Honoring Israel's apologists

Sonja Karkar, The Electronic Intifada, 7 May 2007

Greg Sheridan

Every now and then, journalists who have shown excellence in their work are rewarded. A prize that recognises their investigative skills and critical thinking is a worthy achievement; a prize that rewards them for using their profession to "conspicuously" support a foreign state in conflict, is not. Rather, it raises questions about their impartiality, good judgment and integrity. Their professionalism can no longer be trusted.

It happened in Australia this past week. Greg Sheridan, billed as "the most influential foreign affairs analyst in Australian journalism" by his newspaper The Australian was awarded the annual Jerusalem Prize by the State Zionist Council of NSW. According to its president Frank Levy, "The prize is awarded to someone who fosters and supports the state of Israel and its ideologies, the concept of the Jewish homeland and the Jewish community, particularly in Australia."

Sheridan saw nothing wrong in accepting the prize, but many Australians did. In fact, Sheridan wrote a loose article "Rare support for democracy in a sea of misunderstanding" (The Australian, 3 May 2007) in response to the mail he received urging him not to accept the prize and was at great pains to explain that he had not compromised his independence as a commentator because he believed Israel -- quoting the former pro-Israel president of Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid -- "is a democracy in a sea of misunderstanding."

Anxious to justify his position, Sheridan referred to the illustrious recipients of the prize worldwide including our own Liberal Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and a former Labor lord mayor of Sydney and current NSW minister, Frank Sartor. Sheridan wanted to make sure that bipartisan support for Israel in Australia was really understood and he pointed to both Liberal Prime Minister Howard and Labor Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd as avid supporters of Israel's democracy.

After all the names Sheridan dropped to validate his own selection for the prize, Israel's democracy emerged as the prime reason for Sheridan's unquestioning support, not because it is perfect, but because being anti-Israel is "fundamentally irrational and evidence of psychological and ideological dysfunction rather than genuine analysis."

There is no room in Sheridan's argument for an irrational and dysfunctional Israel and the ideology in which it is rooted. If any of its actions are mistakes that should be understood because "any democratic nation makes plenty of mistakes and sometimes it makes moral mistakes." But, he does not allow for other forms of government and leaders to make mistakes. Sheridan raises Saddam's responsibility for the killing of 300,000 to 400,000 of his own citizens: he does not mention that Israel slipped through the legal and moral net without condemnation when it deliberately killed hundreds of Palestinians and terrorised some 750,000 others to flee their homes and homeland in 1948.

Sheridan's snapshot look at history gives an out-of-context account of Israel's birth, ignoring the well-documented massacres and complete razing of Palestinian villages and towns that Israel executed to gain a permanent foothold in all of Palestine. None of that is in the least justified by Sheridan's statement that "there have always been Jews in Palestine." Indeed, it would have been helpful for him to point out that most of those Jews who lived in Palestine over the centuries were in fact Palestinians. Just like there are Palestinians who are Christians, and of course, Muslims. The European Jews filtered in when they fled persecution in Christian Spain in the Middle Ages, but it was not until modern times that the European Jewish population in Palestine swelled in number after Zionists forced their mass exodus to Palestine in the aftermath of the European holocaust. This was the realisation of the great Zionist colonialist experiment that had no predilection for democracy.

There was nothing fair about the partition that created Israel, giving the minority European Jewish population a greater portion of the land belonging to the majority Palestinian population. And there has been no fairness for the Palestinians since, despite Sheridan raising the old canard of Barak's "generous" offer. The 95 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza that Sheridan says was offered to the Palestinians was once again not put in context.

For years, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) had called for a two-state solution agreeing to Israel keeping 78 per cent of the former British-mandated Palestine while the Palestinians would form their state on the remaining 22 per cent that Israel has occupied since the 1967 war. At Camp David 2000, Barak's offer actually amounted to only a bare 8.3 per cent of the original Palestinian homeland from which they had been driven in 1948. In exchange for withdrawing completely from Gaza as well as the offer of a small piece of land in the Negev Desert that Israel had used as a toxic waste dump, Israel would annex the most fertile and strategically important areas of the West Bank while maintaining control over the Palestinian state's borders, air space and the land's scarce water resources -- and with Israel's military free to intervene at any time. Effectively, what was offered were four non-contiguous parcels of land which would force Palestinians to cross Israeli territory every time they travelled or shipped their goods between each other and with no free access to their own international borders with Jordan and Egypt. Had Arafat agreed to this, he would have effectively waived any further Palestinian claims against Israel. That would have been political suicide for the Palestinians already being subjected to these Orwellian restrictions.

Moving on, Sheridan says that Israel made this "generous" offer in exchange for a peace that would accept Israel's legitimacy. Because Arafat refused, Sheridan then makes the quantum leap to deduce that Arafat "had never accepted that Israel had a right to exist at all." Nowhere does Sheridan explain that all the while these negotiations were taking place, Israel's illegal settlement expansionism was still going on. In fact, the Israeli bureau of statistics reported that settlement building had increased 81 percent in the first quarter of 2000. (Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories, 11-12/00) Nowhere does Sheridan describe the nightly military raids into Palestinian cities, towns and villages, the killings, home demolitions, arrests, humiliations and indignities suffered by the Palestinian population. Nowhere does he mention the frenzied attacks by the Israeli settlers, who have no moral qualms about allowing their children to hurl stones and abuse at Palestinian women and children as they try to make their way to school or home. Instead, he asks the reader to empathise with the Israelis who he says are forced to defend themselves from the constant threats and attacks driven by "hate-filled and anti-Semitic propaganda designed to make schoolchildren despise the Jews." Israel's democracy, therefore, has an excuse for war; Palestinians under occupation have none.

For an experienced foreign affairs journalist, Sheridan shows an amazing reluctance to examine the realities of Israel's "democracy" at work. His article relies on the same old and now-debunked myths and arguments that no self-respecting journalist ought to employ. Even if Sheridan is convinced that "Israel is a democracy in good standing" he ought to be asking for whom? Israel has made no secret of its intention to be a Jewish state only, so it is no wonder that Israel's 1.2 million Palestinian citizens -- the survivors and descendants of the 1948 Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine -- see themselves increasingly isolated and alienated from Israeli society. It won't be long before Israel will have to declare its hand: is it "a state of the Jewish people throughout the world" as it defines itself, or a state of all its citizens, both Jewish and non-Jewish? Perhaps Sheridan sees this as yet another issue that must be left for Israel's "vibrant, genuine problem-solving democracy" to solve. In the meantime, Sheridan should indeed congratulate himself on the "great honour" of being awarded the Jerusalem Prize for no other reason than having supported Israel so "conspicuously".

Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia.

