SYDNEY/BAGHDAD, 3 June 2008 — All the arguments Australia used to justify sending troops to fight in Iraq proved to be wrong, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told parliament yesterday as he fulfilled an election vow to bring them home. Rudd, who ousted long-term conservative leader John Howard last November, was fiercely critical of the process that took Australia into the war.
Howard had presented four reasons for joining the US-led invasion in March 2003, Rudd said as a 550-strong Australian combat force began pulling out of the shattered country. He then clinically listed, and dismissed, each of the arguments.
“Have further terrorist attacks been prevented? No, they have not been, as the victims of the Madrid train bombing will attest,” he said. “Has any evidence of a link between weapons of mass destruction and the former Iraqi regime and terrorists been found? No. After five years, has the humanitarian crisis in Iraq been removed? No it has not.”
Rudd said he was particularly concerned about how the decision to go to war had been made, citing “the abuse of intelligence information.” He said there had been a “failure to disclose to the Australian people the qualified nature of the intelligence — for example, the pre-war warning that an attack on Iraq would increase the terrorist threat, not decrease it.”
Meanwhile, an Iraqi government spokesman said yesterday Iraq wants to discuss evidence of Iranian intervention in Iraq and the two countries’ overall relationship during a visit to Tehran this week by Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki.
Maliki’s government treads a fine line in its relations with Iran, accused by the United States of supporting Shiite militias in Iraq while at the same time seeking support from its neighbor.
