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Howard: morally complacent?- or smug morality?

"Howard rightly asks us to contemplate the pain of the families of the 3000 innocent people who were murdered on September 11, 2001. Does he, do we, feel nothing for the families of the tens of thousands of Iraqis whose lives have been lost in the killings and the murders that have occurred since the invasion of Iraq, for whose involvement in which our Prime Minister was honoured, in Washington last week, with a black-tie dinner and a 19-gun salute?"

So writes Robert Manne, Professor of Politics at La Trobe University in an op-ed piece in both the SMH and The Age.

Manne disassociates himself - and probably a goodly number of Australians - from all the pomp and hype of John Howard's visit to Washington last week, and especially Howard's pronouncement that the honours being showered all around were not for him personally but for Australia. Manne questions that and wonders whether Howard has any conscience given the generally accepted debacle surrounding the Iraq War from inception to the present.

Read the full insightful and thoughtful Manne op-ed piece here.

Meanwhile, Paul Mc Geough, veteran reporter in Iraq, and the Chief Herald Correspondent of the SMH, in an article in today's paper entitled "Iraq: new leader, same old mess" concludes that all the hype about the new Government in Iraq counts for naught. Read McGeough's Comment-piece here.

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