I'm gagged too, says Terry Hicks

By Verity Edwards
April 03, 2007 01:00am


DFAT gagged me, claims Mr Hicks
'This is Big Brother'
Mr Hicks's claims have been denied

THE father of admitted terrorist David Hicks claimed yesterday he had been gagged from revealing facts about his son's five-year incarceration in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Terry Hicks said the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had written to him outlining the 12-month gag order issued to his son as part of his plea bargain to serve only nine more months in jail, mostly in Australia.

Mr Hicks said the letter - outlining how his son could not be interviewed, write a book or make a film about his time as an enemy combatant - detailed the restrictions on what the Hicks family could reveal about their conversations with David.

"This is Big Brother and because the Americans and the Australian Government coalesce on David's charges, at this point in time we're ruled by them," Mr Hicks said from his Adelaide workplace yesterday.

"If David tells us something, we can't pass it on.

"But I could still talk about the signing of his charges, things like he hasn't been abused."

A DFAT spokesman "adamantly and vehemently" denied Mr Hicks's claims. "We have not written to Terry Hicks since the verdict," the spokesman said.

"We communicated via email to his sister and provided two publicly available documents."

It is understood DFAT emailed Mr Hicks's daughter Stephanie, providing a statement of facts and a copy of Hicks's pre-trial agreement.

Mr Hicks said his son's legal team was examining the contents of the letter.

Hicks's Adelaide-based lawyer, David McLeod, did not return calls.

Mr Hicks said he would continue to speak to the media but did not want to jeopardise the Australian jail term imposed on his son. He rejected suggestions that his son could pose a threat to national security when released in late December.

"David wouldn't hurt a bloody fly at the moment," he said. "David never did any harm to anyone when he was over there anyway. He wasn't armed, he hadn't fired a shot at any coalition forces.

"The only danger David is to anyone is to come back to Australia and probably have to go on the dole because he might find it hard to get a job."

The 31-year-old Australian pleaded guilty in a plea bargain with US authorities last Monday to providing material support to terrorists.

The federal Attorney-General's Department has notified the South Australian Correctional Services department that Hicks has applied to be transferred to Adelaide.

Under the International Transfer of Prisoners Act, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock must ask for supporting documents from US authorities before seeking approval from state Correctional Services Minister Carmel Zollo.

Mr Hicks is yet to hear whether the federal Government will apply for a control order to govern his son's release.

An Australian Federal Police spokesman said it would be inappropriate to comment "on someone who may or may not be subject to control orders".

The South Australian Liberal Party released plans yesterday to introduce a private member's bill to prevent convicted terrorists from profiting from their stories.

"David Hicks, who has admitted his guilt, has a right to tell his story and the media have every right to ask for it," Liberal frontbencher Martin Hamilton-Smith said.

"But if money is involved, the victims of terrorism should be the recipients, not Mr Hicks."

A spokesman for state Attorney-General Michael Atkinson said it was an issue for the federal Government to consider, not the state.

I feared they'd shoot me, Hicks said before gag

Mark Coultan Herald Correspondent at Guantanamo Bay and AAP

April 3, 2007

DAVID HICKS feared he would be shot if he did not co-operate with US interrogators, the Australian prisoner says in an affidavit for an English court case.

And his Australian lawyer says he was tortured during his time at Guantanamo Bay, contradicting Hicks's plea bargain statement, in which he said he had not been mistreated by the US.

Hicks, who has spent five years in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after he was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001, last week pleaded guilty to a charge of giving material support to terrorists.

In the plea bargain document, Hicks said: "I have never been illegally treated by any person or persons while in the custody of the United States."

But the ABC's Four Corners last night reported that Hicks had recently signed an affidavit for an English court setting out ill treatment.

"I realised that if I did not cooperate with US interrogators, I might be shot," the ABC quoted Hicks as saying.

In the affidavit Hicks also claims that he was slapped, kicked, punched and spat on in Afghanistan, the ABC reported.

He could hear other detainees screaming in pain, saw the marks of their beatings and had a shotgun trained on him during interrogation.

Hicks says in the affidavit that by early 2003, he "felt that I had to ensure that whatever I did pleased the interrogators to keep from being physically abused, placed in isolation and remaining at Guantanamo for the rest of my life", the ABC reported.

He also details twice being taken off a US warship, flown to an unknown location and physically abused by US personnel for a total of 16 hours, although two US investigations have found that claim unsubstantiated.

The allegations were made in a document which was to have been presented to an appeal in London against the British Government's refusal to grant him citizenship.

In this he says he had been repeatedly hit on the back of a head with a rifle, slapped on the head, spat on, kicked, stepped on by troops and punched in the temple. He also claims that a piece of plastic had been forced into his rectum "for no apparent reason".

Hicks's Australian lawyer, David McLeod, made the torture allegation when asked about further interrogations that Hicks has agreed to undergo before he left Guantanamo Bay.

As part of his plea bargain, Hicks signed a document saying he would co-operate "fully, completely and truthfully in post-trial briefings and interviews".

Asked on Sunday about these interviews, Mr McLeod said: "Steps were taken this morning to introduce David to the interrogators here at Guantanamo and there will be a process which will unfold before he leaves. He will be asked to co-operate in a number of issues, but we don't see any problems."

When asked if this would take the same format as his previous interrogations, Mr McLeod said: "Well, hopefully without the torture this time."

His statement was provocative, given that Hicks is still waiting to be transferred to Australia.

Mr McLeod was able to speak more freely than Hicks's American lawyers because he was not a signatory to the plea bargain. Only US lawyers are allowed to represent the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Plea deal gets Australian nine months on terror charges

A military jury decided on a seven-year sentence but was preempted.

By Carol J. Williams
Times Staff Writer

March 31, 2007

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA — Detainee David Hicks will be home in Australia within two months and will be free before New Year's Eve despite a decision Friday by the first U.S. war-crimes tribunal here that he should serve seven years in prison in his homeland.

Under a secret plea bargain, all but nine months of Hicks' sentence on one count of providing material support for terrorism is to be suspended.

The 31-year-old Hicks, who has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years, secured the reduced sentence by promising he would never allege he was mistreated in U.S. custody and would cooperate with prosecutors in any future civilian or military trials of other terrorism suspects.

The deal that rendered moot the sentence imposed by an eight-member military panel appeared likely to draw more criticism of the Pentagon's detention and trial operations here, because it suggested political influence had been exerted on the case and because it exposed a potential flaw in the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Commission rules prohibit the judge from telling the sentencing panel that an agreement exists that would preempt their decision.

Ten senior military officers were summoned to Guantanamo by the civilian convening authority, Susan J. Crawford, and flew in via Washington on Friday from posts around the globe to sentence Hicks.

Two of the 10 were dismissed: The prosecutor, Marine Lt. Col. Kevin Chenail, used a peremptory challenge against the only woman, an Air Force lieutenant colonel with a law degree; and the defense attorney, Marine Maj. Michael Mori, used a peremptory challenge against a Navy captain who indicated he got his news from the Fox News Channel.

The military judge, Marine Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann, told the commission members that a maximum sentence of seven years could be applied to this case in exchange for the guilty plea that Hicks entered Monday. The charge ordinarily could carry as much as a life sentence.

Chenail gave an impassioned closing statement casting Hicks as a dangerous Al Qaeda asset capable of blending into Western society and bent on killing Americans.

He invoked the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the profound changes they had brought in urging the jurors to give Hicks the maximum of seven years.

Mori portrayed his client as a ninth-grade dropout who wanted to be a soldier and went abroad in pursuit of a misguided idea of armed service.

Hicks was no asset to the terrorists in Afghanistan, Mori said, but rather became scared, ran amok and abandoned his post.

The panel spent two hours deciding a sentence. Kohlmann thanked them for their service without informing them of the pretrial agreement.

Because the jurors traveled here on such short notice and returned the maximum sentence so swiftly, they might look askance at the convening authority's consent to the much lighter sentence.

But none of them are allowed to speak to the media, commissions spokeswoman Army Maj. Beth Kubala said after the case concluded.

By court rules, they cannot be identified other than by rank and branch of service.

Hicks' case was the first before the newly reconstituted trial forum, which replaces one deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court last year. His trial was set before all the rules and procedures had been worked out by congressional liaisons and the Pentagon, after Australian Prime Minister John Howard applied diplomatic pressure on the Bush administration to try Hicks or release him.

Howard's Liberal Party has suffered from a perception among Australians that his government has done too little to rescue a countryman from more than five years of U.S. imprisonment.

Charges against Hicks were filed less than a week after Vice President Dick Cheney visited Australia and Howard, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, made clear the Hicks case was hurting his party's electoral chances.

Human rights advocates criticized the plea deal as perverting a judicial process.

"What we've seen is a rush to trial that gives the appearance that this is about politics, not justice," said Jumana Musa of Amnesty International.

Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch said the U.S. government's main interest appeared to have been to enjoin Hicks from ever alleging he was mistreated in U.S. custody.

Under his agreement, Hicks is prohibited from speaking to the media for a year, he must give the Australian government any proceeds from books or other accounts of his experiences, and he may not bring legal action against any U.S. service member or citizen.

On Friday morning, before the commission members arrived from Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, Kohlmann accepted the plea Hicks entered Monday and pronounced him guilty of one element of a charge of providing material support for terrorism.

On each of 35 allegations, Hicks was asked whether he understood the accusation and agreed that the government probably could prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. He admitted to training at Al Qaeda camps, guarding a Taliban tank in Afghanistan, casing the empty U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital, and other acts in support of the designated terrorist organizations.

Hicks, who appeared in the courtroom Monday unshaven and with straggly chest-length hair, sported a neat new hairstyle Friday and wore a close-fitting gray suit. Kohlmann quizzed him on whether he was coerced into pleading guilty, and he answered politely and calmly that he was not.

The plea deal guarantees that Hicks will be transferred to Australian custody within 60 days of sentencing and probably much sooner, Mori told reporters after the terms were made public. Hicks is still designated an enemy combatant and will remain at his cell in the maximum-security Camp 6 until transfer, officials said.

The 35-point charge sheet presented to the commission members was a modification of the original indictment. All references to a connection with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were omitted, as were mention of Hicks discussing with Al Qaeda members his willingness to commit an act of martyrdom and his reported associations with notorious suspects including so-called American Taliban John Walker Lindh and Briton Richard Reid, the would-be "shoe bomber."

The revised list of accusations suggested Hicks' contacts with Al Qaeda were limited and low-level. An earlier clause accusing Hicks of having "expressed his approval" of the Sept. 11 attacks was changed to state that Hicks had no foreknowledge of the hijackings.

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carol.williams@latimes.com

Welcome to the Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's New Detainee

Wednesday, Mar. 28, 2007

Yesterday's papers all ran stories about the guilty plea made by David Hicks, the Australian held at Guantanamo. But there was little news coverage of what may be a more significant development: the arrival of a new detainee.

Except for the 14 prisoners moved from CIA custody in September 2006, transfers to Guantanamo ended in September 2004. For two-and-a-half years, even as the Bush administration has continued to defend the facility's usefulness, Guantanamo's population has been steadily shrinking. Several hundred detainees have now been released, and ex-detainees currently outnumber those who are imprisoned there.

Yet on Monday, in a surprise move, the Pentagon announced that it had transferred a detainee named Abdul Malik to Guantanamo over the weekend. It gave little information about the new arrival, saying only that he was a "dangerous terror suspect," that he had confessed to terrorist acts, and that he had been arrested "as a result of our ongoing conflict against Al Qaida."

While the Pentagon disclosed neither the detainee's nationality nor where he had been arrested, knowledgeable observers knew that he was a Kenyan picked up in Kenya a few weeks ago. He was reportedly arrested at a foreign exchange bureau in the city of Mombasa, held for a time in Kenyan police custody, and then handed over to the United States.

Malik is accused of serious terrorist crimes, and was arrested far from any zone of combat. So why is he now at Guantanamo and not in U.S. federal court?

A Parallel and Substandard Justice System

Although prisoners at Guantanamo are officially labeled "enemy combatants," Malik is not the only detainee at Guantanamo with no apparent connection to combat. Although the war in Afghanistan provided the excuse for Guantanamo's creation, the majority of detainees held there were apparently not captured on the battlefield; they were arrested outside of Afghanistan, primarily in neighboring Pakistan. Some were even picked up in other regions, in places as diverse as Egypt, Indonesia, Bosnia, Zambia and Mauritania.

Kenya fits fairly easily on this list, but the timing of Malik's transfer is still jarring. Now, more than five years after the September 11 attacks, the choice of bringing a new terrorism suspect to Guantanamo -- someone with no obvious nexus to traditional armed conflict - seems like a studied decision to avoid the civilian courts.

What this decision suggests, in short, is that the U.S. government is intent on establishing a parallel criminal justice system at Guantanamo for foreign terrorism suspects, not simply a limited wartime detention facility. Whereas Americans suspected of terrorism receive fair treatment in U.S. courts, foreigners are sent to Guantanamo for indefinite detention and rigged proceedings.

Column continues below ↓

The vastly different treatment of a similarly-situated terrorism suspect reinforces this view. Malik's transfer to Guantanamo came not long after the transfer of Daniel Joseph Maldonado from Kenya to Houston, Texas, for prosecution in US federal court. Maldonado, an American citizen, was arrested in Kenya in late January for illegally entering the country from Somalia, sent to the United States, and charged with undergoing training in weapons and bomb-making.

