Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"John, on this anniversary I’m here to remind you that this re-writing of post-9/11 history is pure bullshit. A simple examination of the arguments had in those days reminds us all that we did not have to and indeed should not have invaded Iraq if we really wanted to win the global fight against terrorism; that many of us argued as much with every ounce of passion and clarity we could muster, at the time; that events have, largely, proved our arguments prescient and yours utterly, disastrously wrong." Jack Robertson

"US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said that the measure of success in this war is whether the number of terrorists we are killing and deterring is larger than the number that the terrorists are recruiting. By this standard, we are doing badly. In November 2003, the official number of terrorist insurgents in Iraq was given as 5,000. This year, it was reported to be 20,000. As Brigadier General Robert Caslen, the Pentagon’s deputy director for the war on terrorism, put it, “We are not killing them faster than they are being created.”" Joseph S Nye

"After three years of military engagement in Iraq, 2,314 US soldiers had been killed. The equivalent figure for Vietnam is 1,864. The death toll in Vietnam really accelerated from the fourth year onwards. There are significant differences between Iraq and Vietnam, just as there are certain similarities. What kind of lessons are available in comparing the two events?" Bryan Law

Haifa Zangana examines the plight of Iraq's female security detainees.

"I know that Zeina will continue her work. She is one of the few independent journalists still working in Iraq defying the occupation forces as well as their puppet regime, with its sectarian and ethnic militias. More than 100 Iraqi journalists have been killed since the invasion in March 2003. Women journalists, academics, and doctors have not been spared." Haifa Zangana

"The family had decided to keep quiet about the mystery surrounding Jake's death, preferring to let the Army handle the media questions, but a string of incredible mistakes has culminated with the body of Judy's son not being sent back to Australia where the family was waiting to retrieve the coffin. Judy Kovco now wants Australians to know exactly what has happened in the six days since her son was killed, and the circumstances under which he died." Darryl Mason

"Don’t panic. The questions will be tough, but your Prime Minister set up this inquiry, he set the terms of reference, so you haven’t got too much to worry about. The commissioner in charge can’t prosecute you. All he can do is allow you to be questioned for a few hours by a team of kick-arse lawyers and QCs." Daryl Mason

"Mr Howard has said in a media conference this morning that he will appear personally before the Cole Inquiry if requested to do so. His trade and foreign ministers are due to appear today and tomorrow, to discuss the timeframes of transmission of information from their offices to that of the PM's." Richard Tonkin

"During his recent visit to New Zealand, British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke of climate change, closer bilateral relations and the strong historical ties between Britain and New Zealand. But not of Iraq. And who could blame him. Even when visiting Australia, a most willing partner in the Iraq expedition, both Blair and visiting US Secretary of State Rice faced anti-war protests." Irfan Yusuf

"After Tony Blair’s talk, what better test of his values than the US led response to the looting of Baghdad. The month of April marks the third anniversary of the fall of Saddam. Let us put Blair’s values to the test. For all his cheap charisma, words turn to ashes in his mouth." Stephen Smith

"Maybe if the mercenaries who ended his life didn't belong to a company that had lost lives in a car bomb explosion two years back, when they were protecting water and electricity engineers, this tragedy might not have occurred... All these armed men saw, as they guarded a convoy of contractors, was an old Iraqi getting too close for comfort." Richard Tonkin

"High levels of depleted uranium (DU) have been measured in the atmosphere in Britain, transported on air currents from the Middle East and Central Asia. Scientists cited the U.S. bombing of Tora Bora, Afghanistan in 2001 and the “Shock and Awe” bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq in 2003 as one of the main reasons." Leuren Moret

"The name Abu Ghraib became notorious when photographs of abuse of Iraqi prisoners became public. That a prison notorious under the ousted regime should again be the scene of gross abuses of human rights under US control focuses attention on one of the standard rationales used by the administration to explain 9/11 - They hate us for our values." Bob Wall

"There is tremendous pressure from the US for our troops to remain in Iraq, and of course mutual loyalty is a vital component of the alliance. But the longer the Coalition of the Willing remains, the more we are detested, and the more blood is shed. The country is already tearing itself apart, so I am asking you, could our departure really make it any worse?" - John Howard did not say any such thing.

"Iraq’s children have suffered more than just successive wars and economic sanctions. The loss of parents and family resources has boosted child labor, homelessness, and inclinations towards violence and rebellion. They often now live in homes where 25 people live in a space of 40 square meters. Even intact families may comprise parents and five children in a single six-meter room." Amal Kashf Al-Ghitta

Al-Na'as is not the first academic to be killed in the mayhem of the "new Iraq". Hundreds of academics and scientists have met this fate since the March 2003 invasion. Baghdad universities alone have mourned the killing of over 80 members of staff. The minister of education stated recently that during 2005, 296 members of education staff were killed and 133 wounded. Not one of these crimes has been investigated by the occupation forces or the interim governments. There is now a systematic campaign to assassinate Iraqis who speak out against the occupation." Haifa Zangana

"With 2242 American soldiers killed in Iraq by the end of January 2006, and another 16,400 maimed in some way or another, with the Iraqi population suffering horribly and catastrophically, and all the while the affluence of America and Australia gliding along oblivious, one cannot help but feel a little bit of Vietnam coming back. Of course much is different but there is the pattern - of a floundering superpower, callous and crazy leaders, and a tragic morass of innocents killed from a distance, by men in offices making decisions in another language and with other priorities. It is all such that one can’t help but feel like a little bit of history repeating." Tony Phillips

"Some may have tried to blow it off as a political beat up, but that would be a big mistake. This story just gets bigger each day as anyone closely following the Cole inquiry into bad business by sanction busting bribe-payers would know. It is the biggest scandal we've seen for many years." Craig Rowley and Richard Tonkin

"Concerned that the Bush administration might be misleading everyone about the Iraq war’s costs, just as it had about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al Qaida, I teamed up with Linda Bilmes, a budget expert at Harvard, to examine the issue. Even we, as opponents of the war, were staggered by what we found, with conservative to moderate estimates ranging from slightly less than a trillion dollars to more than $2 trillion." Joseph E Stiglitz

"How easily the mighty can fall. One minute you are touted to head the International Atomic Energy Agency, the next you are about to become embroiled in an international bribery scandal!" Richard Tonkin

"With ‘Bomber’ Beazley finally seeming to be ready to declare Labour’s own ‘phoney war’ with the government over, the benign picture of the situation in Iraq painted by Hill is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, whilst the difficulty confronted by the ‘coalition of the willing’ in trying to work out how to extract itself from the disastrous mess is matched only by scale of the problems it has created." John Richardson

"What if Baghdad was Sydney or Fallujah city-of-mosques was Adelaide city-of-churches?
What if like Australians, Iraqis want freedom and they reject foreign rule?
What if there are no benign or altruistic wars?
What if the road to Baghdad leads not to Jerusalem?
What if the occupation is part of the problem rather than the solution?" John Miate

"If New Orleans is starting to look like a Third World landscape, it is because this IS a strip of the Third World in America’s own backyard. Mississippi, with over 20% of its people living in poverty, is one of the poorest states in the Union. While many of the wealthy have been able to slip out under their own power, the poor have been left to fend for themselves. George W Bush’s response has been described as pathetic and cowardly; it is My Pet Goat II. It is now emerging that Federal funding to repair and improve levees and other emergency services was cut because of priority given to the Iraq war." Stephen Smith

"I was asked a very relevant question after my original article on Iraq, namely ‘What could have been done better?’ After some careful consideration and consultation with various people, some who had served in Iraq, I came up with the following." Stuart Lord