The Worm Turns

As pressure builds on his co-conspirators, Bush and Blair, Australian PM John Howard is finally beginning to feel the heat over the Iraq deception. Howard now stands accused of misleading parliament, but the Australian intelligence agencies seem surprisingly willing to take a fall for him. The problem is, the story just does not make sense.

The Office of National Assessments (ONA) has confirmed it withheld American doubts about Iraq's nuclear aspirations from Mr Howard ahead of the Iraq war. Australian intelligence say they also did not inform Foreign Minister Alexander Downer of their doubts.

Former intelligence officer Andrew Wilkie, whose resignation in the lead-up to the war was heavily reported, says Mr Howard's claim that he was not informed "reeks of dishonesty".

"I just find that story unbelievable," he says. "This was either a terrible act of dishonesty or it was a monumental blunder, a blunder so serious that it calls into question our whole intelligence relationship with the US and Australia's intelligence processes."

How could Howard not have been aware of these issues? Mr Wilkie's reasons for resigning - he loudly proclaimed that the "evidence" was flimsy- should certainly have been enough to alert him, and he should have been urgently pursuing the truth not only through Australian agencies but also through his British and US contacts.

If Mr Howard really was NOT informed, we can surely expect him to launch a very serious, wide-ranging and urgent investigation into the failures of his intelligence agencies. If the Prime Minister of Australia took our country to war because he was not sufficiently informed of the facts, that is indeed an astonishing failure of intelligence. Or, more likely, an astonishing, desperate lie.

Mr Howard says he did not set out to deliberately mislead the Australian people. He says he retains enormous faith in the Australian intelligence services. He says "people make mistakes".

Hardly the sort of reaction one would expect from a man who had been so embarrassingly mislead, is it?