Over the last days a lot has been made of Senator Barnaby Joyce having crossed the floor in a Senate vote on Government legislation. Why the hubbub? As the Senator has said - or the "National Conscience" as Alan Kohler of The Age and the Eureka Report [the latter well worth reading by the way!] describes him - if all votes are in effect automatic for Coalition members they might as well be proxy votes and made from back in his electorate rather than him having to travel to Canberra to sit in the Senate. His point is simple and nothing new - but worth refelecting on nevertheless.
Most commentary on the Chilcot Inquiry Report of and associated with the Iraq War, has been "lifted" from the Executive Summary. The Intercept has actually gone and dug into the Report, with these revelations : "THE CHILCOT REPORT, the U.K.’s official inquiry into its participation in the Iraq War, has finally been released after seven years of investigation. Its executive summary certainly makes former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who led the British push for war, look terrible. According to the report, Blair made statements about Iraq’s nonexistent chemical, biological, and nuclear programs based on “what Mr. Blair believed” rather than the intelligence he had been given. The U.K. went to war despite the fact that “diplomatic options had not been exhausted.” Blair was warned by British intelligence that terrorism would “increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the
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