Howard's Iraq evidence on parade in UK

By Mark Riley, Political Correspondent
June 16 2003

The Howard Government will be dragged into a potentially explosive 
British parliamentary inquiry into the doctoring of intelligence on 
Iraq after a former Australian defence analyst was unexpectedly called 
to give evidence.  

Andrew Wilkie, formerly with the Office of National Assessments (ONA), 
will use his appearance this week to tip a bucket on the Government's 
use of the now-suspect intelligence to justify Australia's role in the 
war.  

Mr Wilkie said he would expose the Government's "exaggeration" of 
intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and "concoction" of links 
between Saddam Hussein and terrorists.  

"Australia went to war with the US and UK, without international 
endorsement, on the basis of what our Prime Minister described as a 
massive weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq," he told the 
Herald before leaving for London yesterday.  

"That claim was obviously false. There is no doubt that Iraq did have 
weapons at one time and something will eventually be found and 
dressed up as justification, but it won't be anything of the magnitude 
we were led to believe existed."  

The development comes as Labor prepares a push this week for a 
parliamentary inquiry into the gathering, analysis and use of 
intelligence before the war.  

The Prime Minister, John Howard, has been dismissive of calls for an 
investigation, but now faces a combined front of Opposition and minor 
party numbers that could at least force a Senate inquiry.  

Mr Howard has recently begun deflecting any blame for manipulation of 
intelligence from himself and towards the US and British governments 
by asserting that no doctoring had been done by "the Government I 
lead".  

He also called last week for patience amid rising anger over the failure 
of the US-led forces to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  

But Mr Howard was emphatic in his declaration of the threat of such 
weapons in arguing the case for war, telling the nation in a televised 
address on March 12 that Iraq held "chemical and biological weapons 
capable of causing death and destruction on a mammoth scale".  

He had also emphasised the link between Saddam and terrorists, telling 
Parliament on the first day of the war, March 20: "We do worry about 
the ultimate and fateful coming together of weapons of mass destruction 
and international terrorism."  

Mr Wilkie said he would tell the British inquiry that Australia's 
presentation of its case for war exhibited "at least an intelligence 
failure and at worst government dishonesty".  

"Our Prime Minister needs to be called to account just as much as Blair 
and Bush," he said. "For him to now blame it all on foreign intelligence 
is not good enough, because all that intelligence was filtered through 
Australian agencies."  

Mr Wilkie resigned from the ONA on March 11 and embarrassed the 
Government by going public with his concerns as Mr Howard was 
preparing to deliver a major speech on Iraq to the National Press Club.  

As Mr Howard argued his case for war, Mr Wilkie countered that Iraq's 
weapons of mass destruction program was "at best disjointed and 
contained", its conventional weapons capability was "very weak", and 
there was no intelligence linking Saddam Hussein with Osama bin 
Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network.  

"I think my case is standing up a bit better now than the Government's," 
he said yesterday.  

The Government has played down Mr Wilkie's role in the assessment of 
intelligence on Iraq, saying he was involved only in humanitarian issues. 

The British foreign affairs select committee approached Mr Wilkie last 
Thursday to provide an international perspective to its inquiry into 
allegations that the Blair Government fabricated intelligence on Iraq.  

Senior British ministers have already conceded that the "dodgy dossier" 
claiming Iraq could have activated weapons of mass destruction within 
45 minutes was misleading. Mr Blair has been accused of misleading 
Parliament by presenting the dossier as fact.  

Also at the weekend, a British investigation into two trailers found in 
northern Iraq has concluded that they are not mobile germ warfare labs, 
as claimed by Mr Howard, Mr Blair and the US President, George Bush. 

Instead, the inspectors found, they were used to produce hydrogen for  
artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have maintained.

                           -==-

Source: Sydney Morning Herald ...
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/15/1055615677793.html


Cheers, Steve..

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