Australia's First Iraq Widow and Australian Iraq War inquiry

Kellie Merritt, Australia's first Iraq widow, is an anti-war campaigner. Parliament should listen to her

Merritt, a social worker, anti-war campaigner and widow of Flight Lieutenant Paul Pardoel, wants an inquiry into the 2003 invasion, and a debate over further involvement

2 September 2014 - Kellie Merritt can’t be dismissed as some sort of naïve peacenik for trying to put a brake on Australia’s apparently escalating involvement in American-led military operations in Iraq.

She is part of the campaign for an Iraq War inquiry which also includes a range of notable academics, and respected former defence and intelligence officials. The group lobbies federal parliament for an independent inquiry into the reasoning behind Australia’s participation in the 20 March 2003 Iraq invasion.

She is also the widow of Flight Lieutenant Paul Pardoel, the first Australian serviceman to be killed in that military operation.

The political, executive and military reasoning behind Australia’s involvement in the 2003 invasion has never been independently examined in an official public capacity, although two federal government inquiries into the western intelligence preceding operations were conducted in 2004. Both criticised the veracity of the intelligence.

The allies justified the invasion with fallacious intelligence that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was producing weapons of mass destruction that might be provided to al-Qaida terrorists. read more>>>

* * * The British Iraq War Inquiry * * * Released will carry private communications between GWBush and TBlair, like this already released: TB said there was a danger the Tories would see this as their chance to get rid of him … Bush said they would make it clear to the Tories that if they moved to get rid of TB "we will get rid of them".

Iraq War Promoted Terrorism Rather Than Reducing It