howard
By Darryl Mason
I've been saying it here for years, but has any Australian journalist ever asked John Howard, "While you were in Washington DC, between Sept 11 and Sept 15, did you make a commitment to President George W. Bush that Australian troops would fight the War On Iraq?"
Leaked docs reveal then British PM Tony Blair committed troops to the War On Iraq as early as February 2002.
Did President Bush use Howard's Sept 2001 commitment to fighting the War On Iraq to push Tony Blair to sign on, too?
The documents - transcripts of interviews from an internal defence ministry review of the conflict - disclose that some planning for the Iraq war had begun in February 2002. Major General Graeme Lamb, then head of Britain's special forces, was quoted as saying he had been "working the war up since early 2002", according to the newspaper.
In July 2002, Blair told lawmakers at a House of Commons committee session there were no preparations to invade Iraq.
Critics of the war have long insisted Blair offered President George W Bush an assurance as early as mid-2002 - before British MPs voted in 2003 to approve UK involvement - that Britain would join the war.
The leaked documents are likely to be supplied to a public inquiry established by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to scrutinise prewar intelligence and postwar planning, and which will hold its first evidence sessions later this week.
Brown appointed ex-civil servant John Chilcot to lead the panel, which will call Blair and the current and former heads of Britain's MI6 intelligence agency - John Sawers and John Scarlett - to give testimony in person.
When will John Howard finally face the kind of interrogation Tony Blair is about to undergo?
He might not be as famous as the ex-president, but Howard government foreign minister minister Alexander Downer was the fucking Yoda of 'total unrecall'. As he fastidiously proved during the hearings into how the Australian Wheat Board ended up bribing the Saddam Hussein regime with hundreds of millions of dollars, and continued to bribe the regime even while Australian soldiers and special forces were fighting in Iraq.
Here's just a sample of Alexander Downer responses, in 2006, to questions about how he didn't notice all those truckloads of AWB cash reaching Saddam Hussein, given all the memos and warnings that streamed across Alexander Downer's desk, for years :
“I don't recall.”
“I don’t recall.”
“I don’t recall.”
“I just don’t recall.”
“No, not that I can recall at all.”
“I can't recall my state of mind when I read the document...”
“I don't recall being given that information.”
“Well, I simply do not recall.”
"I would have thought I'd have remembered it, but I don't recall.”
“No, I don’t recall that.”
“I don't recall them saying that.”
“I don't recall them saying that to me.”
“I could have done, but I don't recall it.”
“I am only in a position to tell you what I recall of the conversation, which is very sketchy....”
“I don't recall it being brought to my attention, but it is possible it could have been.”
“Yes, I don't recall that being discussed, but I simply do not recall it is all I can say.”
“I don't remember precisely...”
“My recollection is of a much more general nature.”
“I have no recollection of it.”
“I just can't recall it at all.”
And the classic :
“I can't, of course, recall.”
I imagine Alexander Downer will give very similar responses when he has to face questioning during the Inquiry Into The Reasons For The Iraq War (or whatever it will be called), which should hopefully get started in early 2011.
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Thursday, October 15, 2009
Miranda Devine Backs Illegal Immigrants....Well, Christian Ones Pro-lyncher Miranda Devine points out that Australia is quickly running out of beds for asylum seekers, fleeing war and rape and persecution in Sri Lanka, Iraq and Afghanistan, but asks how about it? for a couple of thousand more :
If Rudd really wanted to show compassion he would back the audacious plan of the Christian Democrat Fred Nile and go into the people smuggling business.
Hosting a meeting yesterday at NSW Parliament House for Christians from Egypt, Iran and Iraq, the upper house MP said he was worried about the plight of Christians in the Middle East, who were desperate to come here and make good migrants. In Iraq, says the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, there are only 400,000 Christians left, down from 1.4 million in 1987.
