Why Australia went to war over non-existent WMDs: "The obverse is that, for Australia the war was never really about Australian intelligence, or the disarming of Iraq. It was about the alliance with the US. But the Government could not bring itself to say so.

"Kim Beazley, a member of the parliamentary intelligence committee that wrote yesterday's report and a great friend of America, put it this way: for Howard to have abandoned the American charge into Iraq 'would not have killed the US alliance. It has more substance to it than that. The US, however, would have lost his address as firmly as it lost David Lange's back in the 1980s. That was what was at stake,' Beazley said."

Both major parties simply havent got the guts to chart an independent foreign policy for Australia.

Why Australia went to war over non-existent WMDs: "The obverse is that, for Australia the war was never really about Australian intelligence, or the disarming of Iraq. It was about the alliance with the US. But the Government could not bring itself to say so.

"Kim Beazley, a member of the parliamentary intelligence committee that wrote yesterday's report and a great friend of America, put it this way: for Howard to have abandoned the American charge into Iraq 'would not have killed the US alliance. It has more substance to it than that. The US, however, would have lost his address as firmly as it lost David Lange's back in the 1980s. That was what was at stake,' Beazley said."

Both major parties simply havent got the guts to chart an independent foreign policy for Australia.