Australia’s decision to invade Iraq was based on wrong information, but was not malicious, John Howard says.
The former prime minister defends his decision to commit troops to the 2003 US-led invasion as newly released cabinet papers reveal the rationale for Australia’s involvement.
The invasion resulted in the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, but failed to unearth suspected stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that were the basis of the military campaign.
In January 2004, the administration of US President George W Bush conceded its pre-war justifications were unfounded.
Mr Howard said he was “disappointed” by the failure of US intelligence that convinced Australia to take part.
“That was a blow,” he told reporters ahead of the cabinet papers release.
“I still tenaciously maintain the decision (was) taken in good faith based on a national intelligence assessment … which recorded a very strong belief that they had the stockpile.”
While no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were found, Mr Howard insisted coalition forces found plenty of evidence of capacity to rapidly assemble them.
“We were wrong, in fact, but not maliciously,” he said.
A 2004 inquiry found Australian intelligence agencies “failed to judge accurately the extent and nature of Iraq’s WMD programmes”, but they drew the most likely conclusions from the available information.
Estimates of the Iraq War’s toll vary greatly, but several sources have claimed more than 100,000 people died as a direct result of the conflict.
When asked if he acted as an advocate for war, Mr Howard said his role was above all to uphold the Australian national interest.
“I thought it was in our national interest to put a curb on the capacity of terrorists to get a hold of weapons of mass destruction from Saddam, and I believed at that time that he not only had programs, that he had stockpiles,” he said.
Australia’s interests were at the forefront of then-defence minister Robert Hill’s mind in a June 2004 letter to Mr Howard, released by the National Archives of Australia on Wednesday among a tranche of previously confidential cabinet documents.
While officials feared escalating violence from insurgents, Mr Hill also saw Iraq as a potential model for liberal political and economic reform in the Middle East.
It was in Australia’s interests that oil supplies continued to flow unimpeded through a stable, free-market Iraq, he said.
“Political reform in the Middle East would, in turn, help the long-term reduction of extremism, and its offshoot, Islamic-based international terrorism,” Mr Hill wrote in a letter to Mr Howard in February 2004.
But minutes from a National Security Committee meeting in June of that year showed the security environment was becoming even more dangerous in the lead-up to the Iraqi Interim Government taking over formal authority from coalition forces.
The committee agreed to scale down the presence of Australian civilian advisers in response.
One senior adviser still helping shore up Australia’s commercial interests in Iraq was Trevor Flugge.
Mr Flugge had previously chaired the Australian Wheat Board, the single-desk marketer that delivered up to 90 per cent of wheat sales to Iraq, and was providing advice to the Iraqi government to develop its agricultural program.
Claims had surfaced in 2003 that AWB had been paying kickbacks to Saddam’s government in contravention of international sanctions and Australian law, sparking inquiries by UN, US and Iraqi authorities.
Government figures were concerned the Americans would use the claims to muscle in on Australia’s lucrative stranglehold of the Iraqi wheat market.
“One issue to watch will be current United Nations, Iraqi and US inquiries into abuse of the UN Oil-for-Food program, which US Wheat Associates has already used to criticise AWB Limited’s dealings with Iraq under Saddam,” then-trade minister Mark Vaile wrote in a cabinet submission.
A royal commission into the scandal found AWB paid almost $300 million to Saddam’s regime in disguised transportation fees.
Mr Flugge was found guilty of breaching his duties as a director for not inquiring into the payments after learning of them in 2000.
