Since it is now clear that WMD was only a pretext for the US to invade and occupy Iraq, what safeguards need to be in place to ensure that in future such a momentous decision is not left to one person or a small group? How can there be more accountability for such actions?

Peter Macdonald; Donna Mulhearn; Tony Abbott; Mike Hartnell

Tanya Plibersek: I think that one of the things that Australia’s involvement in the attack on Iraq showed was that there was a grave failure of the United States and its allies to even try to engage the United Nations and the world community in their project, and I hope that if there’s one significant change that comes about because of the continuing problems in Iraq, and the fact that the conflict there just continues and the United States is spending a lot more than it thought it would financially, and a lot more people, a lot more of their soldiers are dying than expected – if there’s one thing that comes out of that, I hope it will be that they don’t continue to march off unilaterally into adventures like they were going to have in Iraq.

There was a feeling, I think, before the war in Iraq, that there would be a domino effect, that Syria would be attacked next, and then North Korea. George Bush’s speech about the axis of evil alarmed many of us, who thought that this was part of a line-up of countries that were going to face similar treatment. I think that the fact that things haven’t gone well in Iraq at all, perhaps will give the United States pause for thought, and certainly should give our government pause for thought. The most important thing, I believe, we can do is continue to work with and support the United Nations, and if you look at what happened in East Timor, and what happened in Cambodia, it shows that there can be a very positive role for the United Nations in bringing peace to countries that look like they are absolute disaster zones, so I hope that that’s a lesson we’ll learn from Iraq.

Peter Macdonald: Could I just state at the outset that I’ ;m representing no political party here, I’m representing my community and the views that I express are my own and those derived from my working and moving within my community.

But in response to the question, I want to be quite clear in my views on this. I think this war was nothing about WMDs, it was all about oil. I think that’s one thing that has come through very clearly. (Applause) But let’s just paint a picture about this WMD issue, and there’s some recent reports that are emerging that are very troubling. I mean, David Kay report recently found no evidence of plans for a nuclear program, seven sites in Blair’s dossier of September ’02 that there was no evidence of suspicious activities, there was no sign of imported uranium, there were no traces of chemical weapons, biological weapons, etc invoked by Jack Straw. Also the British Joint Intelligence Committee, in their report of February the 10th of this year, found no evidence that Iraq was preparing chemical weapons to give to Al-Qaeda, that the collapse of Saddam’s regime would in fact increase the risk of such weapons going to terrorists, that Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah presented a greater threat to the west than Iraq, and that threat would increase if there was military action against Iraq. But John Howard agreed to the very opposite, and took us into that war. This is the nuts of this question, as to how, in fact, can we in the future try and provide accountability measures which will prevent such actions.

And can I just list a few of them if I have the time. Firstly, the media: we need an unbiased, free, independent, thoughtful media (Applause) but as we know, peace doesn’t sell newspapers, war sells newspapers. We need to find mechanisms for increasing the accountability within our parliamentary system, and that goes to the very heart of our democratic process, and how it works or how it doesn’t work. And remember, governments of whatever persuasion love to operate in secret, love an inner circle, they like to centralise power, and our task as a community is to encourage decentralisation of that power, and we need to have powerful committee structures which, for instance, they have in the US Congress; less bipartisanship, and a strong house of review.

Just finally, seven years of the Howard government have seen significant shift in foreign policy, away from an Asian-Pacific focus to the role of a deputy sheriff tied to America’s apron strings. This, combined with an administration that over seven years has been harsh, uncompromising, adversarial, and dishonest, has left us with few neighbours as friends. Maybe we need a Californian recall system, although we don’t need Arnold Schwarzenegger (Laughter) Maybe we just need an effective opposition. Thank you. (Applause)

Donna Mulhearn: I think we need to get Bush out, for a start. Very, very dangerous man, and his colleagues in his cabinet, very, very dangerous people. And we all know about the history of the people around him, who have been planning this war in Iraq for many, many years, and so this was just one of their many goals fulfilled that they had planned many years ago for their corporate motives. I think we need to help our friends in the United States to get Bush out, and I think they’re really working hard over there, our progressive-thinking friends in the United States are going to have a real shot at it next year, and I think we need to support them in that. And, the media I would like to mention as well, is a major player in this: they’re almost in partnership with the Bush administration in dumbing down the US people: it’s keeping people in ignorance, and keeping facts – the fact that they think Iraq is something to do with September 11 is really disturbing, really very disturbing, especially for me, who had to face Iraqi people who’d had their limbs blown off, and lost their family members, and for somehow them to have the accusation labelled that this is what you get back for September 11, just is the most unbelievably callous and offensive thing that anyone could say to someone sitting in a hospital bed who’s just had their house blown to pieces. So, it’s offensive, and it’s unbelievable that Bush can get away with making that link, which makes me really question what the people are getting and having dished up to them. We know that it’s mostly rubbish, and we are looking forward to the question about media coverage of the war, when we can talk more about that.

