And both turned out to be strategic disasters against virtually every measure. In the case of Iraq, despite the heroic efforts of US, British and Australian troops, we have witnessed: the outbreak of sectarian violence between the Shia majority and the Sunni minority; the effective expulsion of Christians from a region where they had managed to cohabit with Muslims for more than 1,300 years; the "gifting" of Iraq to Iran within the wider strategic balance in the Middle East; and a decade after the US-led invasion, the implosion of Iraq into another full-scale civil war, coupled with the emergence of brand new terrorist organisations for whom Iraq would become the principal base of operations against Syria, the wider Middle East and Europe. Yet while the Iraq War is now almost universally regarded in the US and the UK as a profound strategic error, John Howard remains totally unrepentant. President George Bush and prime minister John Howard in 2003. Credit:AP Howard’s formal justification for going to war was outlined in his statement to Parliament on 18 March 2003. His case rested on five core arguments. First, that Iraq possessed an "arsenal" of chemical and biological weapons. Second, that Iraq was in pursuit of a nuclear capability. Third, that the UN’s disarmament efforts on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had failed. Fourth, that a failure to dismantle Iraq’s WMD capabilities would encourage other rogue states like North Korea to continue their own nuclear programs. Fifth, that allowing Iraq to retain its WMD capabilities would make it possible for terrorist groups like al-Qaeda to obtain WMDs, threatening the security of other states including Australia.

Air strikes hit Baghdad during the invasion in 2003. Credit:Reuters The problem for Howard was not just that each of his justifications for going to war would prove to be false. It was that the intelligence received by his government before the war did not justify any of these claims. Put simply, Howard lied to the Australian public. Should anyone doubt this, it’s worth reading the report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security of 2003, chaired by the late David Jull, a senior Liberal MP appointed by Howard himself. After examining formal assessments from Australia’s two analytical intelligence agencies, the committee concluded that Howard’s core arguments--that Iraq had WMDs and that these might end up with terrorist groups- were not supported by the evidence. A US soldier watches as a statue of Iraq's President Saddam Hussein falls in central Baghdad in 2003. Credit:Reuters Howard chose to ignore the advice delivered to him by Australia’s Defence Intelligence Organisation. In reports sent to Howard personally between September 2002 and March 2003, he was warned there was "no evidence" that Iraq had restarted chemical weapons production, and "that there was no known…production". He was also advised in late 2002 that Iraq obtaining fissile material was an unlikely event and, even more starkly, "that Iraq does not have nuclear weapons".

Howard also argued repeatedly that "if the world cannot disarm Iraq it has no hope of disciplining North Korea". Howard just made this up. And has been spectacularly disproven by events since. Then there was Howard’s deliberate conflation of the post-September 11 threat of terrorism with the "necessity" of removing Saddam Hussein. But Howard just made this up as well. In its assessment of February 10 2003, Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee concluded there was “no intelligence that Iraq had provided chemical or biological materials to al-Qaeda”, and that the “threat [from al-Qaeda] would be heightened by military action against Iraq”. Sydneysiders protest against Australian involvement in Iraq. Credit:Jon Reid Other arguments would also be put from time to time by Howard, including a new-found interest in human rights. Saddam Hussein was certainly a brutal dictator. But while it’s estimated that 250,000 Iraqis, if not more, were killed under Saddam’s rule, in the period from March 2003 to June 2006 alone it’s estimated that some 601,000 Iraqis were killed. Four million Iraqi refugees had also been created as of 2007. Finally, Howard knew that participating in the invasion of Iraq was not mandated under ANZUS. The Treaty does not mandate combined military action in an area outside the treaty area, namely the Pacific. Nor had there been an attack on the armed forces of the treaty partners, or an attack on the metropolitan territory of either party. Howard’s use of ANZUS to support his case for war was again factually wrong. Australia going to war was an entirely discretionary decision by him.