Australia sexed-up Iraq dossier, former spy claims... WMD: Australia accused of hype

Drudge/CNN ^ | Friday, August 22, 2003

[woofie]

CANBERRA, Australia (CNN) -- The heat being generated over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction has moved to Australia with a former senior intelligence officer accusing Canberra of exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime.

Speaking to an inquiry called by the Australian Senate, Andrew Wilkie said Friday information in intelligence reports had been distorted by the prime minister's office and "sexed up" to suit the government's political agenda.

[woofie]

Its the sexed-up revolution?

[Peach]

Sex - the liberals favorite word. The only one they understand.

[thoughtomator]

Key data missing "I would have been stunned if Saddam had wanted or would have allowed his WMDs to be given to al Qaeda, for example," he said.

What liberals don't get is that the Cold War is really and truly over. We were stunned by 9/11. The world has changed and we all need to adjust to that fact!

[Dave Elias]

Just a heads up when talking about Australian politics. The Liberal (note capitals) party is the party of the conservative right...

[thoughtomator]

Good thing at least one country remembers what the word means.

[billbears]

Howard said Friday the assessment made of Iraq's weapons capacity was justified "at the time."

"We didn't ask that the intelligence material be distorted," he said in a radio interview.

The 'new' argument. 'We' didn't ask for intelligence to lie. Coming to a politician near you....

[JohnGalt]

Clinton Redux.

[Coop]

So I take it you buy this argument that the government(s) lied about WMD?

[billbears]

In principle, I believe President Bush is a good man and that he believed what his advisors were telling him. However I do not believe that his advisors were telling the entire story and when needed expanded on the facts to fit their needs

[snooker]

Chemical Ali now renamed to CONVENTIONAL Ali.

Is that sexed up enough? Anyone see a pattern here? Looks like the worldwide commie association got their talking points direct from Carville.

[Coop]

I do not believe that his advisors were telling the entire story and when needed expanded on the facts to fit their needs

Really? I do not, and I have seen nothing which would substantiate your claims. Please educate me (as long as it does not involve the exaggerated, ridiculous 16 words in the SOTU address).

[billbears]

I do not, and I have seen nothing which would substantiate your claims

Well, any WMDs? Oh, I forgot, they're in Syria, no wait, Iran, no wait, Jordan, yeah that's it!! Jordan. They've just got to be somewhere right?

I don't have to substantiate any claims. The facts speak for themselves. No WMDs. And please no reports of 'chemicals' in the river, no bags of beans, no 12 year old buried partial centrifuge.

[Coop]

The facts speak for themselves. No WMDs.

Just as I thought. You have nothing, yet you accuse his advisors of lying and/or exaggerating. Why? Because they haven't (to our knowledge) found the actual weapons yet. Shocking considering the inspectors were kicked out for four years! Even more shocking considering the U.N. drew this "rush to war" out so long my newborn was nearly driving by the time it started. Nope, no time for Iraq to do anything with its weapons. And no evidence [wink] that Iraq has ever concealed anything from us.

But finding reams and reams of technical paperwork isn't sufficient for you.

Finding weapons laboratories isn't sufficient for you.

Identifying actual orders from Hussein's command to deploy WMD's on coalition troops (rather silly if they don't have weapons, don't you think?) doesn't satisfy you.

It's quite simple really. On one side we have those that believe a murderous, lying, habitually deceitful regime that unequivocally possessed and used WMDs in previous years suddenly saw the light and got rid of everything, and that a decent, straightforward President and his advisors lied about it all just so he could finish Daddy's job.

Then there are the realists like me.

It never ceases to amaze me how many fools there really are out there. And it saddens me that their votes count just as much as mine. [sigh]

[woofie]

The left is already saying we are "planting" the WMD so we can find them...I think I am living in some surreal movie

[Shermy]

He said that while Saddam Hussein's regime has trained members of terrorist group al Qaeda, he did not believe Iraq would have given them WMDs because there was "great animosity" between the two.

Yeah, and Saddam wouldn't send his jets to Iran in 1991 and Iran wouldn't support Al Qaeda. Right.....

[piasa]

Oh great, an Aussie equivalent to the Nigerflap's "T. J. Wilkinson"/"amb. Joseph Wilson" :

Andrew Wilkie speech at 'Don't Be Bush Whacked',"Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition

[piasa]

I wonder if George Soros is going to pay all of these jokers a bonus?

(snip) "Of course the lies have turned out to be only the start of it, because the whiff of criminal behaviour now hangs over both the Bush and Howard administrations - in the US over the White House leaking secret information to discredit Joe Wilson, the man who exposed the Niger story as fraudulent; here the Government's leaking of secret information in an attempt to discredit me. Amazingly, I'm still to be contacted by the AFP regarding this matter. I can only assume that the rule of law means nothing to Howard and some senior people in the AFP.
- "Andrew Wilkie speech at 'Don't Be Bush Whacked',"Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition, © Walk Against the War Coalition 2003, This page: http://nswpeace.org/features/1066944641_6126.html , footer : Site proudly donated by Social Change Online, Last Modified: Friday, 24-Oct-2003 12:06:51 EST

[piasa]

This is interesting in light of his bringing up his apparent buddies the familiar former Amb. Wilson and also the Powell-bashing Greg Thielman:

This is a transcript from AM. The program is broadcast around Australia at 08:00 on ABC [Australian Broadcasting] Local Radio.

