Australian Prime Minister John Howard faced renewed attacks yesterday over his support for the US-led war in Iraq as new evidence emerged that a top weapons expert had warned him that there was nothing to justify invasion.
The Sydney Morning Herald said Bob Mathews, described as Australia's leading expert on weapons of mass destruction, told Howard three days before his announcement that Australia was committing troops to the invasion that the case for war was based on falsehoods.
Mathews, a 35-year veteran of the government's Defense, Science and Technology Organisation, also warned Howard in a letter that support for the war would make Australia a bigger terrorist target.
The Herald said it had obtained a copy of Mathews' letter to How-ard and had been appraised of what one colleague had reportedly described as "disgraceful" treatment of Mathews before and after he sent the letter.
"There are no reasons at the present time to justify supporting a US-led invasion of Iraq," the letter quoted Mathews as telling Howard.
The letter also urged Howard to make a last-ditch effort to persuade the US to abandon war plans.
The report described Mathews' action as a last, desperate act after his superiors repeatedly blocked him from expressing his views.
Mathews wrote to Howard as a private citizen three days before he committed the nation to sending some 2,000 defense personnel to the conflict.
Tough campaign
The report, the latest of a series that alleges Howard was well warned against joining the war in Iraq, comes at a bad time for the government, now in the throes of a tough campaign for the Oct. 9 election.
Howard's enthusiastic support for US President George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing" in Iraq and the Labor opposition's pledge to pull Australian troops out by Christmas have been a major election issue.
In his televised address to the nation advising of his decision to take Australia into the war in conjuction with the US and other allies, Howard said that the reason "above all others" for joining the war was the threat that was posed by terrorists who had gained possession of weapons of mass destruction.
Clear evidence
The Labor Party moved quickly yesterday to capitalize on the report, saying that it constituted further clear evidence that How-ard had ignored expert advice not to take Australia into the conflict.
"Bob Mathews was right in saying that there were big question marks over the weapons of mass destruction," opposition leader Mark Latham said from Melbourne.
"Mr. Howard ignored that advice in the letter and decided to go in search of weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist," Latham said.
"Mr. Howard said it would make us safer. It hasn't -- he's had it wrong. This is an incompetent government on national security and the letter today and the information today further confirms that point of view," he said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS