The case for an Iraq War inquiry in Australia

This article examines the background to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq with a view to identifying when and by what process Australia committed itself to the invasion. It provides evidence and assessments from a variety of sources that the Australian Government was effectively committed long before it announced a decision on 18 March 2003, the eve of the invasion. Many questions about the decision making process remain; in the absence of a properly constituted inquiry there is little solid evidence that the Government considered the matter of entering into armed hostilities with the diligence that the Australian public might expect. It is the thesis of this paper that one of the key lessons from the Iraq War is that the current system of decision making in relation to the deployment of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) into international armed conflict contains insufficient checks and balances, and needs to be changed

Armed conflict · Diligence · Due diligence · Government (linguistics · Iraq war · Political science · Public relations · Relation (database · Software deployment · Variety (cybernetics · Commonwealth, Australian Politics and Federalism · Engineering · Law · Military and Defense Studies · Military History and Strategy · Psychology · Public Administration · Social Psychology

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