Aust would have known of doubts over uranium report: Wilkie

AM - Wednesday, 9 July , 2003  08:11:08
Reporter: Hamish Fitzsimmons

LINDA MOTTRAM: The Australian Prime Minister John Howard says the Australian Government used its own intelligence assessment on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and he too believes that evidence of them will eventually be found in Iraq. But a former Australian intelligence officer disagrees.

Andrew Wilkie has told a British parliamentary inquiry that information from Australia, the US and Britain had been manipulated in order to justify a war, and this morning, he says that there is no doubt that the Australian Government was aware of question marks over the accuracy of particular claims about Iraq's nuclear program, claims which the US now admits were wrong.

Hamish Fitzsimmons spoke to Andrew Wilkie a short time ago.

ANDREW WILKIE: I'm sure that you'd appreciate that when it comes to collecting information on the Middle East we rely very much on our US and UK allies.
I was referring at the inquiry to a central role Australian agencies had played in particular in regard to finding out about the thousands of aluminium tubes that were used as evidence for some time that Iraq was trying to develop a gas centrifuge to enrich uranium.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Well the US is now admitting that that information about trying to buy that uranium is incorrect, but Foreign Minister Downer says the Australian Government wasn't told this and in your submission you say that the CIA knew this as far back as early 2002.
Why wasn't the Government told?

ANDREW WILKIE: Well I find this quite extraordinary that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister are still denying that we knew there ever any doubts about the Iraq nuclear story.
The facts of this matter are that the US State Department sent a diplomat to Niger in early 2002, Mr Wilson. He would have reported back to the US State Department not long after that visit to say that he thought the documentation was a fake.
The State Department would have passed that information onto its own intelligence agency, the INR (Bureau of Intelligence and Research), which has a very close relationship with ONA (Office of National Assessments) and would have certainly have passed that information onto ONA. And in fact an INR official, a Mr Thielmann, in the last few days has said that he has no doubts as well that INR had passed the information to ONA.
Now of course, as always, the Prime Minister is being very careful with his words and he's saying that ONA never received Mr Wilson's report. Well, of course, he's right in that regard. I mean, nor would we receive a report from the American diplomat. But we would have received, I have no doubt at all about this, we would have received a report from INR casting doubt over the whole Iraq nuclear story.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: So are you saying the Australian Government than was aware there was flawed information about Iraq's nuclear ambitions, but still used it as a reason for going to war?

ANDREW WILKIE: Well in essence, yes. I'm saying that ONA had made it quite clear to the Government that there was a question mark over the whole nuclear dimension of this Iraq story, but yet the Government continued to use that nuclear dimension as an explanation for the war, along with the more credible stories about Iraq's chemical and biological programs.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: John Howard says the British parliamentary report vindicates the Australian Government's reasons for going to war and that there is still time for evidence of Iraq's weapons for mass destruction program to be found.
What's your response?

ANDREW WILKIE: I found that the report failed to answer the most important questions, which is why we were promised that Iraq had a massive WMD program, that's a word our Prime Minister himself used, in fact he described it as 'massive' and on another occasion he described it as 'mammoth', but yet clearly that is not what has been found and nor is it what is likely to be found.

LINDA MOTTRAM: Former Australian intelligence officer Andrew Wilkie, speaking to Hamish Fitzsimmons.

[Howlin]

I thought Australia was just "cleared" of these charges????

Report Clears Australia on Iraq Claims
AP ^ | 03/01/04 | EMMA TINKLER


Posted on 03/01/2004 12:55:37 AM EST by Pikamax


Report Clears Australia on Iraq Claims

Monday March 1, 2004 5:31 AM

By EMMA TINKLER

Associated Press Writer

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - A parliamentary report Monday broadly cleared the Australian government of exaggerating the threat of Iraq's prewar weapons programs, saying Canberra was ``more moderate'' than coalition partners Britain and the United States.

``The committee found that the presentation by the Australian government was more moderate and more measured than that of its alliance partners,'' said David Jull, chairman of the committee that wrote the report.

Jull is a lawmaker with Prime Minister John Howard's government, and his committee is made up of five government lawmakers and three from the opposition Labor Party.

The report did point out that ministers sometimes did not mention caution expressed by intelligence agencies about the size of Iraq's arsenal and the speed with which it could be deployed.

``The presentations by the government seemed to suggest large arsenals and stockpiles, endorsing the idea that Iraq was producing more weapons and that the programs were larger and more active than before the Gulf War in 1991,'' the report said, after noting that ``the Australian agencies did not think the amounts of (weapons of mass destruction) to be large.''

The report recommended setting up a second independent inquiry into the performance of Australia's intelligence agencies, something the government immediately announced it would do.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the report, ``vindicates the government's use of intelligence in stating the case for disarming Iraq.''

Howard's government sent 2,000 troops to fight alongside U.S. and British troops in the invasion of Iraq and still has about 850 military personnel there. There have so far been no Australian casualties.

Presenting the report to Parliament, committee chairman Jull recommended ``an independent assessment of the performance of the intelligence agencies, conducted by an experienced former intelligence expert with full access to all the material.''

He said the inquiry should report to the National Security Committee of Cabinet which could then recommend possible reforms to Australian intelligence agencies.

There was no immediate reaction from the opposition Labor Party, which opposed the Iraq war.

Downer meanwhile said the report should put an end to doubts over the government's assessments of the Iraqi threat.

``It is now clear to all that the government has been open and honest with the Australian people on this critical issue of national security,'' he said.