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January 23, 2010
Funny how Australia has gone very quiet on the Iraq war whilst the British are conducting an inquiry into it. The Chilcot inquiry embraces the run-up to the conflict in Iraq, the military action and the aftermath and is providing further evidence that Tony Blair misled the British public in the run up to the war in Iraq in 2003.
Steve Bell
Narry a word in Australia. The curtain has been pulled down. The silence is deafening.
Nothing is being said even though the Howard Government simply followed Washington and London on the need for regime change, on being committed from an early stage to a military invasion, and in deceiving the Australian public about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. There was no threat to Australia from Iraq even ttough and Howard, like Blair, had claimed that intelligence had "established beyond doubt" that Iraq had WMD.
The Chilcot Inquiry shows that claim is unsustainable on the basis of intelligence assessments.The lack of evidence when inspectors went in did not change the policy of military intervention because people in government were convinced that there were weapons.
Isn't it the role of the media to ask journalism is about asking awkward questions? So where are the questions? It seems as if everyone in the Australian polity wants to forget the skeletons from the shameful past.
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"...the silence is deafening."
Well of course it is. There's nothing more to discuss. After all, nobody go hurt, did they?