Devine doesn't point out, of course, that the vast majority of the one million Christian who've fled Iraq in the past two decades did so after the start of the War On Iraq, a war Devine so miserably backed, and promoted.
Australia has a special responsibility for the Iraqi people, and from a self-interested viewpoint, Christians are likely to settle more easily into a Christian country than Muslims.
Yes, it's true, young Muslims, particularly the males, hate all the things that many Australians love, like rugby league and fast food and loud cars.
And Devine is right, Australia must be a Christian nation. After all, we're currently fighting in two wars.
"It's a desperate situation," said Nile. "They're being told 'convert or die'."
They are in Iraq, in particular, thanks to the War. Devine :
Seeing how free and easy the Government has become with boat people, Nile has hatched a plan to bring a boat of 2000 Christian asylum seekers from Indonesia to Australia. He wants donations and he dares the Government to stop him.
So basically, war-shattered Christians? Come on in. War-shattered Muslims? Eh.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
The War On Iraq : We Won....Wait, They Won...Someone Won....Did Anybody Win?
By Darryl Mason
In November 2007, The Professional Idiot declared :
Now, finally, Iraq MP Nuri al-Maliki agrees with The Professional Idiot :
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Saturday that the U.S. troops' withdrawal from Iraqi cities and towns by the end of this month would be a "great victory" for Iraqis.
"It is a great victory for Iraqis as we are going to take our first step toward ending the foreign presence in Iraq," Maliki said during a conference in Baghdad for leaders of ethnic Turkmen minority.
Hmm, probably not exactly the kind of victory declaration The Professional Idiot was counting on al-Maliki to announce. But then, The Professional Idiot was always living an absurd NeoCon fantasy when it came to Iraq.
This from The Idiot when it seemed, briefly, so many years ago, that President Bush was right, and the War On Iraq had been won almost as soon as it began :
"The war happened, all right, yet there were no refugees, and no huge casualties."
John Hawkins: If and when do you see the United States hitting Iraq? How do you think it'll work out?
Tim Blair: It all depends on Iraq’s fearsome Elite Republican Guard. Why, those feisty desert warriors could hold out for minutes. Dozens of US troops will be required. Perhaps they’ll even need their weapons.
Wouldn’t expect it to last long once it happens.
No. not long at all.
Six years, a couple of trillion dollars, 4500 dead CoW troops and a few hundred thousand dead Iraqis.
At least they got rid of Iran's main enemy in the region.
Perhaps one day Tim Blair will get the chance to talk to some of the hundreds of young Australian soldiers who had their minds and emotions fucked by what they saw and experienced in Iraq. I'm sure they'll love to hear his explanation for why it was all worth it, and why he was so keen, all those years ago, to perpetuate the myth that the people of Iraq would cave in so quickly to foreign occupation.
"...those feisty desert warriors could hold out for minutes."
Or more than 3.2 million minutes, and counting.
Oh well, at least Blair got a job at the Daily Telegraph out of it.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Go Eat A Big Bowl Of Fuck, You War Mongers
By Darryl Mason
The staff cutbacks at The Australian are starting to bite. The lead editorial yesterday in the once psychopathically pro-Iraq War minded newspaper :
The editor of The Australian is clearly working under tight budgetary limitations. What other reason can there be for such blatant recycling of old arguments against the Iraq War voiced by hundreds of thousands of Australians, and hundreds of millions of people around the world?
While there is no doubting the moral and strategic sense of the war to liberate Iraq from the despicable despotism of Saddam Hussein, the campaign there took resources and attention away the first front in the war on terror.
With money and good management, Afghanistan may yet be the front where terrorism is decisively defeated.
We went to War On Iraq to find and dismantle WMDs? Hell, no. We did it out of a sense of morality!
The kind of morality that results in unimaginable chaos, the finishing off of already debilitated infrastructure, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, entire families full of children, thousands of doctors, civil servants, teachers, university professors, nurses and the creation of more than 3 million refugees.
