Wilkie savages Australia`s wars

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie has launched a savage attack on Australia's Afghan war,
calling it "a great lie" peddled by both sides of politics.
The former intelligence analyst said the West confronts a dreadful dilemma, which
will end in disaster, in Afghanistan.
Mr Wilkie, who won the previously safe Tasmanian Labor seat of Denison, turned his
first speech to parliament into an emotional attack on Australia's military
campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He also pleaded for curbs on poker machines and more help for people with mental
health problems.
Mr Wilkie said his politics was rooted in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when he
resigned from the Office of National Assessments to go public on how the Howard
government "spun, skewed, fabricated and cherry-picked the intelligence to prop up
their case for war".
He said the Iraq war's architects had no care for the consequences.
"There's no chance of them or any of their loved ones lying in the chill desert
night air paralysed with fear, or being gutted alive by razor-sharp shrapnel, or
losing a foot or worse from a mine or cluster bomblet, or having the flesh burned
from their bones as they sit trapped in their blazing vehicles," he said.
Mr Wilkie said the focus had shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan where the
international community, including Australia, confronted a dreadful dilemma.
"On the one hand it could walk away from the seemingly inevitable disaster that
would unfold," he said.
"Or it can stay and fight, as it plans to, in the hope of somehow avoiding a
different but equally inevitable disaster."
Mr Wilkie said it didn't have to be like this, with an opportunity lost when the US
virtually withdrew to prepare for the Iraq invasion.
The one bright spot, that Afghanistan no longer exports Islamic extremism, is dulled
by the fact that the extremists have crossed the border into Pakistan.
Moreover, the Islamic terrorist threat morphed years ago into a global network
independent of one leader or safe haven.
"That we must stay in Afghanistan to protect Australia from terrorism is a great lie
peddled by both the government and opposition," he said.
Both parties seemed to think Australia's involvement is somehow a measure of the
strength of its relationship with the US.
"Neither seems to understand that Canberra would be at less risk of being taken for
granted in Washington if sometimes we just said `No'," he said.
On the domestic front, Mr Wilkie said successive federal governments had failed
southern Tasmania.
School classes were overcrowded and teachers stressed.
"People of all ages live with rotting teeth, older Australians can't afford to heat
their homes and live on dog food.
"Legislated discrimination treats lovers as second-class citizens just because of
the people they want to marry, and people we love throw themselves off bridges for
want of decent mental health care."