Iraq War Has Made Australia Less Safe: Poll
Most Australians believe their government’s involvement in the Iraq war has made the country less safe, an opinion poll showed Tuesday.
Just six percent of those polled said they felt more safe, according to the Newspoll survey for GetUp, a political pressure group that claims nearly 190,000 members. 
Most Australians now believe that Prime Minister John Howard’s support for US President George W. Bush’s policies had put the country at greater risk, said the Newspoll survey.
The poll of 1,205 people found that 51 percent felt less safe, 39 percent believed involvement in the war had made no difference to the country’s safety, six percent felt more safe and four percent were unsure.
“We deserve a plan forward for Iraq that makes the Australian people safer, not less safe. We deserve a plan that makes the Iraqi people better off, not worse off,” said GetUp executive director Brett Solomon.
“And most of all, we deserve a thoughtful and reasoned plan of our own, not a stubborn commitment to stick with George Bush and his failed policies.”
Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser has urged Australians to join GetUpÂs campaign calling for a rethink of AustraliaÂs military presence in Iraq.
Howard gave Australia’s support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the nation currently has around 1,575 soldiers engaged in the campaign.
Fraser, a grandee of Howard’s Liberal Party, said the time had come to open talks with all key players in Iraq and the Middle East as a whole, or to put pressure on Washington by pulling out Australian troops by the end of the year.
Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse.
It’s worth watching Australia to see how much of a gap they have between polls, voting habits, and official policies. It’s the hope of progressives and populists in general that IRV might address some of the problems in the US, introduce more political diversity, etc. But has IRV had much positive impact Down Under? Would it be better to have the Range Vote instead? Is it a problem of corporate media propaganda (Rupert Murdoch was born in Australia, and Australia may have had its government monkeywrenched by the CIA in 1975)?
So if we find a growing disconnect in Australia between polls and policies, to what can we attribute that phenomena?
al-Qaeda’s ultimate goal it seems, according to bin Laden himself is to establish autonomy in the Middle East. In other words no foreigners allowed! No “westerners” should be allowed in the Middle East in his opinion. Obviously, bin Laden demonstrates that he is quite serious. Some may call that idea racist or insane, but one must remember the history of the Middle East. countries in the Middle East have been conquered and invaded for Millennia, and they are tired of it. Very tired.
The USA invading Iraq was the best thing bin Laden could ever wish for. He goes on TV telling foreigners to get out of the Middle East shortly after 9/11 and indeed stated THAT to be the reason 9/11 took place. What does the United States and the so-called “coalition of the willing” chose to do? Not to take heed. Pity and that will be their misfortune. Some even say that the USA IS safer since 9/11 with George as President, as if George measures up to someone like Alexander the Great. No al-Qaeda is merely biding their time.
Anyone notice that the targets al-Qaeda has chosen are the nations of those individuals who are staying, killing, raping, stealing etc.. in the Middle East right now (England, Austrailia, USA)? Maybe there is some kind of pattern here. I mean, has al-Qaeda messed with the nations of South America lately, or nations such as Japan, Denmark, Mexico, or New Zealand?
Yes the CIA (with Henry Kissinger’s help) did in fact topple the Australian government in 1971, to stop Australia from withdrawing from the Vietnam war, and to stop the shutdown of the Pine Gap spy-satellite station at the northern tip of Queensland. Details are in ‘Dirty Tricks Down Under’ in the Feb/March 1984 issue of Mother Jones magazine. What is not covered in that article is also information on the sophisticated and deceptive Taiwanese lobby that was also keeping the United States in the Vietnam War, hoping it could use the US military to retake mainland China after defeating Vietnam, while profiting significantly from the war in the meantime.
Australia was not so willing a tool of international corporate fascist (not yet called New World Order) policy in 1971, that is until Malcolm Fraser came to roost.
The Baathist regime was a sworn enemy of al-Qaeda, and there were no weapons of mass destruction.
So… On what basis could the 6% of Australians believe that invading and reducing to chaos a country that had no links to terrorists could possibly make Australia safer.
The only basies that I can think of are … stupidity, and a blind acceptance of media propaganda.
@RestoreDemocracy
Cripes, what bleedin’ codswallop are you talking about? What Aussie government was toppled in 1971? None. You are thinking when the Governor General sacked Gough Whitlam’s Labour Government in 1975, which was when Mal Fraser first came to power. And that was long after the Aussies bailed from Vietnam. No CIA involvement at all.
Mate, you have a bleedin’ kangaroo loose in the top paddock.
But having said that, Little Johnny Howard is the Mini-Me of Dubya. He’s cracked too.
Hahahaha Shane,
Gorgeous language! I’ll bet you didn’t even try!
I agree with you. Won’t it be interesting when Petraeus delivers his report in September? I tipped that Howard would call an election for late October, early November. Not sure now.
Kucinich has 14 cosponsors for his HR333. Only needs 3 more and Conyers said he’d start impeachment proceedings. Sure he tossed eveyone out of his office yesterday. More numbers Dennis, more numbers.
