Howards final plea for war

Well Heres my Assesment of the PM John Howards National Press Club Address (this time given at Parliament houses Great hall due to security fears). The Press Club has often been the stage of many a momentus and important speech for the nation. And though Howard has avoided it often in his term, it was good to see him use it as a platform for a final public statment of his case.


Well it started well, he at least looked like a leader,if he didnt truely enunciate it. After that it went down hill quickly.

The speech had some good points, his points about the humanitarian suffering were valid although thats about where the good points end.

The rest of his speech consited of two points

1) "We've backed ourselves into a HUGE corner,Help".

An argument hes used before and its certianly worhty although it shouldtn be the reason that we go to war because we've gopne thus far. Its a sad indightment if we got to war out of this fear having blunderd via pushing so down the track, and in many ways comparable to the policy howard demonised of trying to accomidate 100% the terrorists.
Well neither policy is acceptable But our PM seems set to argue that it is unnaceptable to use fear as the basis for the 'appeasement' argument, then turns around and uses similar fear for pushing his own argument of helping Australia out of this corner hes put us in.


2) 'Osama wants WMD'.

No shit john. Hes a terrorist its his job. That doesnt mean he has them, nor that Saddam has given him any. In fact the PM ran very quickly from even suggesting there was a Link between Al-Queda and Iraq despite being asked on it twice. He obviously knows there isnt a link, so he resorted to the hypothetical to push his case.

In fact i was rather suprised by the number of hypotheticals this PM jumped into, speculating the french, russian positions 'If this happens then this , or if that happens....'

Yet of course the 'hypothetical' that we could go to war without the UN as both Blair and Bush have publicly said they would was too much for him and he cowered behind the 'wait till after the UN argument' knowing that any decision then is far too late and the people must accept his will. Not happy john.

In so many ways it once again wasnt the speech the Australian people were looking for, some valid points about it not being a war on Islam, of the Humanitarian argument for war. But mainly it seemed to me a call for help out of this corner Howard finds himself in. Of having stuck so close to the USA policy and playing catch up all along, that when the game has turned and he has to delibver hes now shit scared. He gambled high and if the UN vote goes down hes lost and we the Australian people will suffer.

I expected more from the PM.
Blairs gave it, details and facts. - Our PM provided none.

Bush if not providing a better argument was at least honest with his people. - Our PM has not been so forthcoming.


I now hope few Australians will watch the Question and Answer period after the speech in full due to the supreme vagueness and ineptness of the PM to answer in the very real and pressing questions of the people. He didnt even try to answer many of them. It may be his usual public policy when pressed, but in times of war he needs to be more open and forthcoming not talking in those vague and unsetteling terms using stale cliches and only running back to his limp speech.