Howard, war, politics, priorities
Howard has been interviewed on Larry King Live

KING:

You were invited Mr Prime Minister to be at Camp David tonight with Mr Bush and Prime Minister Blair. You declined, why?

PRIME MINISTER:

It's not that I didn't want to talk to them, and as it happened we talked over the phone. But I felt that right at the moment the best thing for me to do was to be in Australia, bearing in mind that it only takes six and a half hours to go from London to Washington, it takes about 24 hours to go from Canberra to Washington and I took a raincheck on the invitation and I'll no doubt have the opportunity again of talking face to face. But we have had a lot of discussions, the President and I, and we have a very important commitment, we have special forces, we have a squadron of hornets, we have Naval personnel, mine clearance experts. For a country our size, our contribution is very significant and we are very committed to the objectives of the military campaign.

KING:

No causalities, but you have lost an, I understand, an Australian journalist, cameraman Paul Moran was killed by a car bomb. Is that correct?

PRIME MINISTER:

Yes, he was killed by a car bomb, and it's almost certainly the case that it was the work of a suicide bomber of an organisation associated with al-Qaeda that has, at the very least, been accommodated by elements of the Iraqi regime. But it was another demonstration of the wilful behaviour of international terrorists and how they target people without any regard for human life, including their own.

The organisation in question is Ansar al-Islam. According to Human Rights Watch Ansar is linked to al-Qa'ida. Ansar was formed shortly before 9 September 2001. It operates in Iraqi Kurdistan - a region not controlled by the Saddam dictatorship since the Kurdish safe haven was connected. There have been intermittent clashes betwen Ansar and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan for years. The only power with the ability to deal with Ansar since establishment of the safe havens was the Anglo-American alliance. The PUK has claimed that Ansar is supported by Saddam.

Paul Moran's murder at the hand of an Ansar suicide bomber was tragic and awful. Spinning the PUK claim into a certainty to support an al-Qa'ida/Saddam linkage is repellent. The failure to attend the Washington summit is discussed in the posts on The strange history of the ASIO bill.