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March 29, 2006
The dill, the dolt, and the mythomaniac
It seems to have taken them an awfully long time to wake up to the fact that our Minister for Foreign Affairs is a dangerously incompetent twit, but The Australian has finally acknowledged in an editorial that he really must go.
DESPITE all the apparent evidence of commercial corruption and bureaucratic incompetence emerging at the Cole inquiry, two questions are unaddressed. Did Foreign Minister Alexander Downer believe anything he said when he explained the need for Australian troops to fight Saddam Hussein? And if he did, how could he ignore any allegation that AWB was paying off an enemy Australia went to war against twice in 12 years? The Foreign Minister still says he believed AWB's denials that it paid bribes to the Iraqi dictator. It is a curious defence that can easily create the impression that Mr Downer is either a dill or a cynic unwilling to explain what he really thought about the ethics involved if AWB was paying bribes in Iraq. With this week's revelation that as late as last September he was telling the UN's Volcker inquiry that bribery was just a routine part of business in the Middle East, it looks like he is both.It won't happen, of course. Not when the nitwit - according to that other dolt, Andrew Bolt - has "the support - even admiration - of the Prime Minister" as his replacement. Could somebody please sack him too? And the Prime Minister?
While the PM is certainly no dill, his efforts to distance himself from responsibility for Wheatgate have surely cemented his place in history as Australia's greatest ever liar. We loved the coy way in which The Aus attempted to gloss over the fact that Howard continues publicly to praise the nitwit as an extraordinary talent, and promote him as a worthy replacement: "And talk among friends of the Foreign Minister that he could be a candidate for the deputy leadership of the Liberal Party, or even The Lodge, is simply not credible in light of what we now know about Mr Downer's judgment." Guess who's his chief "friend"?
Posted by cw at March 29, 2006 09:16 AM
Comments
Judging by the way the HS Editor defends Dolt and the manner in which he has allowed the print and online versions of the paper to be a promotional vehicle for Dolt's book, don't expect Dolt's services to be terminated anytime soon.
Divisive and poorly researched polemics apparently sell papers. And, after all, what else matters????
Downer has learned a great deal about dissembling from the little master. And as [apparently] most of us only care about the hip pocket these days being a porky teller is no barrier to getting to the top.
Posted by: Stuart at March 29, 2006 11:00 AM
"That feeling you get when you're overseas and someone mentions Australia".
Nicked from someone far cleverer than I.
cheers, Paul
p.s. Typekey is working fine for me.
Posted by: Paul at March 29, 2006 07:47 PM
Does anyone believe that ANY company dealing with Iraq during those times was able to do it with clean hands? Does anyone seriously believe that $300m would buy much in the way of military equipment in any event?
This totaly ludicrous, indeed delierately disengenuous, way in which there is a lnk made between teh undoubted bribes and risk to Australian (or other coalition) troops is despicable in my view. It is propaganda from an opposition bereft of ideas and bereft of policies.
One more thing on this subject, 20/20 hindsight is a marvelous thing. You can select a few cables, from many thousands, and say "See, I told you! They knew what was happenning and these cables prove it!"
It's like the people who use ancient texts and interpret them to prove that they had predicted world events. I will be impressed when they use those same texts to PREDICT a FUTURE event accurately.
Posted by: Peter at March 30, 2006 10:35 AM
On a related matter of contempt for the state and law I would refer people to Alan Ramsey's column in the SMH March 25th which traces the source of the leak of classified government material to Andrew Dolt in 2004 to Alexander Downer's office. Ramsey suggests the staffer involved was the one currently seeking Petro Georgio's seat of Kooyong. And of course the ever compliant and politicised federal police did not follow up the evidence.
See http://smh.com.au/news/opinion/bolt-from-blue-sets-tongues-wagging/2006/03/24/1143083983213.html
This government has been unaccountable for so long, and has pursued its corruption of the state so systematically that we should not be surprised that criminal behaviour will be more and more a feature of Australian government. Needless to say our duty as citizens to regard this government as lawful should also be much diminished. Thus the road to degradation opens...
CW: It may be that Howard's reinvention of the meaning of words has made me ultra-cautious. It seems to me Ramsay suggests by raising a question. Which is somewhat coy.
Posted by: tflip at March 31, 2006 06:09 PM
Really, you're being a little, just a smidgin, hard on Andrew Bolt. Whilst I don't know him personally, I have met him a couple of times when our social circles have crossed.
The impression I get is of a man who holds his convictions firmly, and deliberately goes a little "Attilla" in his column to pique the ire of people like Jill Singer.
Kind of like journatistic jousting. I think that his job is to write a certain point of view, to keep to a mantra, and that's exactly what he does. He loves it when people get upset - it's proof that he's doing what he's being paid to do!
Posted by: Newman at April 1, 2006 06:07 PM