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Original Message -----
Sent:
Sunday, October 12, 2003 1:47 PM
Subject:
Re: Senator Allison speaks on Iraq - still
Dear Senator,
Being of an Australian Middle Eastern background, I
am in constant receipt of e-mail messages and newspaper cuttings from
that region. I am told that Australia’s participation in the ill-fated
Bush/Blair aggression against Iraq is likely to cause much damage to
Australia’s reputation in that region.
It seems to me that people in the region have
temporarily conceded that participation by Australia was only due to the
fact that it has an unwise prime minister prodded by a Jew-controlled
government. People in the Middle East were widely informed of the
anti-war demonstrations in Australia, which genuinely reflected public
opinion at the time. They seem to have appreciated such demonstration of
public goodwill.\
However, If we do not withdraw our troops from that
ill-conceived mad venture, It is quite likely that our boys would come
back home in body bags, which is the ultimate fate awaiting all foreign
invaders of Iraq. The notion that our boys may only take part in
reconstruction operations is no excuse. We would still be seen as part
of the invasion. Our trade with the region would also continue to suffer
irreparable damage.
The UN and the world are not responsible for the
reconstruction of Iraq. Only the war criminals who caused the
destruction should be held responsible for the cost of reconstruction
and compensation. The reasons offered to justify this crime by the
Jew-spin media and US/UK Jewish politicians are flimsy and unconvincing.
People in the Middle East do realise that invading Iraq
was part of a wider plan to protect Israel and to grab Iraqi oil. Had
the US been so worried about any oppressed people, they should have
invaded Israel, rather than Iraq, in order to free the Palestinian
people. There, they are also assured of finding real weapons of mass
destruction. Some estimates mention a figure of 300 atomic warheads
claimed to be aimed at and capable of destroying every capital city in
Europe, should the need arise.
"Ramm, Natasha (Sen L. Allison)" <Natasha.Ramm@aph.gov.au>
wrote:
Please find below Senator Allison's latest speech on Iraq made in the
Senate yesterday, I also attach a question on notice given almost six
months ago again seeking clarification from the Government as to why
the decision was made to go to war.
SPEECH IRAQ - 07/01/03
Senator ALLISON (Victoria) (4.45 p.m.) -I rise to lend the support of
the Democrats to this censure motion and to the amendment moved by
Senator Faulkner. There would be few Australians who would not agree
that we have been lied to over the pre-emptive attack on Iraq. I will
not even call it a war because it was hardly that. It was Australia
joining the United States and the UK on the world stage in attacking
another country.
We were told that this attack on Iraq was absolutely essential.
Already, there have been a number of quotes drawn on in this debate of
what the Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs said in
the lead-up to this attack on Iraq. It is quite possible, of course,
that our Prime Minister and our Minister for Foreign Affairs were also
lied to. I accept that this is a strong possibility. That makes it no
less irresponsible of this government to have taken us to this
pre-emptive attack on another country. Obviously, so keen were they to
join the United States on the world stage and to strut their stuff
that I, quite frankly, believe the government did not care. They were
willing to suspend rationale. The obvious evidence that was available
to everyone in this country was put aside. The government chose to go
into this attack with its eyes open to some extent but also hiding
behind a lot of suggestions that the information was within the
jurisdiction of the US administration but, of course, we could not be
told about it precisely.
I will go to some of the quotes that we heard from those who took us
into this attack. In May this year, the Prime Minister said:
Well Australia supported military action against Iraq for a number of
reasons, particularly the possession of weapons of mass destruction.
I'm sure evidence of that will be found, it will take time.
This is like a leap of faith that we are all expected to join the
Prime Minister in taking. For some reason we believe they are there.
We do not know why we believe this, but we believe they are there and
we are sure they will be found. In September last year, Mr Downer
said:
Since 1998 and the departure of the UN inspectors, there has been an
accumulation of intelligence information from a range of human and
technical sources pointing to Saddam Hussein having continued or
stepped up his weapons of mass destruction programs.