I think we really need to empower the UN. We now live in a situation in a world where one country thinks it can go and invade anyone it likes. That’s the reality that we live with. Now, I don’t know about you, but I think we need to do something about that very quickly, because I’m not very comfortable about that because we just don’t know what’s going to happen next. The UN needs to become a serious and credible organisation, and I know that’s mostly because of the United States thumbing its nose at it, that it’s not. But we need to insist that United States sign up to institutions such as the International Criminal Court, which – everyone used to say to me: “oh, so what’s your alternative to getting rid of Saddam Hussein, and that’s another talk in itself and we could talk for hours on that because there were many many alternatives, one of them being, if the US had signed on to the International Criminal Court we could have brought Saddam Hussein to answer for human rights abuses etc etc and made the democratic process go. But, who - other than a few tinpot dictatorships around the world, there was only one country that refused to sign, and that’s the United States of America.

So, I think as far as accountability and world affairs go, it’s all in the hands of those men in the White House, and that one woman in the White House. So, I think we need to work with our friends in the United States to get Bush out, and go from there. (Applause).

Tony Abbott: Thank you, Genia. I don’t exactly share the perspective of my fellow panellists this evening. I don’t believe that the weapons of mass destruction were a pretext at all. If you go back to the period before the war in Iraq, all sorts of people who are not normally friends of the Howard government, or friends of the Bush administration or friends of the Blair government said that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction. You have people like Richard Butler saying that they did have weapons of mass destruction. You have people like Andrew Wilkie saying that they did have weapons of mass destruction.

Now it’s true that so far only the ingredients of weapons of mass destruction have been found, not actual weapons, but under any interpretation, the Saddam Hussein regime was a deeply evil regime. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqis had been gravely persecuted, even unto death by the Saddam Hussein regime. He had poisoned his own people, he had invaded his neighbours, he had sponsored terrorism, both in Palestine and in other places, he had harboured Abu Nidal. While he may not have been Osama Bin Laden’s principal lieutenant, certainly he was an agent for mayhem in the wider world, and I think that we are all much the better off for his passing from polit ical power and influence.

As for the United Nations, well look, I think the United Nations is an important force in the world. I think that the United Nations has significant moral authority, it has significant legitimacy, but I do not believe that countries such as Australia should in the end be forced to subject themselves to the ultimate rule in these matters of the United Nations. There are many things which have been done by countries such as Australia, which have been good things which have not been sanctioned by the United Nations. For instance, the intervention by a number of powers, western powers, in Kosovo, in support of persecuted Muslims, was not sanctioned by the United Nations, and yet plainly it was a good thing. Supposingg Australia’s intervention in East Timor had not been sanctioned by the United Nations, would that have meant that it shouldn’t have happened – I would argue no, it would not have meant that it shouldn’t have happened. So look, by all means, let’s have the support of the United Nations where possible. By all means, let’s try to engage the United Nations in what we think and what like-minded countries think are important international issues of justice and peace, but in the end countries like Australia must maintain their right to act in support of their fundamental national interests and their fundamental national values. I regret that the United Nations did not in the end sanction the campaign in Iraq, but certainly I think that there were any number of United Nations resolutions that justified what countries like Australia, Britain and America did in Iraq.

Genia McCaffery: Thank you, Tony. Mike, would you like to respond to those answers.

Mike Hartnell: Three of the four speakers seem to agree that weapons of mass destruction were a pretense for us invading Iraq and one of the speakers doesn’t. I think that if we go into this we can see that we were all conned, basically. We were given false information and of course we as individuals have no way of verifying it for ourselves. We were told about weapons ready to use in forty five minutes. We were told about buying uranium from Niger. That was false, that was proven to be false before the war, and we didn’t change our course of action. We should have at least stopped to think as a community then.

Like Donna, I went to Iraq in February, and I met a lot of beautiful, wonderful Iraqi people, just like everybody here in this room, and talking to a group of Iraqis would be like talking to you. They’re lovely kind people with families and we bombed them. We bombed them under false pretences, in my view.

I’d like to say, constructively, that bring the United Nations into things is a terrific idea, and let’s face it, you might say that you agree with the United Nations, but our coalition really talked down the United Nations, and Mr Bush was saying it was irrelevant, and Mr Howard was just toeing the line. That’s what it appears to ordinary Australians, anyway. Peter, thank you very much for your really constructive suggestions. And to Donna, who is going back to the beautiful Iraqi people, let’s give her all of our support, they really are lovely people. Thank you. (Applause).

Genia: Thank you, Mike. And our second question comes from Jim Wilks ...

© NSPD 2003. Last modified 21/10/03.