John Winston Howard: Psychotic Murderer or just gullible?

Many people seem to have forgotten about Australia's involvement in the illegal attack and overthrow of the sovereign government of Afghanistan. ChargeJohnhoward.tripod.com presents this summary of the events leading up to this act - just to help maintain the rage. (Don't miss the sensational, mostly unseen video of the September 11 Pentagon wreckage further down.)

In October 2001, many Australians were still reeling from the 9-11 attacks and their incessant replays through our mass media. They were still in shock and hadn't yet began to ask themselves why there were so many holes in the official story.

The Australian Government, meanwhile, was in the process of capitalising on the terrorist attacks and tying them into the issue of border protection. On September 18, 2001, Liberal MP Peter Slipper stated in parliament "there is an undeniable linkage between illegals and terrorists." (1)

John Howard, himself, when asked about this the following day on the ABC's AM program said "My view is that every country has a right to fully protect its borders. The question of the character background and so forth of the people that have sought to come to this country illegally, the evidence on that is mixed. Some of them have criminal records...Not all of them have fled tyrannical regimes as is almost universally suggested by the Government's critics." (2)

John Howard and his Liberal Government rode this wave of contrived hysteria into the November election and snatched a win from the jaws of defeat.

Unsatisfied with just ensuring himself employment until a day of his choosing, John Howard also used this manufactured hysteria to convince the Australian Electorate that their 'Defence' Force needed to attack Afghanistan, a country in the Middle East which was still trying to rebuild after twenty plus years of reluctantly being a staging ground for the East-West 'Cold' War.

It's the information we were fed by our Prime Minister in that time, and the information conveniently ignored, that this article is concerned with.

On September 21, 2001, Prime Minister John Howard told 3AW's Neil Mitchell that Afghanistan's refusal to hand over Osama Bin Laden to the United States was "not satisfactory". He said "It is obvious that if all of the nations of the world cooperated in handing over people suspected of terrorism for a trial, that would avoid the need for any kind of American military strike. If the Taliban, if others who encourage and harbour and relieve and give comfort and support to terrorists were to cooperate, then I'm sure that an American military strike would be avoided."

He added "(The Americans) are angry. They believe they have a moral responsibility to retaliate on behalf of those thousands of innocent people who died in such terrible circumstances." (3)

In saying this, John Howard totally ignored Afghanistan's Taliban Government's offer to hand over Osama once evidence linking him with the September 11 attacks had been produced. This was a concession Australia would not have been able to give had the ball been in our court. Australian law states that no person can be extradited if they be subject to the death penalty in the country applying for their return. (4)

Only two days earlier, on September 19, the Taliban's chief said "We have not tried to create problems with America. We have held negotiations with former American governments and we are ready to hold negotiations even now" (5)

US President Bush responded to this through his Spokesman, Ari Fleischer "The president's message to the Taliban is very simple - it's time for action, not negotiations," (6)

The evidence Afghanistan was asking to see was apparently readily available. John Howard told a press conference in Canberra on October 4 "Yesterday the American Ambassador brought to me the same material that had been made available to the British Prime Minister from intelligence sources. The material was very lengthy. I read it over a period of half hour or 45 minutes and returned it to the Ambassador. It was certainly very compelling and the material he presented to me it included some material that I of course was previously well aware of, but some new elements which you'll understand I won't go into, but collectively it amounted to a very compelling case in support of the allegations concerning bin Laden and his terrorist organisation that have been made by the United States and by others." (7)

This is presumably the information the US administration spoke of when it promised to unveil evidence of Osama Bin Laden's guilt. This information was only released to selected governments, beginning with America's allies. (8)

Unfortunately, the US government chose not to share this same evidence with the public. What they did share was a mish mash of innuendoes and unauthenticatable information - much of which proved to be deeply flawed.

For example, of the nineteen September 11 hijackers named by the FBI, no less than seven have proven to be still alive. (9) No correction has ever been put forward by the FBI and the original 19 accused still appear on the FBI's website. (10 a, b, c & d)

In fact, the evidence that the US was attacked from outside at all has been questioned by many impartial observers ever since September 11, 2001. Questions such as "What happened to the US's air defences on September 11?"(11), and "If what the Bush Mob are saying about the 'impossibility' of stopping 9/11 is true, how is it that within 24 hours of that disaster, while America was reeling in shock and pain and anger and unable to think critically, they announced that they knew TO A CERTAINTY that this was an Al Q'aeda operation, as well as the names of all the hijackers?" (12)

Recently, even more evidence damning the US administration has been presented to the public. Michael Moore created a disturbance in Washington by releasing his film Fahrenheit 911 (13). His film heavily criticized the Bush administration's handling of the attacks and their deep financial links with the major players.

Even more recently, 911InPlaneSite.com has released video showing the Pentagon on September 11, before the outer wall had collapsed (14). A video, which can be downloaded from http://911inplanesite.com/media/pentagon.wmv, and accompanying photographs show a 16 foot wide hole in the wall, a hole so small you could not have driven a truck through it, and asks just what happened to the 44 foot tall and 125 foot wide airplane the official story says disappeared into it.

John Howard used his US supplied intelligence, from the same people who brought us the "Proof of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction" intelligence, to justify invoking the UN's provisions for a nation to defend itself when he sent our troops off to Afghanistan.

Conventional wisdom demands that whether deliberate or through negligence, John Howard has been unthinkingly blasé with the lives of both Australian servicemen and women, and the lives of people just trying to live their lives in foreign countries.

If we truly do live in a country ruled by law, our Prime Minister must be as accountable to that law as anyone else.