The Power of Suggestion

Clearly Dennis Shanahan and The Australian want an investigation into WMD Intelligence Assessments. This article, headed ‘Spy agencies to face new WMD inquiry’ is very long on suggestion and very, very short on facts. AUSTRALIA’S spy agencies can expect.. The Howard Government is expected to agree to an independent inquiry.. ..a recommendation for an independent inquiry is expected. Pressure has grown for an independent inquiry .. ..the external inquiry into Australia’s intelligence assessment is not expected to include politicians. It is also likely to be more secretive than the US inquiry.. Dennis has based an entire article on the passsive ‘expected’. Nowhere is there a ‘will’, ‘is to’ or ‘are going to’ statement. The entire article is based on the fact that Dennis thinks there should be an inquiry. Hang on. Dennis does actually quote someone rather than rely on conjecture Mr Howard has refused to order an external inquiry until the findings of a parliamentary inquiry, due to be released in March, are made public. Keep up the good work Dennis but I feel that by March the electorate will have other things to occupy it’s mind. For example, by March the public could well be running a book counting Flip-Flop’ Latham’s policy reversals. To make the article more confusing the on-line editors have grafted a part of another article about Bill Gates and Microsoft security into the middle of ‘the I want an enquiry’ article..Confusing but so is the whole article particularly when it ends with this.

But both the Opposition Leader and Mr Rudd have fallen short of demanding such an inquiry until the parliamentary committee reports. Yesterday the Coalition and the ALP joined forces in the Senate to block a Greens motion to hold a judicial inquiry into the intelligence agencies.

Most people understand, some need telling, that Intelligence work is not as precise as maths. Never was..never will be. It is always based on assumptions and unless you have operators on the ground, in the enemies HQ, then you can only assume. The Left and other Howard haters will push this Intelligence issue for all it’s worth but all it’s worth is not very much.