The
Australian government joined the widely unpopular Iraq War in 2003 –
deploying troops, warships, and combat aircraft – solely to boost
its relationship with George W. Bush’s White House, a declassified
Australian army paper has revealed.
A report,
written by Dr. Albert Palazzo of the Australian Army’s Directorate
of Army Research and Analysis (DARA) between 2008 and 2011, was
accessed by Fairfax Media and cited by the Sydney Morning Herald.
DARA is a branch of the Australian Army Headquarters and serves as
the Army’s think tank
The 572-page
declassified document provides enough evidence to prove that then
Prime Minister John Howard joined former US President George W. Bush
in invading Iraq only to strengthen Canberra’s ties with
Washington.
It also
gives insight into how the political decision to enter the unpopular
war was made – Howard’s statements about enforcing UN
resolutions, combatting global terrorism, and contributing to the
post-war reconstruction of Iraq were dismissed in Palazzo’s report
as “mandatory rhetoric.”
Eventually,
Prime Minister Howard and the then Chief of the Australian Defense
Force (ADF) General Peter Cosgrove were unwilling to accept the
prospect of high casualties among the soldiers deployed to Iraq.
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