Missing Weeks

A full understanding of the reasons for Malik's transfer to Guantanamo may require an investigation into his detention in Kenya.

Malik was reportedly arrested in Mombasa late February. In early March he was held in various police stations in Nairobi, where local human rights groups briefly spoke to him. Sometime in the first half of March, he reportedly disappeared from Kenyan custody. A Kenyan press article dated March 14 cited police sources who said that he had been flown to Guantanamo.

The Pentagon now claims that Malik confessed to participating in two terrorist plots, but it has not revealed where Malik was held when he made these confessions. Clearly, if Malik was in secret detention somewhere, such as in CIA custody, it would raise serious questions about the treatment he experienced and the value of his statements.

Dumping him at Guantanamo would be a way of avoiding these questions. At Guantanamo, secret evidence can be a basis for indefinite detention, and even the military commission proceedings allow evidence obtained coercively.

A Most Bad Place

Dubbed the "least worst place" to hold detainees by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2001, Guantanamo's bad aspects have long been apparent. The one encouraging fact was that, little by little, detainee by detainee, Guantanamo was shrinking in size.

Just last week, the New York Times reported that Robert Gates, Rumsfeld's replacement as Defense Secretary, was recently pressing to close Guantanamo altogether. While one new detainee does not alter population trends in any meaningful way, it still sends the signal that some officials in this administration want Guantanamo to remain open for business.

By JOANNE MARINER

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Joanne Mariner is a New York-based human rights attorney. Her previous columns on Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and the "war on terror" may be found in FindLaw's archive.

Zionist Politics: A New Voice for Australian Jews

Wednesday 21 March 2007

By Antony Loewenstein

The Jewish establishment claims to speak for all Jews and have Israel’s best interests at heart. In fact, the opposite is true.

Take the late February example of Israeli military using Palestinian human shields during a raid in Nablus, despite t he practice being outlawed by the Israeli High Court. Human rights groups in Israel and internationally condemned the action, but the Jewish community remained mute.

Did they agree? Is their loathing for Palestinians so deep that they can’t see the long-term ramifications? This moral degradation is a daily occurrence in the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, and yet most Jews remain silent — complicit in the crimes.

But the times are a’ changing.

I’m a founding member of Independent Australian Jewish Voices (IAJV), a loose coalition of Jews who are articulating an alternative perspective on the Israel/Palestine conflict and challenging the Zionist establishment to justify their support for the Jewish State’s intransigence. We are true friends of Israel and the Palestinians and believe in the national aspirations of both peoples.

Our ‘Statement of Principles’ reads, in part:

We are committed to ensuring a just peace that recognises the legitimate national aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians with a solution that protects the human rights of all.

We condemn violence by all parties, whether State-sanctioned or not. We believe that Israel’s right to exist must be recognised and that Palestinians’ right to a homeland must also be acknowledged.

As Australians we are privileged to live in a democratic State that embodies the principles of tolerance and free speech. We feel there is an urgent need to hear alternative voices that should not be silenced by being labelled disloyal or ‘self-hating.’

Uncritical allegiance to Israeli Government policy does not necessarily serve Israel’s best interests. Our concern for justice and peace in the Middle East is a legitimate opinion and should be met by reasoned argument rather than vilification and intimidation. In particular, we are concerned that the Jewish establishment does not represent the full range of Jewish opinion. Contrary to widespread concerns, anti-Semitism is not fuelled by Jews who publicly disagree with actions of the Jewish State.

Jews understand what it is to suffer racism and victimisation and therefore we are not only concerned about anti-Semitism but also the demonisation of all other minorities.

The response has been extraordinary. The mainstream press has welcomed the debate, thankful that Jews are finally willing to speak publicly and condemn the indefensible. The Jewish establishment, on the other hand, has mostly attacked the petition, its signatories, our motives and my choice of breakfast cereal (muesli, for the record).

Despite claiming to welcome debate, the Jewish community has proven yet again that its representatives and self-appointed yes-men will simply not tolerate dissent. Thankfully, many Jews are now willing to shun these dinosaurs and embrace change. The main Jewish bodies do not represent the majority of Jews — these groups ignore the multiplicity of opinions on Israel and a host of other issues.

Thanks to emo

The IAJV has invited Jews to be co-signatories to our Statement of Principles. Since its launch in February, over 440 Jews from a wide variety of backgrounds and attitudes have signed, including Professor Peter Singer, Monash University Dean of Law Arie Freiberg, Melbourne University Publishing CEO Louise Adler, academic Eva Cox, and Melbourne barrister Robert Richter QC. We probably wouldn’t agree on every detail relating to the Middle East, but we do claim that rational debate in Australia is near impossible when Jewish spokesmen (and it is always men, isn’t it?) allege anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, or self-loathing against critics of Israel.

Then there was the sad sight of self-appointed leftist academic Philip Mendes — now warmly embraced by the Jewish establishment — drafting a counter petition defending the beleaguered Jewish community and proudly stating a commitment to a two-State solution and a host of other platitudes. Unfortunately, the wider community generally doesn’t believe Mendes and his fellow travellers anymore. By not speaking out strongly against Israel’s expanding settlement, they are allowing the Jewish State to literally get away with murder.

A recent BBC poll found that a majority of the world’s population, including in Australia, felt Israel had a ‘negative’ role in the world. Must be rabid anti-Semitism! Perish the thought that growing antipathy towards Israel may have something to do with its occupation of Palestinian land and its indiscriminate violence against Palestinians.

Better PR is not the answer to this problem.

Another intriguing response to the IAJV petition has been the objection to our mention of ‘State-sanctioned violence’ — a clear reference to Israel (though we equally condemn Palestinian violence). For many Jews — and this has been shown in various letters in the Australian Jewish News and elsewhere — Israeli violence is not ’violence,’ merely self-defence. This Orwellian conceit gives comfort to those who choose to ignore the inhumanity of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and focus on Israel’s supposed victimhood.

Being a Jew means different things to different people. Critics of IAJV have revealed their parochialism by condemning Jews who, previously, have never spoken out as Jews. Perhaps they should wonder why. In the UK, US and much of Europe, Jews are starting to shun decades-old Jewish groups that have simply rubber-stamped Israeli policy and refused to allow true debate across a wider spectrum.

Of greater concern to global citizens should be the ever-tightening embrace between the US Zionist lobby and Christian fundamentalists. Supporting the Iraq War, advocating military action against Iran and isolating the Palestinians is the official public position of the Jewish establishment in the Western world — despite the fact that, according to a recent poll, a majority of US Jews are against such actions (more than any other religious group in the US).

The Jewish community needs to ask itself who is speaking up for its needs and concerns. The current leadership is simply advocating a take-no-prisoners approach that, as the BBC poll proves, is leading to Israel’s rapid isolation. Blind US support will not last forever.

