former Australian PM John Howard tells lies on US think tank show

[Swagman]

## this man will not fade away gracefully.

In 2003 John Howard told the Australian Federal Parliament in a speech that he was joining the "Coalition of The Willing" to invade Iraq for the sole reason of Saddam Hussein's threatening WMDs.

He re-iterated in Parliament and interviews that he would never join the invasion for the sake of regime change.

In this interview he blithely dismisses his insulting cliam that "Al Qaeda would welcome an Obama win"
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"{John Howard has told a right-wing US think tank that Australia joined the attack on Iraq because the US was its security guarantor, and that Aboriginal people will only ever be “fulfilled” if they become part of mainstream Australia.


Howard has given a series of interviews to the online program Uncommon Knowledge, hosted by former Republican speechwriter Peter Robinson for the conservative Hoover Institute in association with The National Review, one of the homes of US neo-conservatism. The interviews are being released this week under the title The Aussie Way with John Howard.

In the first interview on the Iraq War, Howard makes it clear that the primary reason his Government agreed to participate in the attack on Iraq was because of the need to keep retain a strong relationship with the United States.
Asked why participation in the attack was in Australia’s national interest, Howard immediately replied: "It is always in Australia’s national interest to work closely with the United States because ultimately the United States is our security guarantor," before going on to say the attack on Saddam Hussein removed a "potential facilitator of future terrorist activity."


The Howard Government ignored evidence that National Party-connected wheat monopoly AWB was paying bribes to Saddam’s regime, providing nearly $300m to potentially fund Iraqi military and terrorist activity. Howard did not mention the actual pretext for the attack, Iraq’s purported possession of weapons of mass destruction, or the claim of then-Defence Minister Brendan Nelson that securing oil supplies was also a reason for Australia participating in an illegal attack that has so far led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the undermining of NATO’s attempts to stabilise Afghanistan.


http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090429-A-glimpse-into-John-Howards-mind-as-told-by-the-man-himself.html