The Australian newspaper, you may remember, joined the rest of the Murdoch national and worldwide media empire's downright nasty and sick assault on those who said Afghanistan was where Al Qaeda came from and so that was where the war should be fought, and that winding back in Afghanistan, after so much progress, to attack and invade and occupy Iraq was downright fucking insane.
The people who, back in late 2002 and early 2003, made all those kinds of arguments against the War On Iraq - including millions of World War I & II and Korea and Vietnam veterans in Australia, the US and the UK - were unanimously portrayed by Murdoch's newspaper and television empire as being pro-terrorist and supporters of Saddam Hussein.
And now, six years later, The Australian newspaper tries to justify its backing of the 2002 turning away from Afghanistan to ramp up the War On Iraq for "moral" reasons? Strategic reasons? So Iran can become the dominant nation in the region, and the United States can pay out hundreds of millions of dollars to brutal Sunni fighters to stop them killing American soldiers?
Is the editor of The Australian typing over a bucket of ether?
The editor of The Australian and Rupert Murdoch can go and fuck themselves.
They lied to Australians, day after day, weeks into months, about a threat that didn't exist, cramming headlines with absolute bullshit pro-war propaganda, while ignoring the obvious truth that hundreds of thousands of other Australians seemed to have no problem locating online for themselves.
The Australian newspaper's complicity in helping to manufacture the reality for a senseless war that killed hundreds of thousands of people will never be forgotten.
Friday, September 01, 2006
New US Ambassador Says It's Okay For Aussies To Disagree With American Policies...
Particularly The Ones That Result In The Deaths Of Thousands Of Innocent People By Darryl Mason
Apparently Australians don't have to agree with every vicious, brutal, war pig ideology and mantra that stumbles from the lips of President Bush and Offence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The new US ambassador to Australia has announced it's okay for Australians to disagree with American policy, and if we choose to do so, that doesn't make us anti-American.
That's a good plan. If dissenting against the War On Iraq and the way Bush Co has chosen to fight the War On Terror was a sign of anti-Americanism, then, well, something close to 60% of all Australians would have to be branded with this badge of dishonour.
Of course, the majority of Americans as well would also be anti-American. Which would mean America would be populated with more than a hundred million anti-Americans. From the Sydney Morning Herald :
THE new US ambassador to Canberra wants Australians to understand that it is OK to disagree with the Bush Administration yet still feel warm towards America.
Apparently trying to contain the damage that the Iraq venture has inflicted on Australian sentiment towards the US, Robert McCallum said he would appeal direct to the Australian public.
"I want to get out across the entire continent of Australia" to say that "it's OK to disagree with this US policy or that US policy but still be pro-American, because we have so much in common", he told the Herald.
He agreed that this approach was designed to stop Australians throwing the baby out with the bath water.
And the ambassado....said he was surprised to learn that a majority of Australians polled last year said US foreign policy was a potential security threat.
"The national security of Australia and the US is a common interest, each with the other," Mr McCallum said.
A poll for the Lowy Institute last year found 57 per cent of respondents believed US foreign policy to be a security threat, the same percentage that cited Islamic fundamentalism as a threat.
"Australia and the US are both pioneer nations with great energy and determination. Americans have the greatest respect for anything Australian. It's quite remarkable."
Complete crap. Most Americans know next to nothing about Australia, Australians or Australian culture, outside of the Crocodile Hunter/Dundee cliches.
Most Americans remain unaware that Australians devoted tens of thousands of troops to the Vietnam War, with more than 500 killed in action.
Today, the vast majority of Americans also remain unaware that Australians are fighting in Iraq. This is not unexpected, as President and Secretary of Offence Donald Rumsfeld rarely mentions that next to the UK, Australia is the United States' chief ally in the War On Iraq.
Rumsfeld, and Bush, have also failed to adequately acknowledge that Australian supplied more than one third of the special forces that tore down the Taliban regime in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US, and saved the lives of countless US special forces troops and CIA agents on at least three separate occasions.
