Tag Archives: Iraq War

Palm Sunday refugee rally address: Australia’s wars of choice create refugees

By: AWPR | Posted in: Blog, Foreign affairs, Iraq | 29 March, 2018 | 12:54 pm
29 Mar

Text of an address to Rural Australians for Refugees in Armidale, NSW by Paul Barratt, President, Australians for War Powers Reform Palm Sunday Refugee Rally, 25 March 2018

 

Good morning ladies and gentlemen

My remarks this morning are directed not so much to how we treat refugees who come to our shores seeking help, but how so many of them come to be refugees in the first place. This is appropriate because many people have become refugees as a result of wars in which we have participated, such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Most Australians would be …

Why an Iraq War Inquiry is more necessary than ever

By: AWPR | Posted in: Blog, Iraq war | 16 March, 2018 | 9:09 pm
16 Mar

US air strike on a suspected insurgent hideout at the edge of Fallujah, Iraq, 8 Nov 2004. Image: US Marine Corps via Wikimedia Commons

A flurry of activity was caused by last month’s comments by Greens parliamentarians Adam Bandt and Richard Di Natale over Liberal Senator Jim Molan. The ostensible reason for the attack on Molan was his sharing of two videos originating from a neo-Nazi far right group in the United Kingdom. Bandt, who later withdrew his remarks, called Molan a “coward” and said that Molan should be prosecuted for his service in the Iraq war. In the Senate, …

The Media, the Iraq War, and Fallujah

By: AWPR | Posted in: Blog, Iraq, Iraq war, Media | 22 February, 2018 | 2:01 pm
22 Feb

Rupert Murdoch and his newly appointed head of Fox News, former Republican adviser Roger Ailes, 1996

The Australian media continues to fail us badly over its coverage of the Middle East wars, terrorism, and the ongoing disaster of ISIS. That failure began with the invasion of Iraq. Unlike important overseas media, no Australian media has admitted to or apologised for its failure in the coverage of the Iraq war and its consequences. As is often the case, our media was embedded in the ADF in support of Coalition policy. The political class sticks together. News Corp media has been most …

Parliament split on going to war: Remember 2003?

By: Sue Wareham | Posted in: Blog, Iraq war | 5 July, 2017 | 7:26 pm
05 Jul

As calls increase for reform of the flawed process by which Australian troops can be sent to war, and in particular for parliamentary debate and vote before ADF deployments to armed conflict, some standard arguments against such decision-making by parliament continue to be offered. They remain unconvincing. The latest articulation of these arguments was made on 30 June 2017 by Dr Anthony Bergin during his lecture entitled “Parliament and national security: Challenges and opportunities,” in the Senate Occasional Lecture Series.

Pleasingly, Dr Bergin acknowledged that parliamentarians are under-utilised in matters of national security, and he contributed useful ideas, especially …

Kellie Merritt on Australian participation in foreign wars

By: AWPR | Posted in: Blog | 21 May, 2015 | 2:35 am

On the eve of Anzac Day CIWI Committee Member Kellie Merritt, widow of Flight Lt. Paul Pardoel, Australia’s first serviceman to be killed in Iraq during the military operations that began with the March 2003 invasion, gave a powerful presentation at The War to End All Wars: our responsibility to those who died and their families, an event at Deakin Edge, Federation Square, Melbourne hosted by the Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW).

To get the full impact of this presentation you can view it on YouTube.

The full text is below:

Begins

My name is Kellie …

Our 2015 fundraising appeal for the new AWPR book

By: AWPR | Posted in: Blog | 29 April, 2015 | 2:34 am

Today Australians for War Powers Reform launched a fundraising appeal through the crowd sourcing website pozible. The appeal is to enable us to produce and distribute to all members of Federal Parliament​ a new booklet for the campaign, edited by Dr Alison Broinowski and with contributions from a range of authors. our new booklet “HOW DOES AUSTRALIA GO TO WAR?” puts the government’s war powers under the microscope. The publication offers a diverse range of views from Australian experts in foreign affairs, defence, and law. With a foreword by the late Hon Malcolm Fraser, it examines the history of …

Creepy Mission

By: Alison Broinowski | Posted in: Blog | 4 March, 2015 | 2:26 am

So to no-one’s surprise, the Prime Minister says we are now in the ‘next phase’ of the fight against whatever it’s called. ISIS, ISIL, IS, Daesh, you name it, has recently become a ‘death cult which is reaching out to us here in this country’. So the Martin Place siege proves the death cult is here among us, and hence that we are defending Australia.

In fact, it is an opportunistic minority Sunni assault on the Shia government of Iraq, a country divided in three by ancient religious differences and modern power politics.

What interest has Australia (or New Zealand) …

Media release: No Clear Mission – No SOFA?

By: AWPR | Posted in: Blog | 4 March, 2015 | 2:25 am

MEDIA RELEASE

WEDNESDAY 4 MARCH, 2015

No clear mission – no SOFA?

Following Prime Minister Abbott’s announcement of additional troops for Iraq, Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR) have expressed serious concern at the lack of clearly articulated goals that will be met by the deployments.   While the PM has denied any ‘mission creep’, this is exactly what is happening, with our role in Iraq having evolved significantly since August-September last year.

AWPR President and former Defence Department head Paul Barratt said,

“Step by step Australia is being drawn into a vicious sectarian war of enormous complexity, with no apparent …

Are we about to see another ‘Captains Call’ on Iraq?

By: AWPR | Posted in: Blog | 25 February, 2015 | 2:24 am

Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR) have expressed concern that the problem of ‘mission creep’ for our troops in Iraq, already in evidence, seems set to escalate, following the NZ Prime Minister John Key’s announcement of the deployment of 143 NZ defence personnel to Iraq.

“Mission creep has been happening since the decision mid-last year to deploy ADF forces to Iraq,” said AWPR President Paul Barratt, former Defence Department secretary. “In August-September 2014, within a matter of weeks, a humanitarian mission to drop relief supplies to fleeing civilians was transformed first into using transport aircraft to deliver arms and …