IAJV shows the wider community that the ‘official’ Jewish bodies do not represent many Jews, that we have no desire to join them and want alternative ways to be heard. We plan to hold public forums in the coming months and establish IAJV as a permanent fixture in the public arena. We’re only just warming up.

By: Antony Loewenstein

About the author

Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based freelance journalist, author and blogger. He has written for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, The Guardian, Sydney’s Sun Herald, The Bulletin, the Washington Post, the Big Issue, Crikey, Znet, Counterpunch and others. Melbourne University Publishing has published his book on the Israel/Palestine conflict, My Israel Question (2006). His website is http://www.antonyloewenstein.com/

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Australian army imposter gatecrashed security meetings

12.30pm

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Peter Walker
Thursday March 15, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

An Australian truck driver and convicted armed robber attended top-level military security meetings after posing as an army officer, it was reported today.

Peter Bennett began what the Age newspaper described as his "self-appointed military career" in September 2005.

The 54-year-old wore formal military dress - including decorations for supposed service in Vietnam and elsewhere - to gatecrash a formal dinner at an air force base in Melbourne.

There, he met senior figures including the head of Australia's air force, Air Vice Marshal Geoffrey Shepherd.

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The Age pictured Bennett, who has pleaded guilty to impersonating a public official, dressed in a white jacket, bow tie and red cummerbund as he posed for a photograph with Mr Shepherd.

After managing to obtain an Australian defence forces identity card, he attended a series of meetings of Operation Acolyte, which planned security for last year's Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

Werribee magistrates court, in Melbourne, heard yesterday that Bennett's "career" ended last March, when he was asked to provide proof of his service record after none could be found in military archives.

He promised to return with the paperwork but was not seen again. Police later raided his home and seized military items including uniforms, badges, medals and ribbon bars, the Age reported.

Bennett told the court he had done similar things before, saying his "foolish stupidity" stemmed from being turned down for military service on medical grounds in 1971. The case was adjourned until May for a pre-sentence report.

"If the army had have accepted me all those years ago I probably wouldn't have ended in the trouble I have," Bennett, who was released from prison in 1986 following a sentence for armed robbery, told the Age outside the court.

"Anzac Day won't be so good this year," he said, referring to the Australian and New Zealand public holiday in honour of the military held every April 25, the anniversary of the start of the ill-fated Gallipoli landings in 1915.

No such thing as victory in Iraq, says Australian DM

No such thing as victory in Iraq, says Nelson

Brendan Nicholson, Sydney
February 23, 2007

IRAQ will remain beset by sectarian violence and terrorism even after coalition forces leave it, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has warned.

"There is no such thing as victory in Iraq," the minister declared in a speech to a defence conference yesterday.

He made the extraordinary admission just hours before US Vice-President Dick Cheney arrived in Australia last night on an official visit, and the day after Britain announced it was cutting its Iraq troop commitment by a quarter.

In his speech, Dr Nelson said people should not be thinking in terms of "conventional victories or success" in Iraq.

Success would "essentially mean that the democratically-elected Iraqi Government, supported by its own Iraqi security forces, will be able to provide economic and defence security to its own people for the forseeable future," he said.

"It will, however, be a country that will continue to be characterised by degrees of sectarian and other violence and al-Qaeda and other terrorists who so desperately want to make sure they prevail in Iraq will do everything to frustrate and undermine it."

The comments appear to be a departure from the recent rhetoric of the Bush Administration and the Howard Government on coalition objectives in Iraq.

As recently as last month, in his state of the union address, US President George Bush said: "It is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle. Let us find our resolve, and turn events towards victory."

Prime Minister John Howard said this month the coalition should not "abandon the Iraqi people to much greater bloodshed and deliver a victory to the terrorists".

Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd last night seized on the Defence Minister's remarks, telling The Age the Government was raising the white flag on Iraq, and that Dr Nelson had admitted that there could never be an exit strategy.

"Dr Nelson's extraordinary admission of military defeat in Iraq heralds an entire new chapter in the Iraq debate in Australia and undermines fundamentally the Government's credibility on national security," Mr Rudd said.

"If the Defence Minister is now saying there is absolutely no military hope in Iraq, then why the hell are we there in the first place and how did they get this so radically wrong?

"This is the final and formal hauling up of the white flag by the Howard Government on its entire Iraq strategy. That strategy has cost the Australian taxpayers $2 billion and has made Australia a greater terrorist target than we would otherwise have been."

Dr Nelson, in his speech, continued to maintain that it would be wrong for coalition forces to withdraw from Iraq now. He said anyone familiar with US domestic politics would understand the risk if the US adopted an isolationist foreign policy in response to a premature retreat from Iraq.

"Whatever anybody thinks about the Australia-US alliance … it will be damaged if the US leaves Iraq in a situation where the al-Qaeda and others are able to say they have prevailed," he said.

The Iraq war is expected to be at the top of the agenda during the three-day visit of the US Vice-President. Mr Cheney will hold talks with Mr Rudd today, and with Prime Minister John Howard and his ministers tomorrow.

Mr Rudd said earlier yesterday he would also raise his desire to have Guantanamo Bay detainee Hicks tried quickly in a civilian court, either in the US or Australia.

Speaking in Tokyo on the eve of his visit to Australia, Mr Cheney sparked a fresh political confrontation with Democrats who now control the US Congress, declaring their efforts to thwart President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq would "validate the al-Qaeda strategy".

The Bush Administration is under unprecedented pressure over its Iraq strategy, heightened by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision this week to withdraw some British forces.

Mr Rudd will reassure Mr Cheney of Labor's continued support for the US alliance, but stress it will not be unconditional. He is expected to say that a Labor government will warn its ally if it feels the US is making bad decisions, and explain Labor's plan to pull Australia's 520 combat troops out of southern Iraq while leaving other units in place to protect diplomats, gather intelligence and protect Iraqi oil platforms in the Persian Gulf. Mr Rudd will assure Mr Cheney that Labor strongly supports the efforts of the coalition in Afghanistan — while making the point that he believes the US left too soon after toppling the Taliban.

Dr Nelson, in his speech yesterday, slammed Mr Rudd for backing Australian involvement in the war against terror in Afghanistan, but not in Iraq. And he queried why opponents of Australia's presence in Iraq were not also advocating Australia withdraw from East Timor and the Solomon Islands.

"They know that if we leave that country (East Timor) prematurely we will see a return to the events that led to Australia going back in there with New Zealand in May last year," he said.

But Mr Rudd said the Government needed to explain why it believed it was OK for Britain and Denmark to withdraw troops from Iraq, but not Australia.

"Why is it not OK for 520 Australian troops to be brought home to Australia some time next year. That's the question which Australians would like the answer to," he said.

Greens leader Bob Brown said the Government should follow British Prime Minister Tony Blair's lead and withdraw Australian forces. "It seems that Mr Howard's got no strategy but to respond to whatever George Bush does," Senator Brown said.

