Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has unsuccessfully attempted to censure Prime Minister John Howard over the war on Iraq. Mr Beazley's move comes after Britain's army chief said British troops should pull out of Iraq because their presence there was exacerbating security problems.After using eight of the opposition's 10 questions in parliamentary question time to quiz Mr Howard about Iraq, Mr Beazley moved a censure motion against the prime minister for sending Australian troops to war "on a lie". He also accused Mr Howard of contributing to the spread of radicalism, spawning a new generation of Islamic terrorists. "There is nobody in the United States administration, in the British administration, in the leadership of the United States administration through to the leadership of the British administration, and I dare say the civil servants, the public servants that advise this government, who now believe that going to war in Iraq was the right thing to do," Mr Beazley told parliament. "The whole panoply of disasters that has surrounded this war has put those of us in the West, struggling for a decent outcome to protect ourselves and to encourage a victory for mainstream Muslims, ... all on the back foot."
Mr Howard said Mr Beazley had not considered the consequences of the policy he was now proposing. He said Mr Beazley was obliged to explain to the Australian people how an allied defeat in Iraq would make Australia safer. "He is talking about the security of our nation yet he is advocating a policy that would give an enormous boost to the terrorist cause, not only in the Middle East but also in our part of the world," he said. "That is the central failure of the leader of the opposition's speech. He has not explained, let alone justified, how the policies that he advocates could in any way make this country safer."
Mr Howard said he could not imagine a more catastrophic defeat for the cause of the west and anti-terrorism than a precipitous withdrawal which plunged Iraq into chaos. He said Mr Beazley's claim that Australian troops were despatched to Iraq on a lie was itself a lie. Mr Howard said opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd himself said in 2002 that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. "That was the informed, received official foreign policy belief of the Labor opposition three years ago," he said. "Their argument was not whether Saddam had the weapons but what we should so about them." Australia has 900 troops in Iraq, compared with the US's 141,000.
Mr Rudd told parliament there was a time when the people of Australia actually believed Mr Howard. "It did not cross their mind that he would tell them blatant lies," he said. "But what they have seen over the last three and a half years is a prime minister who ducks and weaves at each opportunity around the truth, each time he is pinned down, each time he is asked a difficult question."
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Labor often claimed the government went to war based on the lie of the existence of weapons of mass destruction. But he said Opposition Leader Kim Beazley had also believed Saddam Hussein possessed such weapons prior to Iraq's invasion.
Mr Downer said the Labor Party was weak when it came to tyranny and would not confront dictators until they were left with no choice. He said the Labor Party received $500,000 from Saddam Hussein for its 1975 election campaign. "I don't much warm to lectures from the Labor Party about Saddam Hussein," he said. The censure motion was defeated along party lines, 80 votes to 58.