Australia joined the US-led invasion of Iraq, one of the most contentious decisions of John Howard’s prime ministership, without a formal cabinet submission setting out a full analysis of the risks.

Cabinet papers published by the National Archives on Monday show the full cabinet signed off on the decision on 18 March 2003 based on “oral reports by the prime minister”.

The record of the cabinet’s decision contains no mention of any doubt about Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s continued possession of weapons of mass destruction. This key justification for the war fell away after months of failed searches after the invasion.

“The cabinet further noted that Australia’s goal in participating in any military enforcement action would be disarmament of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction,” the document said.

A month earlier, Howard told parliament: “The Australian government knows that Iraq still has chemical and biological weapons and that Iraq wants to develop nuclear weapons.”

But a comprehensive US report later concluded that Iraq had destroyed its last weapons of mass destruction more than a decade before the March 2003 invasion and its capacity to build new ones had been dwindling for years.

Australia’s preparedness to join the “coalition of the willing” assembled by the then US president, George W Bush, and backed by the UK prime minister, Tony Blair, was highly controversial at the time.

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Australian cities in February 2003 – a month before the formal decision – to protest against the Iraq war.

A future MP, Andrew Wilkie, resigned from the Office of National Assessments in protest on 11 March 2003. When Howard announced the government’s decision one week later, the then Labor leader, Simon Crean, said it was “a black day for Australia”.

Many of the government’s key strategic calls appear to have been made by the cabinet’s secretive national security committee (NSC), whose records have not been released.

But the cabinet documents show that Howard took the matter to his full cabinet for endorsement on 18 March 2003. This occurred without detailed paperwork.

“There was no submission to cabinet on costs, benefits and implications of Australia’s entry into the war,” associate professor David Lee from the University of NSW Canberra wrote in an essay on the 2003 cabinet papers.

“This was notwithstanding the fact that the Iraq commitment was, in Howard’s words, ‘the most controversial foreign policy decision taken by my government in the almost 12 years it held office’. This indicates that cabinet’s national security committee was the locus of decision-making on the war.”

Howard later wrote in his book Lazarus Rising: “The NSC had been meeting regularly on Iraq, but I wanted full cabinet endorsement of a final decision to commit to the invasion.”

The six-page cabinet minute from 18 March 2003 said Howard briefed his ministers on his “extensive discussions over a period of time” with Bush and Blair “concerning the disarmament of Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and the possible use of force against Iraq if it failed to disarm”.

Howard told the cabinet he had received a call from Bush earlier the same day to formally request “that Australia participate in military action by a coalition to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction”.

Bush told Howard the US would issue a “final ultimatum” to Iraq very soon. Within two days, the war was in full swing.

Ministers “noted an oral briefing” from the then chief of the ADF, Peter Cosgrove, and chief of the air force, Angus Houston, about the readiness of the Australian forces already “pre-deployed” to the Middle East.

This briefing apparently included “possible risks of military action in Iraq, including the risks to Iraqi and other civilians and to the various elements of the contingent as well as the scope for risk mitigation” – but the details are not recorded in the cabinet minute.

Ministers relied on a number of past UN security council resolutions as providing, in the words of the cabinet minute, “clear authority for the use of force against Iraq”.

But Crean and other critics argued Australia should only act if the UN security council passed a new resolution specifically authorising military action.

The UN’s then secretary general, Kofi Annan, would later describe the US-led war on Iraq as “not in conformity with the UN charter” and “illegal” under international law.

Howard’s cabinet backed the rationale that Iraq’s behaviour “weakens the global prohibitions on the spread of weapons of mass destruction, with the potential to damage gravely Australia’s security”.

Robert Hill, the defence minister at the time, recalled that the likelihood of a US military operation had been building since late 2002.

“We weren’t formally asked to participate until the last moment, but we sensed the likelihood that we would be asked, and we obviously were doing a lot of work on what that would mean and what would be the appropriate Australian contribution,” Hill said in an interview on the release of the cabinet papers.

He said he believed the government made the right decision “on the information that was available at the time”. He said Saddam had had weapons of mass destruction in the past and the issue was “whether he’d gotten rid of them”.

Asked whether it was now clear the decision was flawed, Hill said: “Now we know he didn’t have the weapons of mass destruction. Well, that would have been a different information base from which to make a decision.”

