Governmental cock and bull about Iraq
Andrew Wilkie writes:

But sooner or later the cock and bull surrounding Iraq and WMD is going to catch up with the Australian Government. The deception and its consequences are just too great to be ignored.

The Government sold us the war on the basis of Iraq's "massive" WMD program. The image was of a huge and deadly arsenal imperilling us all. Time was of the essence.

Allowing the chief United Nations weapons inspector, Hans Blix, the little more time he asked for would have been foolish (even though the Coalition is now taking for itself much more than the little extra time he asked for.)

However, no huge program has been found. If the WMD program was destroyed just before the war it must have been small. And whatever may yet be found would need to be so limited in scale as to have been concealable during weeks of searching.

Wilkie is a former senior analyst with the office of national asessments. He appears on Thursday before the house of commons select committee on foreign affairs.

The coalition governments are just going to have to learn that you can't fool all of the people all of the time in a world of asymmetric media. No doubt Wilkie will appear before the inevitable Australian inquiry as well. The prime minister's bleat that: 'Those from the opposition who now seek to denigrate what this government and this country do are, in effect, calling for the restoration of Saddam Hussein as the ruler of Iraq.' will not make the questions go away.