In 2003 a former Australian Army lieutenant-colonel and intelligence analyst, Andrew Wilkie, spoke out as a whistleblower against the invasion of Iraq, and quit the Office of National Assessments. The ONA provides builds assessments on international political, strategic and economic matters of interest to Australia, reporting to the prime minister and the National Security Committee of cabinet, linking up with services such as ASIO, the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation.
The conservative Coalition government of the day promptly mounted a campaign of personal vilification.(...a Right-wing government vilifying an experienced military officer for doubting the wisdom and basis for an illegal war...good heavens... who would have thought it?)
Then prime minister (and eternal scumbag) John Howard said Wilkie was ''guilty of distortion, exaggeration and misrepresentation''. Liberal Party senator David Johnston described him as ''unstable and flakey". Howard's own office called Wilkie "unbalanced".
Well... the tables might or might not have turned now...
Andrew Wilkie is now an independent political candidate and a potential power broker in the stand off in the hung parliament, wherein neither government nor opposition alone has the numbers to take power. Wilkie was once a member of the Liberal Party (the greater part of the conservative Coalition), and later stood as a Green.
This week Wilkie said Australia should separate from the US on Afghanistan war policy, and exit the conflict, saying that the assertion that Australia was there because of terrorists is a "great lie". He says the terrorists have "morphed years ago into a global network" making Afghanistan an irrelevance.
Both Labor and the Coalition opposition currently support Australian military presence in Afghanistan.
The night before last yet another Australian soldier was killed. He was from what was Wilkie's own battalion and regiment.
Wilkie has yet to claim victory in his Tasmanian seat but the current Coalition leader and would-be prime minister Tony Abbott has called him and apologised for what the Howard government - of which Abbott was a key member - did to him.
I bet he did.
Gillard has arranged to meet Wilkie on Saturday. Abbott will meet with him on Monday.
"Then prime minister (and eternal scumbag) John Howard said Wilkie was ''guilty of distortion, exaggeration and misrepresentation''. Liberal Party senator David Johnston described him as ''unstable and flakey". Howard's own office called Wilkie "unbalanced"
ReplyDeleteIf this is the case, why then did they place him in the position he held?? Makes no sense, but then what does in bitter politics.
I'm not sure your politics aren't even uglier than ours, which are pretty damn barbaric.
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed that Wilkie is from the Conservative wing of your government. The authors I most brainwash myself with, Andrew Bacevich and Chalmers Johnson, are likewise Conservative. The party has some tradition of non-intervention (I believe wrongly smeared as isolationism).
ReplyDeleteIs Islamic terrorism something that has occurred in Australia? Would it likely be a threat if you guys weren't hanging out with us?
Good luck to Paul Hogan! I only saw the first movie, but he seemed very likable and I know he's been huge in Australia forever.
Bob,
ReplyDeleteIt would have been a professional appointment, not a political one. He saw the case for WMDs was being distorted to support a political decision that had already been made.
tnlib
Maybe our barbarity is just less theatrical. Politics is not a nice business, nonetheless I think a lot of people in it have the best of intentions. I think Gillard is a good person. I don't like what Abbott represents, and I don't agree with him, but I don't dislike him either.
ex DLB,
People have been jailed in Australia for conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism. Just recently there has been a multi-pronged raid on a proscribed Kurdish group alleged to be plotting something.
Nothing has happened on Australian soil, touch wood, and I hope we are at least is one continent on the Earth to where it never comes.
There is however the 2002 Bali bombing which killed 202 people, 88 of them Australians. This was by Jemaah Islamiyah, one of Al Qaeda's proxies. There have been attacks on our embassies in South East Asia too.
All Paul Hogan had to do was pay his taxes. His whole persona is relaxed and irreverent. There's a lot of nostalgia in my generation for his show from the 70s. Hope he sorts it out.
Thanks magpie, I didn't realize there were many Kurds outside of the areas they had been pushed into by Saddam and the Turks and Iran and Syria. Thought they would have had enough enemies there.
ReplyDeleteEmbarrassingly, I had to look up where Bali and Jakarta were in relation to you. I remembered the bombings there but not much detail.
The joke goes that wars are how Americans learn geography. And so it goes.