Again, there was absolutely no evidence and now we know that not to be
the case. In September last year, Mr Downer also said:
The point is that I think that the central point here is, I think that
this document produced by the British Labour Government puts beyond
any question, the fact that Saddam Hussein does have a chemical and
biological weapons capability.
How silly does Mr Downer look having said back in September, `puts
beyond any question'? I do not think there is any doubt that that lie
was to reassure Australians that Saddam Hussein was a threat. Mr
Acting Deputy President, you are frowning at me. You obviously do not
like me calling that a lie but I cannot see anything that can suggest
that it was not a lie. Mr Downer answered this question from Barrie
Cassidy:
Minister, you mentioned the weapons of mass destruction, but how long
does the Coalition need to search for these weapons of mass
destruction without success before it can be assumed that they don't
exist?
Senator Kemp -Mr Acting Deputy President, I raise a point of order
.There was the use of an unparliamentary term referring to Mr Downer
purporting to lie. I do not think it is parliamentary. It has always
been ruled to be unparliamentary and it should be withdrawn.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Lightfoot)-If that was
unparliamentary, Senator Allison, I invite you to withdraw it on the
two occasions that you have mentioned it.
Senator ALLISON -If that was unparliamentary, as it appears to be,
then I unequivocally withdraw the word `lie'. In answer to Barrie
Cassidy, Mr Downer said:
Well, I don't think there's any doubt that they exist. I mean, after
all, Saddam Hussein, we all know, used weapons of mass destruction on
a number of occasions, including against his own people. Nobody has
really doubted that such capabilities exist but nobody also has had
any illusions it will take a lot of time to try to find these
capabilities.
It is fairly clear to those who listened to this debate that if you
had to admit that it was going to take a long time to try to find
weapons of mass destruction capabilities then you did not know where
they were. The intelligence did not stretch to us knowing precisely
where they were. It is a strange kind of suggestion for the government
to make: they know that they are there but they do not know where they
are and they do not know how to find them-but we have the
intelligence, of course, that tells us otherwise.
The Democrats have put some hundreds of questions to the government on
this very subject over the last few months. Some of them have been
answered; most of them have been avoided or evaded in terms of a
response from the government. Nonetheless, we have done this because,
since the public were not being told the truth here and were not being
given the evidence that the government claimed it had, we felt it was
important that those questions should be put. Some of those questions
are yet to be answered. I will go through some of them which I put on
notice on 22 April. I said:
With reference to a claim made by the Prime Minister before the war
that only the threat of force by the United States of America (US)
allowed the United Nations Monitorings Verification and Inspection
Commission (UNMOVIC) weapons inspectors back into Iraq-
the Prime Minister said that it was only the threat of force that put
them back-
and given that it was the threat of force by Washington which pulled
the weapons inspectors out of Iraq in March 2003 before they could
complete their work-
which had been conveniently glossed over by this government and in the
debate at the time-
does the Prime Minister now concede that the threat of force failed
again to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction?
The Prime Minister has never conceded this. I asked:
What is the government's response to the claim of the Executive
Chairman of UNMOVIC, Dr Blix, that the US was guilty of `fabricating'
evidence against Iraq to justify the war, and his belief that the
discovery of weapons of mass destruction had been replaced by the main
objective of the US of toppling Saddam Hussein?
Again, that was not answered. I further asked:
With reference to claims made by the Prime Minister before the war
that there was no doubt that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and
that this was the primary reason for Australia's participation in the
`coalition of the willing', what is the Prime Minister's position now
that, even after the collapse of the regime in Baghdad, no weapons of
mass destruction have been found despite United States Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's claim to know where they are?
The Prime Minister said to us that regime change-and we have all heard
a lot in this chamber about the Saddam Hussein regime-was only a
secondary concern for Australia. So the primary concern, supposedly
weapons of mass destruction, turned out not to be the primary
justification for war after all. The Prime Minister claimed that Iraq
had weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein could not be
contained or deterred. I asked:
... what is the government's analysis of why they were not used in the
regime's terminal hours against the invading US, United Kingdom and
Australian forces?
If Saddam Hussein had such weapons-and it seems clear that he did
not-why would he not use them in response to what was a pretty
decisive attack on Baghdad and other parts of Iraq? I asked whether
the Prime Minister now regretted saying before the war that Saddam
Hussein could stay on in power provided he got rid of his weapons of
mass destruction. Again there was no answer to this question.
The Prime Minister has changed his position many times on this issue
to justify taking this country into a war zone and taking part in an
attack on a country which killed thousands of civilians. The Prime
Minister started by saying that if Saddam Hussein would just comply
with weapons inspections and get rid of his weapons of mass
destruction then he could stay on. Then suddenly we were convinced
that any 45 minutes from now there could be an attack on any other
country and that biological, chemical and nuclear weapons might be
used. Then we moved to the position which ultimately we went to the
war on: we needed to get rid of this regime because of the way they
treated their own citizens.
Just in the last 24 hours or so, questions have been raised about the
evidence which has been found-that is, the test tube of botulinum
which was presented by Washington and London as evidence of Saddam
Hussein's development and concealment of weapons of mass destruction.
This test tube was found in an Iraqi scientist's home refrigerator
where it has been for 10 years. That information came out just
yesterday. David Kay, the expert appointed by the CIA to lead the hunt
for weapons, told a congressional committee last week that the vial of
botulinum had been hidden in the scientist's home and could be used to
covertly surge production of deadly weapons. Since that time the
discovery of the vial has been at the heart of the debate over prewar
claims that Iraq had an arsenal of banned weapons.
This was cited in justifications of the invasion by President Bush and
by Britain's Foreign Secretary, who described this toxin as 15,000
times more toxic than the nerve Agent VX. Mr Straw claimed, after the
report came out, that it presented further conclusive and
incontrovertible evidence that Saddam had been in breach of the UN
resolutions, how dangerous and deceitful the regime was, and that the
military action was both justified and essential to remove the
dangers. Now we know that the scientist had been asked to hide the
botulinum in his refrigerator at home in 1993. So it is hardly likely
that this was the basis of a huge capability of Iraq to produce this
biological substance.
Since the war we have had the situation where enormous amounts of
money have had to be poured in to fix up the mess that has been left
behind in Iraq. The White House has ordered a major reorganisation of
American efforts to quell violence in Iraq and Afghanistan and to
speed up the reconstruction of both countries, according to senior
administration officials. This is news as of yesterday. The new effort
includes the creation of a so-called Iraq stabilisation group, $20
billion being required by the Bush administration for reconstruction
and $67 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. We
are seeing here a legacy of unrest and violence, and a destroyed
country that has recently been described by a US army physicist as a
toxic wasteland. There is so much depleted uranium and there are so
many chemical materials in Iraq-not from weapons of mass destruction
but because of the damage which has been done to various chemical
facilities in industry-that this is not a safe place for anyone to
live.
I think we have been misled, both in this place and more publicly.
While all of this has been going on, we have also seen the United
States step up its own weapons of mass destruction. On 7 August US
government scientists and Pentagon officials gathered at Nebraska Air
Force Base to discuss the development of a modernised arsenal of
small, specialised nuclear weapons. According to the New York Times of
3 August 2003:
The Pentagon believes that more than 70 nations, big and small, now
have some 1,400 underground command posts and sites for ballistic
missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
It further says that it wants to:
... develop a class of relatively small nuclear weapons ... that could
pierce rock and reinforced concrete and turn strongholds into
radioactive dust.
"With an effective earth penetrator, many buried targets could be
attacked," the administration said in its Nuclear Posture Review,
which it sent to Congress last year.
Back in April the United States produced a weapons grade plutonium
pit, the core of a fission bomb, for the first time in 14 years.
According to the Los Alamos National Laboratory:
... the move restores the nation's ability to make nuclear weapons and
was needed so the Energy Department could replace pits found unsafe or
destroyed through regular check-ups.
So, on the one hand, we have joined the United States in chasing some
non-existent weapons of mass destruction and, in the meantime, the
United States has pursued its own nuclear agenda with great gusto and
at great cost. I think that it is very likely that we are going to see
some of those nuclear weapons tested in the United States and, by all
accounts, some of those bunker-busters will need to be atmospheric.
According to reports that I have read, it is completely unfeasible to
test them underground.
We are now back in the realm of nuclear development, facing what I
think is the very frightening prospect of nuclear weapons
proliferation around the world-because it will not just stop with
America. America is certainly a superpower and has a great deal more
resources than any other country, and this is a very serious situation
we are currently facing with America being reluctant to contain its
own development of nuclear weapons of mass destruction. We are going
to see a backlash in both the Middle East and around the rest of the
world.
All in all, the attack on Iraq has been a gross failure. It has failed
to stop terrorism; it has failed to stop the proliferation of weapons.
It has destroyed a country and there is no end in sight to the unrest
and the mess that has been left behind there. The United States would
like the United Nations to come in and help clean up that mess but I
sincerely hope that the United States are not going to be relieved of
the responsibility that they have towards that country. I think
Australia should accept some of that responsibility as well because we
have joined the United States on the basis of something which has not
been proved and which cannot clearly be proved. I think it is a sorry
part of Australia's history and it is a great pity that our government
was not prepared to listen to its parliament and was not prepared to
bring to this place the decision to go to war, because it is quite
clear that it would have been defeated.
Many of us on this side of the chamber have spoken at length about why
this was an ill-conceived war and why we would be left with the kind
of mess that we currently are left with. The Democrats are pleased to
support this censure motion. I think that, if we have not seen good
sense come out of the government over this issue-that is, if we have
not seen honesty or clear answers provided to the many questions that
have been put about why we went with the US to this attack-it has not
been for want of trying in this place. I think the government should
take far more heed in the future of the kind of debate that the Senate
has typically had over this kind of action.
FOR YOUR INFORMATION PLEASE FIND COPY OF MY QUESTION BELOW
Q 1403 asked to Prime Minister on 22/04/2003 regarding Foreign
Affairs-Iraq almost six months lapsed
QUESTION To ask the Minister representing the Prime Minister-
(1) With reference to a claim made by the Prime Minister before the
war that only the threat of force by the United States of America (US)
allowed the United Nations Monitorings Verification and Inspection
Commission (UNMOVIC) weapons inspectors back into Iraq, and given that
it was the threat of force by Washington which pulled the weapons
inspectors out of Iraq in March 2003 before they could complete their
work (as in December 1998), does the Prime Minister now concede that
the threat of force failed again to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass
destruction.
(2) What is the Government's response to the claim of the Executive
Chairman of UNMOVIC, Dr Blix, that the US was guilty of 'fabricating'
evidence against Iraq to justify the war, and his belief that the
discovery of weapons of mass destruction had been replaced by the main
objective of the US of toppling Saddam Hussein (The Guardian, 12 April
2003).
(3) With reference to claims made by the Prime Minister before the war
that there was no doubt that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and
that that this was the primary reason for Australia's participation in
the 'coalition of the willing', what is the Prime Minister's position
now that, even after the collapse of the regime in Baghdad, no weapons
of mass destruction have been found despite United States Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's claim to know where they are.
(4) Given the Prime Minister's statements that 'regime change' was
only a secondary concern for Australia, does the Government agree that
the primary justification for the war may prove to be a lie.
(5) If, as the Prime Minister repeatedly claimed, Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction and Saddam Hussein could not be contained or
deterred, what is the Government's analysis of why they were not used
in the regime's terminal hours against the invading US, United Kingdom
and Australian forces.
(6) With reference to the Prime Minister's argument that stopping the
spread of weapons of mass destruction was a primary motive for
Australia's participation in a war against Iraq: (a) is the Government
concerned that one of the direct effects of the war may be the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to third parties,
including other so called 'rogue states' and possibly terrorist
groups, and (b) what analysis has the Government done of this
likelihood, and (c) can details be provided.
(7) Does the Prime Minister now regret saying just before the war (at
the National Press Club and elsewhere) that Saddam Hussein could stay
on in power providing he got rid of his weapons of mass destruction,
thus allowing him to continue the repression of Iraqis; if so, what
circumstances altered the Prime Minister's view.
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