On Monday the acting Greens leader, Nick McKim, will denounce the Iraq war as “one of the worst foreign policy disasters in Australian history” and will call on the government to reform war powers.

McKim will say preventing governments from deploying the ADF to overseas conflicts without a binding vote of parliament will ensure no Australian prime minister can “repeat a mistake like Iraq without basic democratic oversight”.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/01/australia-went-to-war-in-iraq-based-on-oral-reports-to-cabinet-from-john-howard

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Alexander Downer, who served as foreign minister during the invasion of Iraq, has backed Anthony Albanese’s call for as many cabinet documents as possible relating to the Iraq War to be released as the prime minister backed an investigation into whether a cover-up had taken place.

Albanese slammed the failure to release key documents relating to the lead-up to the war to the National Archives three years ago and the fact the documents were only discovered just before Christmas.

Speaking at his first press conference of the year, Albanese said there was no reason why the documents should not be made public, “with the exception of putting people in danger”, and vowed a report into the circumstances by former spy chief Dennis Richardson would be released within the fortnight.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/live-prime-minister-anthony-albanese-speaks-from-sydney-20240103-p5euv2.html

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SEE ALSO: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/11276

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard has visited on Australia the whole spectre of terrorism, through his craven and ill-judged support of the United States and its invasion of Iraq. Now we live perpetually with the spectre of terrorism and racial strife, visited upon us by his prejudices and lack of judgment.

This statement was made in 2016.

John Howard’s stubborn and unctuous denial of his responsibility in committing Australian troops to the assault on Iraq, should be held in contempt by every thinking Australian.

Howard decided to support President George W Bush, notwithstanding that there was never any linkage between the attacks of 11 September 2001 in New York and the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The singular cause to which John Howard committed Australia, by his own admission, was the presence of so-called weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein.

There was never any evidence that such weapons existed and that fact was established following the exhaustive UN investigation led by Hans Blix.

Bob Hawke and I committed forces to the first Iraq war in 1991, because Saddam Hussein had invaded another country, Kuwait, and because the war against Iraq was to be conducted under a UN mandateaement. The objective of that mandate was to check the Hussein regime. It was not about regime change.

Could you imagine the woebetidings of Howard and the Liberal Party, had it been Hawke or I who had committed Australia to such an un-mandated assault on another country? We would never have heard the end of it. The Liberals would have been ringing their hands for decades.

The incompetent management of Iraq following the invasion, fractured that country and with it, Syria and the region around it, casting millions adrift from their lives and homes. A sea of refugees. Yet Howard has no shame of it. And no responsibility.

During his prime ministership, his party was advertising that people should be aware of the risk of terrorism. And invited people to pin such official warnings on their fridges with magnets.
We need more than magnets now.

Howard has visited on Australia the whole spectre of terrorism, through his craven and ill-judged support of the United States and its invasion.

Australian was perhaps the most successful multicultural society in the world, including the settlement of a large Muslim population.

John Howard put the torch to that.

Now we live perpetually with the spectre of terrorism and racial strife, visited upon us by his prejudices and lack of judgment.

In the face of the Chilcot Report, John Howard should atone for his actions and those of his government. He should, at least, hang his head in shame.

Statement by PJ Keating, Sydney 7 July 2016.

https://johnmenadue.com/the-chilcot-report-and-howards-obfuscation/

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What has changed since 2003? Nothing, except for the worse. Australian governments continue to accept the US enemies as their own, and shoot whoever the sheriff says.

All but two of the missing Iraq War Cabinet papers have now been released to the long-suffering public. But those of us who remember the Howard government’s secretive, year-long slither towards the Iraq invasion know the lies Australians were told in 2002 and 2003. We weren’t waiting for the National Archives to reveal them.

Some surprises may lurk in the two documents still suppressed for ‘national security’ reasons, and in papers from 2001 and 2002 that have yet to appear. What’s most important is unlikely to be revealed, however, because Howard preferred no paper trail, and didn’t want Cabinet submissions to leave one.

Howard’s conversations with President George W Bush are not recorded. Senior Defence people didn’t tell him the case for war against Saddam Hussein wouldn’t stand up, because he didn’t ask them. Relatively junior DFAT and AG’s officials told him it did, deliberately misreading UN Security Council Resolutions to support their claim that Iraq was in ‘material breach’. ONA suddenly changed from telling the PM no intelligence showed that Iraq had WMD, to providing him with media reports that it did.

