Tag: Iraq

The Left have been celebrating the 10th anniversary with a litany of what went wrong. Me, I’m more positive and haven’t really changed my opinion since I posted on the subject nearly ten years ago

A democracy in the middle of the shit-hole that is the Middle East would give birth to hope and all the Mullahs and Kings and Princes would be feeling uneasy

More here

Today in the Age Alexander Downer, Foreign Affairs minister when adults were playing the game has a piece in The Age

We played a worthy role in Saddam’s demise

Let me be blunt: I think we were right to play our own small part in the destruction of the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a far from perfect operation, mistakes were made and the sectarian violence that followed was appalling. But there are three reasons why the Iraqis, the Middle East and the world are better off for the demise of the Saddam regime.

The first is simple humanity.  Sadam is dead!  That’s a very big plus for the world and particularly Iraqis

Secondly, there is the issue of chemical and biological weapons.  He had ’em, he used ’em and now he can’t nor can any other aspiring despot

Downer continues;

But if the threshold question is, should we have played a part in getting rid of Saddam a decade ago, my answer is an unequivocal yes.

I’m glad we did. We played a small part in evicting the world’s most brutal dictator who made President Assad of Syria look moderate. We played a tiny part in starting to change theologies of the Middle East from dictatorship to democracy. And we helped spare the region and the world from a dictator who aspired to dominate the Arab world and threaten Israel.

That was the thing about the Howard government: we stood for something. And one of the things we stood for was freedom.

As different from the Gillard government who stand for themselves and the less than 20% of the population who are unionists.

Six years ago, talking about Iraq, I wrote;

a democracy in the middle of the shit-hole that is the Middle East would give birth to hope and all the Mullahs and Kings and Princes would be feeling uneasy

Since the Arab Spring bloomed I’ve been waiting for someone to put it all together and give George Bush some credit for the changes, all to no avail.

Until today that is.

Today’s The Australian editorial opines;

Clearly, the Arab Spring has been triggered, at least in part, because people of the Middle East and North Africa have seen Arabs proudly casting ballots in Iraq and taking control of their own destiny.

For all his mistakes in the post-invasion phase, it was former president Bush’s foresight and courage in implementing the surge in 2007 that saved the Iraq venture, turning a conflagration of defeat and sectarian terrorism into a solid basis for a secure and democratic future.

And this to close;

So while the end belongs to Mr Obama, the success belongs to Mr Bush

The Left would have to agree, wouldn’t they?

AFTER eight weeks of hearings, at a cost of more than $1 million, that have exposed the most painful and private secrets of Private Jake Kovco’s life, the inquest into his death yesterday vindicated the 2006 military inquiry verdict that he died while”skylarking”.

The military inquest sorted out all the problems associated with Kovco’s repatriation to Australia and the ADF have put in place measures to ensure it performs better should a similar incidence happen again. Although there would not have been any experience base left after more than thirty years without fatalities the ADF should have foreseen and been prepared for the obvious.

In all my time in the army I never came across an original problem. Somewhere in the files there was always a paper or SOP laying down procedure and no doubt with over 500 bodies repatriated from Vietnam a similar answer would have existed.

The lessons learned, or rather relearned, have already been turned into procedure so all this latest inquest has done is to bring into the open things that should’ve been left unsaid. The widow does not need to have her husbands imperfections underlined and nor does the nation need to know he was somewhat cavalier with weapons.

Lots of soldiers die in a war zone and not all of them from enemy action and often enough, in our long military history, soldiers have died by their own hand; either deliberately or accidentally. Drawn out public inquests, seemingly hunting down witches, prove little once second parties have been eliminated.

Mrs Kovko needs to get on with her life remembering the best of her husband and forgetting the painful and private secrets raised as people sought a darker side to what already was a tragedy.

We need to let the poor man rest in peace and to let his wife and kids live on in peace.

From getup.org;

As this election looks more and more a case of “Don’t mention the war“, two brave young Australian women, both victims of the war on terror, have united to put peace back on the political agenda.

Whereas I have sympathy for both of them, they are fighting an uphill battle as news from the war gets better each day. Even the ALP are silent on the matter and the only people who want to raise a noise are the Getup mob.

The media have just gone quiet about Iraq, haven’t they? Well with their idea about Iraq being, only bad news is good news, we can see why.

The BBCare getting the message and The Observer, a long-time opponent to anything George Bush suggested heads an article –Packed classes hint at peace in battered Iraq in this piece

I wonder if it ever occurred to the girls to blame the terrorists for their troubles? Nah can’t bash Howard with that.

As usual, getup.org is off the pace but I guess they serve some kind of purpose – I just can’t think what it might be.

It would appear the butcher of Baghdad has been killed by the US. The Jordanian-born militant, who is believed to have personally beheaded several Western hostages including Ken Bigley, a Liverpool engineer, was the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq after swearing allegiance to Osama bin Laden in 2004. He had a $25 million bounty on his head.

This report from News.com

THE al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a US air attack near Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said today.

“Today, al-Zarqawi was eliminated,” Mr Maliki told a news conference. His statement drew loud applause in the hall where he made the announcement.

ABC news reported that US helicopters hit a house near Baquba, 65km north of Baghdad, at sunset yesterday.

“Zarqawi was apparently injured at first … The Americans found him. They handed him over to the Iraqis and he later died of his injuries,” ABC said.

The BBC has an obituary and mentions Zarquawi was a rival of Bin Laden.

Both men rose to prominence as “Afghan Arabs” – leading foreign fighters in the “jihad” against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

It was a far cry from Zarqawi’s youth as a petty criminal in Jordan, remembered by those who knew him as a simple, quick-tempered and barely literate gangster.

Another nail in al-Qaeda‘s coffin.