Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Al-Qaeda singles out Australia: "The al-Qaeda terrorist network has singled out Australia for mention while claiming responsibility for last week's bombing of the Marriott Hotel in the Indonesian capital Jakarta", while at the same time US warns of new terror attacks. Labor foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd says "the war in Iraq had failed to reduce the threat. The war against terrorism, against al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah in South-East Asia is of fundamental national security significance to Australia in a way in which the war in Iraq was not". This is the nearest that Labor can come to an outright denunciation of the attack on Iraq as an illegal war of aggression based on a pretext of lies which will recruit many more new terrorists and places Australia and Australians directly at risk. Australia is sleepwalking into the terrorist quagmire of the US' making and one wonders how many more attacks there has to be before policy is fundamentally reviewed.

No comments: