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premature withdrawal .....

 
20 October 2006

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER
THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW
ROYAL AUTOMOBILE CLUB, SYDNEY

JOURNALIST:

Mr Howard, General Cosgrove says there's been an energising of the jihadist movement through the protracted war in Iraq, that's a direct quote.  Do you agree with that?

PRIME MINISTER:

Look, I was asked that question last night and I made the point that whatever conclusions people might draw you still had to face the simple question of what do we do, and that if we decide to pull out that will be an enormous victory for the terrorists and that's why the Australian Government sets its face against a premature withdrawal.  We'll go when we believe that conditions are appropriate and reasonable stability will remain and that Iraq has a real prospect of a democratic future.

JOURNALIST:

Does that mean the 2010 deadline has been shelved?

PRIME MINISTER:

Well I've never set a deadline.  I have never set deadlines.  Other people may have said I'd set deadlines, other people might want me to, I'm not setting any deadlines.  You don't allow yourself to be driven by a date in relation to these things, you are governed by circumstances and outcomes.  I have a conditions-based approach and therefore I don't set deadlines.

See nothing, hear nothing, know nothing...


From our ABC .....

Govt doesn't want Iraq truth, Rudd says

Labor's foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd says the Prime Minister has failed to ask his intelligence agency for an up to date report on Iraq because he is afraid of the answers.

Officials from the intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments (ONA), last night told an estimates committee it had not done a report into Iraq for more than a year.

Mr Rudd says that is not good enough.

"It is an absolute scandal ... The bottom line is John Howard controls the ONA, it lies within his own portfolio. John Howard doesn't want to get the answers on Iraq because he knows it will be bad," he said.

Mr Rudd says national security is a disgrace.

"Why has the Prime Minister not commissioned an ONA assessment on Iraq," he asked.

"Is the Prime Minister so frightened of the answers that he'll be delivered that he's too frightened to ask the questions?

"This is the political manipulation of our security policy agencies and our intelligence agencies of the worst order."

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Gus: Our primal Munster is like the unwise monkeys: see nothing, hear nothing and know nothing while spruiking-a-lot...

howard at war ....

 

Howard At War

howard competent on national security?

not on emerging evidence.

there is a political world calamity unfolding in the middle east. one of the consequences is that the general contempt felt for the usa by islamic peoples has been widened, and fanned to white hot rage in some.

by joining his mentor in washington, howard has put australia on the 'to do' list of some serious enemies. he knows this, and puts tank traps around parliament house while sooling asio on the moslem community.

it was optional. he could have said, "good luck, george" instead of "right behind you, mate". by choosing to participate in an optional war that is being lost, he convicts himself of incompetence in a matter of primary significance.

everything that national leaders do reveals their lack character and incompetence. that is why i want to make them extinct, by instituting rule by the people through referendum.