Ho-hum, another day, another lie

Tony Kevin is a former Australian ambassador to Cambodia and Poland. In a commentary in The Age (Melbourne, Australia) on January 17, he discussed the implications of a little-known facet of the Iraq war. The key points are these:

Australian SAS troops initiated pre-emptive combat in western Iraq on the evening of March 18 (Iraq time). The force, previously secretly inserted into Iraq, attacked Iraqi positions in the first hours of darkness, 16 hours after Bush's 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam to cede power. ... US-Australian operational planning began in mid-2002.

The mission was revealed by Australian officials on May 9, 2003 to complete silence outside Australia until the Jerusalem Post picked it up on May 25. It's still, as far as I'm aware, virtually unknown in the US.

So this is what we have. Bush gives Saddam Hussein 48 hours to get out of Dodge. Sixteen hours later, the war starts. That may be less important, because no one expected Saddam to go, although it's still amounts to a lie, to the pretense that we were giving him "one last chance."

Actually, it reminds me of one of those old "gentlemen's duels" with pistols.

"Take 10 steps, turn, and fire. One.... Two...."

BANG!

The more serious fact here, though, is the second: "US-Australian operational planning began in mid-2002." Months before Bush publicly raised the idea of attacking Iraq, and all the while the White House was telling us that "no decision had been made," they not only had committed to an attack, there were active operational plans for it. My gosh, how much more of this does there have to be before these scumbags are tarred and feathered, run out of town on a rail, and jailed?

Oh, wait, I remember. "Contingency plans." The catch-all CYA answer. Yeah, that's the ticket.

This is still a sensitive subject in the Defence Force. Even now, decorations to SAS members for acts of valour in this secret war are being awarded anonymously.

Gee, I can't imagine why.