Robert McCallum has a particularly difficult job ahead of him if he thinks he can turn the tide of Australian opinion on how Bush Co. has conducted itself in the War On Iraq and the War On Terror.
Australians don't hate Americans, but most Australians are smart enough to know that the road to the War On Iraq was paved with deceit and ouright lies, and that the Howard Government and Bush Co. conned them all in the worst possible way.
The always excellent Road To Surfdom blog has a great take on this story, and the comments are well worth reading.
We do have so much in common with Americans. More than 60% of Australians also believe that President Bush is a threat to world peace and the War On Iraq was an appalling mistake.
The new ambassador is off to a great start with his enthusiastic embrace of dissent.
Of course, Australians are free to dissent, as Howard has repeatedly said.
(Attorney General Philip) Ruddock will soon release new guidelines on what the parameters are of the kind of dissent and free expression we will all be able to democratically engage in….within the specificed Dissent Expression Zone in the Simpson Desert, and after you obtain the right permits to freely express yourself, for which you will need to provide proof that you are, at least, a fourth generation Australian.
The new ambassador….Good to see a Skull And Bonesman finally walking the corridors of power in Canberra. He should feel right at home amongst all those Freemasons and Opus Dei-ists.
Friday, July 07, 2006
The Very Best Of John Howard On The First Six Weeks Of The War On Iraq
"....our goal is to make certain that the weapons that Iraq now has, chemical and biological and a capacity to develop nuclear weapons, are taken from Iraq. I don't believe the world can turn its back on that. If Iraq gets away with this, if Iraq stares us all down, she will certainly not abandon her weapons then." January 23, 2003
"..if as a consequence of that military action the current regime disappears, that circumstances in Iraq could well be a lot better, I’m certain they will be a lot better and that in a relatively short period of time the situation could stabilise in the way that it did in Afghanistan." February 7. 2003
"I think there’s a very big connection between Iraq and North Korea and the connection is this, if the Security Council and the world community can’t discipline Iraq it has no hope of disciplining North Korea." February, 16, 2003
"Iraq must be disarmed. We cannot afford to allow a rogue state like Iraq to retain chemical and biological weapons. Others will do likewise. North Korea will not be disciplined by the world community if Iraq is not disciplined." March 14, 2003
"I have no doubt at all in my mind, and many would agree with me, that the Iraqi people will suffer less if Saddam Hussein is removed." March 17, 2003
"You don't make parallels with history when you are dealing with contemporary events." March 18, 2003
"I think you’ve also got to remember that the suffering of the Iraqi people will be a lot less once this regime has gone..." March 19, 2003
"I want the Iraqi regime disarmed, I want Iraq disarmed. The question of what happens to Saddam Hussein to me is incidental. The aim is the disarmament of Iraq," March 19, 2003
"...we don’t have any quarrel with the ordinary people of Iraq, we don’t want to inflict any avoidable pain injury or death on them. We do have a big quarrel with the regime because it’s the regime that has defied the world in relation to its chemical and biological weapons. We mustn’t lose sight of what this is all about." March 20, 2003
"....on the scale of suffering I have believed for a long time that the people of Iraq will suffer less if he’s gone than if he’s left there." March 21, 2003
"...it is a very tyrannical regime and once it’s gone the people of Iraq will I’m sure have a much better life." April 2, 2003
"...if Iraq had disarmed and fully cooperated, then I don’t think people would have been arguing on its own for regime change." April 2, 2003
"...getting rid of the regime and thereby ensuring that Iraq does not retain chemical and biological weapons or a capacity to develop them in the future, that is the goal....I would say victory once the regime is gone." April 6, 2003
"...we won't be making a significant peacekeeping contribution. I would expect that as our military involvement winds down, and I'm not announcing that it's about to wind down, let me emphasise, but at some point obviously it will begin to wind down. I would think during the transitional phase we may retain during that transitional phase - I'm not talking about a period of 12 months or two years, but the immediate period of the transitional phase - we could retain some niche contribution of military forces in order to assist in the immediate transition phase. But we certainly don't intend to have a significant army of peacekeepers." April 10, 2003
"...the same thing with the civilian casualties. Of course there were. But you have to put that in the balance against the tens upon tens of thousands who have died in different ways as a result of this regime." April 13, 2003
"It was inevitable that when you topple a tyrannical regime and you took the lid off, it was inevitable there was going to be a period of some upheaval..." April 16, 2003
"It’s one thing, as I say, to have a short, sharp, highly professional, highly effective contribution when it’s really hot. It’s another thing to have a very long commitment of a large number of regulars."