Interesting if it all comes to a head (of sorts) in September/October.
Cheers
V
Shane July 24th, 2007 9:46 pm
You seem very sure of yourself. I am convinced that you are wrong. The CIA was behind the dismissal of Gough Whitlam. The Vietnam thing is wrong as you point out. Other than that, there is (or was) a lot of evidence to support this conspiracy theory.
I used to know the details quite will. But my memory fails me now.
No, it has never been admitted in the media. The stock media response was always “That is a conspiracy theory, and all conspiracy theory’s are wrong”. If you then ask “who sunk the rainbow warrior”, you get various lame responses about that not being a conspiracy theory. The media get to decide what is a “conspiracy theory” and what is “fact”. The “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, decided the media, are not a conspiracy theory, they were “fact”.
The loans consipiracy is not documented as well as the Kennedy killing or the toppling of the twin towers. The definitive book is “Get Gough” by the late Denis Freney. I used to own a copy. I wish I still had the book. It is a shame that Denis Freney is not still alive or he could have argued this. Denis Freney did the research and dug up some of the incriminating evidence.
“in 1983 I decided to begin work on a book on Nugan Hand, and write a chapter on the links of Nugan Hand, arms dealers, the CIA and organised crime to the destabilisation and destruction of the Whitlam government. The chapter quickly became this book. I found the interconnections snowballed the deeper I investigated.” - Denis Freney.
The key issue that led to the dismissal of Gough Whitlam was the loans affair. The main actor was Mr Khemlani. Mr Khemlani was not who he claimed to be. He did not have access to the loans that were offered to the Whitlam government. He was a CIA agent. The Whitlam government fell for the rouse, hook line and sinker.
But further to the evidence exposed by Denis Freney, the CIA involvement in the destabilisation of Whitlam was exposed from the other side as well, by a CIA defector. Yes, the guy they made the movie about “The Falcon and the Snowman”
Howard was the treasurer when Fraser blocked money supply to the Whitlam Govt let’s not forget. He paid his dues then and has been well rewarded: but he’s an old man, 68 in fact, and as is the case with all whose trade relies on skewed perspectives of truth, the actuality catches up over time. Tampa, children overboard, no GST ever, etc etc etc; but not ad infinitum. Howard’s day is done, no ruler however clever, manipulative or ruthless can withstand the onslaught of time and the changes it wroughts.
We can probably apply certain rules of logic/physics here, and analyze the disconnect between polls & policy like entropy. Think of it this way — in order to maintain that disconnect between the natural order (polls) and a forced one (policies) (which has become exceedingly wide in the US) an increasingly larger amount of energy input is required.
How do you keep people in check? Keep the opposition down? Keep the media at bay? Keep your military loyal? Keep your civil servants motivated? Fund your special projects?
The greater the disconnect between what the public wants, and what the Bilderbergs — or whoever/whatever they are — want, the more energy (money & propaganda, in this case) is required to keep the arrangement afloat.
Hey, the bombing of the rainbow warrior was proved to be the French Government. A very sloppy operation it was too. The secret service operatives forgot their fake names and made all the bumbling errors one would expect from a Peter Sellers character.
The Whitlam Government, thrown out in ‘75 had withdrawn from Vietnam in ‘72 and was considering getting the Pine Gap spy operation out of South Australia, not Queensland. The CIA used it’s considerable control to ensure no more socialist changes would occur in this country by manipulating the double dissolusionment of parliament.
The reason our current right wing Government is getting away with its behaviour is due to media support by the Murdoch empire, world wide economic boomtime, thanks to the emergence of China flooding the world with cheap goods to make us feel wealthy, and the fact that, like the US, most Australians are too apathetic to educate themselves beyond what the gutter press tells them. ‘He who controls the media controls the people.’ The use of fear to sway voters is as old as the hills and in times of instability that’s how people vote. The 9/11 situation was an absolute bonanza for certain big businesses which reach into the highest levels of politics and Arab royalty.
John Howard has made university unaffordable, currently up to $230,000 for some diplomas, except again to the wealthy. Whitlam had made tertiary education free.
Education quality, except to the wealthy, conservative voting private schools, is spiralling downwards with the effect of creating an ignorant and unskilled population. The result of which is to also create an ignorant xenophobic, nationalistic underclass majority which, of course, will vote the way it is told by the gutter press. The Howard government recently attempted to take control of the teaching of the history curriculum to very little public outcry. As we know the Americans rewrite their history to suit their agendas and the same is happening here.
I have heard personal anecdotal evidence from former Prime Minister Bob Hawke, when quizzed as to why he cowtowed to the Americans so much, his reply was “it was the only way i could keep my job.”
It would be nice to think we are on the side of good in this world, but we’re not and our sons and daughters have been sent on an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation to consolidate the wealth of a few American and Arabian mega businesses. George Orwell should be remembered as the greatest prophet of all time.