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Downer v Man of Integrity

Who would you put your money on? The Foreign Minister - who seems to lurch more and more to be Donald Rumsfeld Mark 2 - or the former diplomat, Dr. John Gee, whose integrity seems unimpeachable?

It would appear that Downer has been caught-out in relation to what he and the Government knew about the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - if the newspaper article by stalwart and first-class journalist Marian Wilkinson, reporting in the Fairfax press today, is correct. See her piece here.

In a separate piece, Wilkinson profiles Dr. John Gee this way:

"The case of Dr John Gee highlights the chronic reluctance of the Howard Government to receive frank and fearless advice and the dwindling number of public servants willing to provide it.

Dr Gee was one of Australia's best and brightest in the Department of Foreign Affairs. He was a world-renowned expert on chemical weapons who had worked for the United Nations and who was called on to find the truth about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction after the war."

Read this complete piece here.

This "story" has probably got some time to run. Meanwhile our own Donald Rumsfeld [aka Alexander Downer] maintains the attack on a Red Cross ambulance during the recent Israeli-Hezbollah war was "a hoax". The Red Cross says absolutely not! But why let the facts get in the way of delusion?

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