"Our troops should be at home. We need them for deployment in our own region and not at the behest of a Bush administration which is being increasingly seen to be embroiled in a war it can't win."

Meanwhile, anti-war protesters are expected to be out in force in central Sydney today and hundreds of police have been mobilised for the visit of Mr Cheney.

Police and anti-war protesters clashed last night during a rally near Sydney Town Hall as parts of the city went into lockdown.

Last night's protest, organised by the Stop the War Coalition at Town Hall, turned nasty when about 200 people attempted to break a line of police and march to the US Consulate in Martin Place.

Police officers, supported by mounted officers, held their positions as activists attempted to break through.

Ten people were arrested in the scuffle with police, which calmed after officers negotiated with organisers to allow the group to march on the footpath during busy peak hour traffic.

Superintendent Ron Mason said police supported the right to demonstrate as long as there was no disruption to the community.

He said an application from the demonstrators was received but it was unreasonable for demonstrators to block busy streets during peak hour. "Police have been negotiating for days with this group and they agreed to hold a static demonstration at Town Hall.

Copyright © 2007. The Age Company Ltd.

US acting like terrorists: ex-premier

Last Update: Saturday, February 17, 2007. 1:04am (AEDT)

A former Western Australian Labor premier has lashed out at the Australian and US governments over the treatment of terrorism suspects like David Hicks.

Peter Dowding says the US has acted like terrorists by "virtually kidnapping" suspects and using the "rendition" process to take them to countries outside the US justice system where they can be tortured.

Mr Dowding, who is campaigning for justice for Guantanamo Bay detainee Hicks, has told ABC TV Stateline in WA the Government stands condemned for endorsing the US actions.

"It's tolerating outrageous international conduct, the conduct of terrorists is really what the United States Government is engaged in," he said.

"It's tolerating kangaroo courts. Our Prime Minister and our Attorney-General, firstly I believe they have misled the Australian community and not told the truth about the circumstances of Hicks's position and they've done nothing to protect him.

"Moving these people into a position where the courts are not allowed to supervise their incarceration is an absolute outrage and our Prime Minister and our Attorney-General have accepted that that's appropriate conduct.

"It's not appropriate conduct for anybody, it doesn't matter whether they're bank robbers, we don't do that."

He says the activities of the US are also disturbing Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

"We are behaving as best we can through our present Federal Government to offend our nearest neighbours, now that is a silly act which puts us in some jeopardy," he said.

"I would like the community to understand just how much jeopardy that puts us in."

Cruelty and xenophobia stir and shame the lucky country

The social regression and flag-waving promoted by Australia's neocon prime minister may come unstuck in Guantánamo

John Pilger
Friday January 19, 2007
The Guardian

The Australian writer Donald Horne meant the title of his celebrated book, The Lucky Country, as irony. "Australia is a lucky country run by second-rate people who share its luck," he lamented in 1964, describing much of the Australian elite as unfailingly unoriginal, race-obsessed and in thrall to imperial power and its wars. From Britain's opium adventures to America's current travesty in Iraq, Australians have been sent to fight faraway people with whom they have no quarrel and who offer no threat of invasion. Growing up, I was assured this was a "sacred tradition".

But then another Australia was "discovered". The only war dead whom Australians had never mourned were found right under their noses: those of a remarkable indigenous people who had owned and cared for this ancient land for thousands of years, then fought and died in its defence when the British invaded. In a land littered with cenotaphs, not one honoured them. For many whites, the awakening was rude; for others it was thrilling. In the 70s, thanks largely to the brief, brave and subverted Labor government of Gough Whitlam, the universities opened their studies to these heresies and their gates to a society Mark Twain once identified as "almost entirely populated by the lower orders". A secret history revealed that, long before the rest of the western world, Australian working people had fought for and won a minimum wage, an eight-hour working day, pensions, child benefits and the vote for women. And now there was an astonishing ethnic diversity, and it had happened as if by default: there simply were not enough Britons and "blue-eyed Balts" who wanted to come.

Australia is not often news, cricket and bushfires aside. That is a pity, because the regression of this social democracy into a state of fabricated fear and xenophobia is an object lesson for all societies claiming to be free. In power for more than a decade, the Liberal prime minister, John Howard, comes from the outer reaches of Australia's "neocons". In 1988 he announced that a future government led by him would pursue a "One Australia Policy", a forerunner to Pauline Hanson's infamous One Nation party, whose targets were black Australians and migrants. Howard's targets have been similar. One of his first acts as prime minister was to cut $A400m from the Aboriginal affairs budget. "Political correctness," he said, "has gone too far." Today, black Australians still have one of the lowest life expectancies in the world, and their health is the worst in the world. An entirely preventable disease, trachoma - beaten in many poor countries - still blinds many because of appalling living conditions. The impoverishment of black communities, which I have seen change little over the years, was described in 2006 by Save the Children as "some of the worst we have seen in our work all around the world". Instead of a political respect in the form of a national lands rights law, a war of legal attrition has been waged against the Aborigines; and the epidemics and black suicides continue.

Howard rejoices in his promotion of "Australian values" - a very Australian sycophancy to the sugared "values" of foreign power. The darling of a group of white supremacists who buzz around the Murdoch-dominated press and radio talk-back hosts, the prime minister has used acolytes to attack the "black armband view of history", as if the mass killing and resistance of indigenous Australians did not happen. The fine historian Henry Reynolds, author of The Other Side of the Frontier, has been thoroughly smeared, along with other revisionists. In 2005 Andrew Jaspan, a Briton newly appointed editor of the Melbourne Age, was subjected to a vicious neocon campaign that accused him of "reducing" the Age to "another Guardian".

Flag-waving and an unctuous hand-on-heart jingoism, about which sceptical Australians once felt a healthy ambivalence, are now standard features at sporting and other public events. These serve to prepare Australians for renewed militarism and war, as ordained by the Bush administration, and to cover attacks on Australia's Muslim community. Speak out and you may break a 2005 law of sedition meant to intimidate with the threat of imprisonment for up to seven years. Once described in the media as Bush's "deputy sheriff", Howard did not demur when Bush, on hearing this, promoted him to "sheriff for south-east Asia". Like a mini-Blair, he has sent troops and federal police to the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Papua New Guinea and East Timor. In newly independent East Timor, where Australian governments colluded with Indonesia's 23-year bloody occupation, "regime change" was effectively executed last year with the resignation of the prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, who had the temerity to oppose Canberra's one-sided exploitation of his country's oil and gas resources.