Citizens everywhere protested against the illegal invasion and were ignored. The result for Australia in 2003 was a cheap defeat in Iraq, with only four ADF deaths, followed by decades of terrorist attacks, repressive laws, invigilation and securitisation in Australia. Howard after 11 September 2001 committed Australia to the endless ‘war on terror’, with continuing ADF deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and devastation in all three countries.

Graeme Dobell departs in his 15 March article from ASPI’s usual line, to show what Howard’s priorities were. Masterful blunder: John Howard’s Iraq war-of-choice | The Strategist (aspistrategist.org.au). Howard mentioned Australia’s decision to join the war on terror first, and the alliance with the US second. But the latter, Dobell makes clear, was what had priority in Howard’s foreign and defence decisions, as it has with all our governments since.

What has changed since 2003? Nothing, except for the worse. Australian governments continue to accept the US enemies as their own, and shoot whoever the sheriff says. Since about 2014, Australia has become increasingly suspicious and hostile towards China and Russia. After the Defence Strategic Review of that year, Australia quietly handed over significant tranches of sovereignty over Australian territory, placing it under American control for American purposes, and enabling the US ‘unimpeded access’ for its troops, aircraft, ships, and weapons.

Australia’s anti-China garrison in the Northern Territory expanded in the face of local protestors (who were ignored, or prosecuted). In 2022 Anthony Albanese unhesitatingly signed on to his predecessor’s unworkable AUKUS deal. Australia surrendered more sovereignty over the entry and deployment of US bombers, possibly armed with nuclear weapons. In 2023 Penny Wong adopted the Japanese formula, that Australia wouldn’t ask and wouldn’t be told what bombs the US had onboard, or what it might do with them.

China, whose largesse had been gratefully accepted just a few years earlier by Australian universities and businesses, were transformed into targets of hostility and suspicion. China was accused of allowing COVID to spread. Trade embargoes followed. Incidents, provoked or not, multiplied over our shared maritime trade routes. Laws against ‘agents of foreign influence’ targeted Chinese and their Australian associates. We are now told by ASIO that they include an un-named politician (who remains at large).

As always, this creeping change in Australian foreign and defence policy was inspired from the US, through the Five Eyes and our multiple consultative groups, while long-nurtured official and unofficial contacts with China withered and died. Trust is about more than wine and barley: it has been betrayed and will take years of effort on both sides to fully restore. Our Foreign Minister’s meeting with her Chinese counterpart will help, and lower the drawbridge for Albanese and Xi.

The greatest danger facing Australia is not from China but from the US under a new president who, wanting to appear strong, may provoke an attack over Taiwan or the South China Sea. To avoid involvement in yet another war, the US could press Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia into joining a coalition. When that fails, as it undoubtedly will, the US can retreat across the Pacific, leaving its allies, as in Ukraine, to cope with the consequences.

Whoever is president is likely to want two things: unimpeded capacity to send US forces to war at will, and, restoration of the US to the hegemonic ‘greatness’ it once imagined it had. President Biden’s war in Yemen has now outlived the 60-day limit required for Congressional approval. Repeated efforts to strengthen the 1973 War Powers Resolution have failed in Congress. Propelling successive presidents towards more wars is the gargantuan military industry, backed by the gun lobby and their supporters in the mainstream media.

Much the same is true in Australia. As the international weapons companies buy up big, and penetrate our schools and universities, their expensive ways to kill the enemies of the US have precedence over health, social services, and the preservation of our environment. Former Australian politicians take well-paid jobs with them, ensuring that Canberra stays attached to the killing machine.
Now is Australia’s key moment, before it’s too late. If the government doesn’t want to be charged with war crimes and complicity in genocide, let alone to fight another war, it should have four immediate priorities:

• Advise the US and UK that AUKUS is unachievable and cancel it.
• Advise the US that Australia will not join a coalition for an illegal war against China.
• Make an Australian submission, together with Canada and New Zealand if possible, to the International Court of Justice dissociating us from genocide in Gaza.
• Begin consulting with civil society groups and our ASEAN neighbours about neutrality, armed or unarmed, for Australia.

After all, we’ve restored our aid to UNWRA. From now, more daring un-Americanism is possible.

https://johnmenadue.com/australias-moment-of-choice-illegal-war-on-show-in-2003-cabinet-papers/

SEE ALSO: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/11276

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