Top Australian intelligence adviser quits over Iraq
by Sunday Star Times (New Zealand) 11:48pm Tue Mar 11 '03
CANBERRA: A senior intelligence adviser to Australian Prime Minister John Howard resigned yesterday in a protest against Australia's likely involvement in a war with Iraq.
The analyst with the Office of National Assessments (ONA) said the Australian government's backing of war to disarm Iraq, if necessary, was "dumb and not worth the risk".
"Going to war against Iraq, invading Iraq, is exactly the course of action most likely to cause Saddam to lash out recklessly, to use weapons of mass destruction, and maybe even play the terrorism card," Andrew Wilkie said.
"It's bad policy, dumb policy, if only because all of the other options have not yet been exhausted," he said. The ONA confirmed Wilkie had resigned.
"The views he has expressed are not the views of the Office of National Assessment," ONA head Kim Jones told reporters in Canberra. "It is not our role to give policy advice, we are an assessment agency," he said.
The resignation will be embarrassing for Howard, one of the most vocal supporters of US President George W Bush's tough stance against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Howard has deployed 2000 troops to the Gulf and is trying to convince Australians, the majority of whom do not back action against Iraq without UN support, that Iraq must be forced to disarm with or without the United Nations.
Howard has stepped up rhetoric linking Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction to possible terror attacks.
But Wilkie, a former army lieutenant colonel, said he believed Iraq's military was weak and its weapons of mass destruction programme disjointed and limited.
"Iraq does not pose a serious enough security threat to the US or the UK or Australia or any other country," he said.
Wilkie, who produced a report three months ago on humanitarian implications of a war with Iraq, warned that Saddam, if attacked, could use chemical or biological weapons to create a humanitarian disaster to overwhelm invading forces with civilian casualties and refugees, or cause international outrage.
Howard has said no decision has yet been made to join any military action against
Iraq, whether UN backed or US-led. But Howard has said Australia is a member of
the "coalition of the willing" along with Britain and the United States.
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