John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

that as far as he was concerned there was not a foreign ministry in the world that did not believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. His colleague the member for Griffith in addressing the State Zionist Council of Victoria in 2003 said that it was an empirical fact. He said, ‘If you don’t believe the intelligence, believe the American scientists.’ He was not relying on the intelligence briefings he claimed he had got; he was relying on something else.

What this lot were doing back in 2002 and 2003 was setting up a case to cover themselves in case things turned out differently from what Simon Crean said. At least Simon Crean was up-front in his opposition. This other lot were just having two bob each way. That is what they were doing. Now he comes into this place and works himself up into a lather and says, ‘I was always viscerally opposed to what the Americans and the Australians did.’ He had another very interesting thing to say in that article of July 2002. He said:

But should an attack be imminent Hussein can change course on inspection to play for time. Once a US force is in place, it will be used. This is in part because the agony of getting such a force in place is so great. Not to eliminate Hussein having done so would be unthinkable.

That is what the Leader of the Opposition said in the article. He said, ‘Not to eliminate Hussein would be unthinkable.’ What the Leader of the Opposition, in his then guise as the ever ready, dignified, knowledgeable man who never quite got into bed with Simon Crean on the issue, was doing there was leaving open the possibility that, if things worked out as a short, sharp American victory, he could have said: ‘That’s what I would have told Dick Cheney to do. We shared those experiences in Gulf War No. 1. We were great mates together. We would have shared it all and we would have agreed. And silly old Simon should have never gone in hard.’

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