However, it is one man, David Hicks, a spectacular loser in the new Australia, who now threatens Howard's "lucky" facade. Hicks was found among the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 and sold as bounty to the Americans by CIA-backed warlords. He has spent more than five years in Guantánamo Bay, including eight months in a cell with no sunlight. He has been tortured, and never charged with any crime. Howard and his attorney-general, Philip Ruddock, have refused even to request Hicks's repatriation, as is his constitutional right, because there are no Australian laws under which Hicks can be charged. Their cruelty is breathtaking. A tenacious campaign by his father, Terry, has ignited a kind of public shame that is growing. This has happened before in Australia, such as the march of a million people across Sydney Harbour Bridge demanding justice for black Australians, and the courageous direct action by young people who forced the closure of notorious outback detention camps for illegal refugees, with their isolation cells, capsicum spray and beatings. Asylum seekers caught in their leaking boats by the ever-vigilant Australian Defence Force are now incarcerated behind electric fences on tiny Christmas Island more than 1,000 miles from the lucky country.

Howard faces no real opposition from the compliant Labor party. The trade unions, facing a rollback of Australia's proud record of workers' rights and up to 43% youth unemployment, have stirred, and filled the streets. But perhaps something wider and deeper is coming from a nation whose most enduring and melancholy self-image is that of disobedient larrikins. During the recent Ashes series, Ian Chappell, one of Australia's most admired cricket captains, walked out of the commentary box when Howard walked in. After seeing for himself conditions in a refugee prison, Chappell said: "These are human beings and you can't just treat them like that ... in cricketing parlance it was like cheating. They were being cheated out of a fair go."

www.johnpilger.com

John Pilger has been a war correspondent, film-maker and author, and has twice won British journalism's highest award, that of Journalist of the Year. He has also been named International Reporter of the Year, and won the United Nations Association Peace Prize and Gold Medal. For his broadcasting, he has won France's Reporter Sans Frontieres, and television academy awards in the United States and Britain. He holds the prestigous Sophie Award for "thirty years of exposing deception and improving human rights".

AWB Executives Should Be Charged After Report on Iraq

(Update3)

By Gemma Daley


Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- AWB Ltd. executives paid kickbacks to win sales to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, a government inquiry found, recommending charges against 11 officials from Australia's monopoly wheat exporter.

Prosecutors should pursue officials including Trevor Flugge, the former chairman of the Melbourne-based exporter, for breaching criminal, banking and company regulations, Commissioner Terence Cole said in a report published today. Calls to Flugge's lawyer were not returned.

The probe was triggered by an investigation of the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who found AWB paid bribes to win sales. Prime Minister John Howard said he'll urgently review AWB's monopoly on arranging wheat exports from Australia, the world's third-biggest exporter of the commodity.

``The report of the Cole inquiry has clear implications for the operation of a single desk system for Australian wheat exports,'' Howard said in a statement e-mailed to Bloomberg. ``The government will give urgent consideration to the future of marketing operations for the export of Australian wheat.''

AWB, which ``deeply regrets'' the way it conducted its wheat trade with Iraq, said it won't respond to allegations against individuals in a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange.

Biggest Supplier

Cargill Inc. and Glencore International AG are among companies that have called for an end to AWB's monopoly, a legacy of when the company was state-owned. AWB was the biggest supplier of food under the UN's Oil-for Food program and paid $222 million in kickbacks, according to Volcker.

``The next step for the industry is to devise a wheat export system that doesn't confer monopoly power on any one company,'' Greg Canavan, an analyst at Fat Prophets in Sydney said before the report was released.

The findings will be referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Cole said in a report distributed in Canberra today. Cole said AWB did not inform Howard's government or the UN of its ``true arrangements with Iraq.''

Cole said there was no suggestion of illegal activity by the government, prime minister or ministers.

The former judge led a 10-month inquiry that heard from 60 people, including Prime Minister Howard. Cole also said that Davidson Kelly, a former employee of BHP Billiton Ltd., may have conspired with AWB. BHP Billiton, the world's biggest mining company said it was studying the Cole report in a statement to the exchange.

BHP Billiton

The inquiry had heard AWB inflated wheat contracts to recover $8 million of debt, which Gibraltar-registered Tigris Petroleum Corp., BHP's joint venture partner studying oil fields in Iraq, had said it was owed arising from a grain shipment. Kelly set up Tigris in 2000.

Former BHP Group President Energy, Phil Aiken had signed a letter giving Tigris the authority to recover the debt under a ``misunderstanding,'' Cole said. BHP Petroleum, or BHPP, had acted by ``mistake because Mr. Aiken, who had no personal knowledge of the 1996 shipment, was not told at any time that the shipment had been approved by the managing directors of both BHP and BHPP only on the basis that the transaction was a gift,'' Cole said in the report.

Worst-Performer

Shares of AWB, the worst-performing stock on the S&P/ASX 200 Index this year, have fallen 55 percent since the inquiry began Jan. 16. The inquiry has prompted the resignation of at least four executives, including former managing director Andrew Lindberg and company secretaries Richard Fuller and Jim Cooper. Cole said Lindberg was ``not guilty of any criminal conduct.''

Wheat growers in the U.S., the world's biggest exporter of the grain, have called for an end to AWB's monopoly, saying it gives Australian farmers an unfair advantage in price negotiations.

``The loss of the single-desk has been largely incorporated into the share price,'' said Justin Braitling, who helps manage A$100 million in stock at Wilson Asset Management including AWB shares. AWB shares rose 10 cents, or 3.6 percent, to A$2.86 at the 4.10 p.m. close of trade in Sydney.

AWB, which controlled about 14 percent global wheat trade last year, is also facing pressure on earnings as drought threatens to cut wheat production in Australia to a 12-year low of 9.5 million tons. The nation shipped 15.2 million tons of wheat in the 12 months ended June 30, 2006, worth A$3.3 billion ($2.6 billion), according to the country's commodity forecaster.

The Volcker-led U.S. investigation into the Oil-for-Food program has separately resulted in criminal charges against at least seven people, including Oscar Wyatt. The program allowed Iraq to sell oil and use the proceeds to buy food and medicine while remaining subject to economic sanctions.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gemma Daley in Canberra at gdaley@bloomberg.net ;

Last Updated: November 27, 2006 02:05 EST

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=auAuxJTZ.cT4&refer=asia

Leave now or perish, Mr Howard

THE IRAQ WAR
By Alan Stretton
November 20, 2006


As Iraq continues to sink further into the quagmire of civil war, the leaders of the coalition of the willing continue to close their eyes to what is happening and keep repeating the untruths about how democracy in Iraq is starting to work. The remarkable thing is that while President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair are suffering the political consequences, our own Prime Minister is weathering the storm The reason is that there is still a general apathy in the Australian electorate because we have been fortunate enough to avoid major casualties.

It is sad that Bush and Howard both think that the trial of Saddam Hussein shows that democracy in Iraq is working. The trial was not set up by the Iraqi Government (which was not in existence at that time) but by a military commission controlled by the US.