"...it was a remarkable military victory, and a great tribute to the American military leadership." May 2, 2003
"...can I Mr President congratulate you on the leadership that you gave to the world, at times under very great criticism, at times facing very great obstruction...I think what was achieved in Iraq was quite extraordinary from a military point of view. I think the military textbooks will be replete with the experiences of Operation Iraqi Freedom for many years to come..." May 3, 2003
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Alexander Downer Lobbied Washington, Baghdad In 2003 On Behalf Of BHP
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, warned BHP Billiton that pushing for control of an Iraqi oilfield straight after invasion would be "very sensitive" because the US-led coalition had made it clear "there would not be blood for oil".
Despite this Mr Downer agreed he would raise the company's claim over the huge Halfayah oilfield with Washington and the head of the post-war occupation government in Iraq, Paul Bremer, according to documents released yesterday by the Cole inquiry into the Oil for Food scandal.
A highly confidential record of the meeting between Mr Downer and BHP Billiton executives written by the Department of Foreign Affairs details their discussion of the project in London in May 2003, only weeks after the Saddam Hussein government fell.
The document reveals an extraordinary effort by BHP Billiton to get its share of the Halfayah oilfield, one of the richest in the country, by lobbying the key players in postwar Iraq.
The executives told Mr Downer the company had already lobbied Arthur Sinodinos, the chief adviser to the Prime Minister, John Howard, and were about to approach Downing Street and the US Vice-President Dick Cheney.
In a frank assessment of the power structure under the occupation government in Baghdad, the executives told Mr Downer they had a key contact there, the former boss of Shell Oil in America, Philip Carroll, who had been hand-picked by the White House to advise the new Iraqi oil minister. Mr Carroll also had a number of Iraqi exiles with him who had worked for the Iraqi Oil Ministry.
"The Australian Government had said sincerely that it had not joined coalition forces on the basis of oil," Mr Downer is recorded saying. "Wise judgement suggested it was the Iraqis themselves who needed to be awarding the oil contracts.
"That said, Mr Downer agreed he would raise the matter both in Washington and in Baghdad with Paul Bremer. He would also have it raised with the Oil Ministry in Baghdad."
The document also clearly sets out of the first time that real relationship between BHP Billiton and the controversial company Tigris, its joint venture partner in Iraq.
Tigris has been accused in evidence to the Cole inquiry of being involved in a major fraud in the UN's Oil For Food program to assist Australia's wheat trader, AWB.
According to the document, Mr Harley told Mr Downer: "Tigris was responsible for maintaining relationships with [Saddam Hussein's] Iraq by working Oil for Food projects until a normal political situation could be established in Iraq.
"This arrangement was judged by all parties to give Australia the maximum chance of securing the Halfayah field investment."
The Cole inquiry also released a bundle of new documents from AWB and the UN supporting evidence to the Cole inquiry that AWB knowingly paid hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime to maintain its wheat contracts in Iraq.
Several Iraqi documents written by Saddam Hussein's officials between August and December 2000 detail orders to Iraqi ministers to collect kickbacks and fees on humanitarian shipments to Iraq under the UN Oil for Food program and transfer the money back into government coffers.
