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Australian Prime Minister John Howard in Canberra Monday highlighted his image of the liberator of the Iraqi people by dodging the question of whether or not the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was dubious.
The Australian Associated Press quoted the prime minister as saying, "Every day that uncovers more mass graves is a demonstration that there's a huge humanitarian and moral dividend out of what took place and that it was right."
Former US State Department official Greg Thielmann was quoted as saying the Australian government knew the US State Department had doubted intelligence claims that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons.
The Howard government used these dubious intelligence to support the deployment of more than 2,000 troops to Iraq and fought the war along with the US and British forces. Howard said at the parliament on Feb. 4 that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.
Now, Howard denied he knew the United States doubted the intelligence claims.
Opposition leader Simon Crean asked him to explain, saying "The prime minister has a lot of explaining to do because he told the parliament that there was evidence of Iraq getting nuclear capacity through Africa-Niger in particular."
Most of observers here believed that it was not weapons of mass destruction, nor liberation of the Iraqi People, pushed the country into Iraq. On June 23, famous political analyst Paul Kelly noted, "Australia went into Iraq because of its alliance with the United States, not because of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and not to liberate its people."
(Xinhua News Agency July 7, 2003)
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