The first judge hearing the case resigned because the Iraqi Government and their American advisers thought he was "too soft" on Saddamn. A second judge was murdered. Three of Saddam's lawyers were gunned down during the trial and other defence counsel were banned from the court. The third judge shut down the defence before all their witnesses could be called. This is democracy at work, according to Mr Bush and Mr Howard!

And guess what? The guilty verdict was able to be announced two days before the American mid-term elections. Not that it did much good as the American people gave a resounding answer to the lies, spin and deceit still being promoted by the President as the military casualties rise to nearly 3000. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have been massacred.

Many eminent lawyers cannot understand why Saddam was not brought to justice and made answerable for his crimes before the International Criminal Court. If this had occurred the world would have been reminded that it was the United States that armed Saddam Hussein during the war with Iran. It was also likely to publicise that the gas and chemicals used by Saddam against the Kurds came from the United States. It is easy to understand why the Americans wanted Saddam to be tried by a court controlled by them.

The term "cut and run" is no longer used by the leaders of the coalition of the willing. It is now being replaced by the term "withdrawing with honour". Certainly a major withdrawal of American forces will be under way before the presidential election in 2008. It is also certain that a withdrawal of some Australian units will take place before Howard comes up for re-election in 2007.

There was a great opportunity to withdraw 400 troops earlier this year. They were guarding Japanese troops helping to rebuild the infrastructure in southern Iraq that had been destroyed by the Americans in their initial air onslaught. They should have been brought home to relieve the strain on the Australian Army, which is overstretched with other foreign commitments. The cynical could believe that the decision to leave these forces there in an operational role has a political motive, so that their withdrawal can have a political impact closer to the federal election.

From the start, our involvement in Iraq has been a military and political catastrophe. The stated aim for the invasion was to destroy weapons of mass destruction and to fight the war against Osama bin Laden and his terrorists who carried out the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. The attack on Iraq was launched without any United Nations authority. The fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam was not involved in the attack on America is now acknowledged . The main reason for the American invasion of Iraq was that, after 12 months of bluster and threats by Bush in the so-called war against terror, the Americans could not find bin Laden, and the Republicans were losing political support.

The invasion of Iraq as part of the war against terror has had the opposite effect to that which the coalition of the willing intended. Instead of decreasing terrorism it has provided radical Muslims with a reason to call a jihad against American efforts to dominate affairs in the Middle East. It has provided the spark to start fires around the Western world that will take decades to extinguish.

There is now no way the invading forces in Iraq can withdraw with honour. The excuse for withdrawing US forces during the Vietnam War was that the American policy of Vietnamisation had made the South Vietnamese forces strong enough to defeat the Vietcong themselves, and the Americans were no longer needed. This was a complete falsehood that served the purpose for internal American consumption. But it will be difficult to use this excuse again. Despite the American resources being poured into the growing Iraqi army and police force, the results have been very disappointing. On many occasions the Iraqi army has refused to fight and many terrorist acts have been committed by Iraqi army personnel.

The American aim to set up a Western-style democracy in Iraq was doomed from the start. With the country divided into three major factions - the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds - the only solution may have been a loose federation controlling three semi-autonomous zones. Unfortunately so much damage has been done that this political solution is unlikely to succeed.

Both militarily and politically the invasion of Iraq will become one of the great catastrophes in the Middle East and have lasting consequences for peace and security. Australia's involvement for the wrong reasons, in the wrong place at the wrong time must have major political repercussions for the Australian Government despite the political skills of Howard.

Although some Australian forces need to remain to protect our embassy and other Australian officials, there is no reason why the 400 Australians who were guarding the Japanese cannot be brought home now, before they risk taking casualties. Should Australian casualties occur, the political fallout for the Government will be greater than any gain from a withdrawal closer to the next election.

Major-General Alan Stretton was the Australian Army chief of staff during the Vietnam War and was later placed in charge of Darwin after Cyclone Tracy. He spoke out strongly out against involvement in the Iraq War.

There was a great opportunity to withdraw 400 troops earlier this year. They were guarding Japanese troops helping to rebuild the infrastructure in southern Iraq that had been destroyed by the Americans in their initial air onslaught. They should have been brought home to relieve the strain on the Australian Army, which is overstretched with other foreign commitments. The cynical could believe that the decision to leave these forces there in an operational role has a political motive, so that their withdrawal can have a political impact closer to the federal election.

From the start, our involvement in Iraq has been a military and political catastrophe. The stated aim for the invasion was to destroy weapons of mass destruction and to fight the war against Osama bin Laden and his terrorists who carried out the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. The attack on Iraq was launched without any United Nations authority. The fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam was not involved in the attack on America is now acknowledged . The main reason for the American invasion of Iraq was that, after 12 months of bluster and threats by Bush in the so-called war against terror, the Americans could not find bin Laden, and the Republicans were losing political support.

The invasion of Iraq as part of the war against terror has had the opposite effect to that which the coalition of the willing intended. Instead of decreasing terrorism it has provided radical Muslims with a reason to call a jihad against American efforts to dominate affairs in the Middle East. It has provided the spark to start fires around the Western world that will take decades to extinguish.

There is now no way the invading forces in Iraq can withdraw with honour. The excuse for withdrawing US forces during the Vietnam War was that the American policy of Vietnamisation had made the South Vietnamese forces strong enough to defeat the Vietcong themselves, and the Americans were no longer needed. This was a complete falsehood that served the purpose for internal American consumption. But it will be difficult to use this excuse again. Despite the American resources being poured into the growing Iraqi army and police force, the results have been very disappointing. On many occasions the Iraqi army has refused to fight and many terrorist acts have been committed by Iraqi army personnel.

The American aim to set up a Western-style democracy in Iraq was doomed from the start. With the country divided into three major factions - the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds - the only solution may have been a loose federation controlling three semi-autonomous zones. Unfortunately so much damage has been done that this political solution is unlikely to succeed.

Both militarily and politically the invasion of Iraq will become one of the great catastrophes in the Middle East and have lasting consequences for peace and security. Australia's involvement for the wrong reasons, in the wrong place at the wrong time must have major political repercussions for the Australian Government despite the political skills of Howard.

Although some Australian forces need to remain to protect our embassy and other Australian officials, there is no reason why the 400 Australians who were guarding the Japanese cannot be brought home now, before they risk taking casualties. Should Australian casualties occur, the political fallout for the Government will be greater than any gain from a withdrawal closer to the next election.

Major-General Alan Stretton was the Australian Army chief of staff during the Vietnam War and was later placed in charge of Darwin after Cyclone Tracy. He spoke out strongly out against involvement in the Iraq War.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/leave-now-or-perish-mr-howard-the-iraq-war/2006/11/19/1163871268501.html