Antony L's nod to a wiser-headed Liberal Elder is a good 'un to off-set my hotheadedness on Abu Ghraib and leave a better taste in our mouths for the weekend.

In my earlier mock-telegram I think I describe the Iraq invasion/liberation as an 'unnecessary war' of 'Australian aggression'. Yeah, well, I stand by that - ugly as it may seem - because I reckon there were other ways we could have got rid of Saddam. I am, however, a bleeding-heart idealist who, since I'm no longer a soldier, doesn't have to cope with the practical trickiness inherent in removing bedded-in dictators without hurting innocents. So let's just assume for a moment that the Iraq invasion in which that 'isolated bad apple' Major George O'Kane - according to the Yank high-up chain-of-command, that is - failed to act honourably and competently on Abu G abuses was/is never-the-less still justifiable on more generalised humanitarian grounds. A lot of Australians (now, belatedly) argue this, after all, including John Howard's Liberal government.

Fine.

But if that IS so, then the ungainsayable corollary MUST be that JH's concurrent treatment of Iraqi asylum-seekers fleeing Saddam, who arrived just before and over the same period, was unjustifiable, surely?? (I mean, you JH-supporters can't have it both ways on the 'humanitarian' argument, can you?)

As Ant notes, former Immigration Minister Ian McPhee, one of the last of the small-l dissenters whose careers were ultimately finished by Howard's ascendancy, certainly thinks just that. He argues the case as perhaps any JH-fan who supported/still supports the Iraqis' liberation now has no choice but to do: with logical consistency when it comes to their freedom from oppression:

An important issue in all marginal seats in the imminent federal election should be the treatment of asylum seekers