Axis of Deceit, Fulcrum of Power?

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.

"Excuse me, we need your identity to kill someone..."

How would you feel.... if you were innocently living your life and discovered that your identity had been stolen, used in the assassination of a senior leader of Hamas, and then your name and face sprayed all over the world as being connected?

Dubai police have released the names of the holders of 26 Western passports they say are suspects in the killing of Mahmud al-Mabhuh, electrocuted and suffocated, in a Dubai hotel room on January 20th.

Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan of the Dubai police stated he is “99, if not 100 per cent” sure that the Israeli eternal intelligence agency, the Mossad, was behind Mabhuh's death, and said there was evidence, including wiretaps, of their role. Israel has only said there is "no evidence" linking them to the killing.

I'm basically pro-Israel in as much as I recognize the country's right to exist, and defend itself within ethical limits.
That does not extend to potentially framing my countrymen for murder, or anyone else's for that matter.

The fake passports were British, Irish, French, German and those of two Australian men and one Australian woman.
Five very pissed off governments.

Australian foreign affairs minister Stephen Smith called in the Israeli ambassador this morning. He warned Israel that its relationship with Australia could be damaged if evidence is found it was involved in forging Australian passports.

Smith said "I've made it crystal clear to the ambassador that if the results of that investigation cause us to come to the conclusion that the abuse of Australian passports was in any way sponsored or condoned by Israeli officials, then Australia would not regard that as the act of a friend".

Ronen Bergman, a security analyst writing for the Yediot Aharonot newspaper in Israel commented:

"Was Mabhuh worth this? It depends whom you ask. Most of the people involved agree that the enormous risk, whose full details will never be revealed, would have been justified only if he himself had been smuggling a nuclear warhead from Tehran to Gaza....Other than that, there is no terror activist who is worth it."

How about we ask the 26 passport holders if they think it was worth it?