Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows the close relationship between US president George W Bush and Australian prime minister John Howard as they express their views on Iraq and Saddam Hussein at a White House press conference on 13 June 2002. It begins with Howard affirming Australia’s close friendship with the USA and focusing on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Bush then states that the USA will use all tools at its disposal to deal with Saddam. At times the sound of the interview fades as reporter Jonathan Holmes comments on what is being said.

Educational value points

• The most striking feature of the press conference is the commonality of views about Iraq of the Australian and US leaders, who both take Iraq’s possession of WMD as being already proved. Both find Iraq’s behaviour offensive. Both expect the USA to deal with the situation. Howard’s close relationship with Bush, the attitudes on Iraq Howard expresses and his words to Congress the previous day all suggest that the Australian Government will support any US attack on Iraq.

• After the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the phrase 'weapons of mass destruction’, used here by both leaders, took on the specific meaning in US foreign policy that the USA could take pre-emptive action against any country posing a threat and possessing WMD. In his 29 January 2002 State of the Union address Bush identified Iraq as part of an 'axis of evil’ – states allied with terrorist groups and either seeking or, as he asserts in Iraq’s case, hiding its WMD.

• Prime minister Howard’s comments on Iraq’s 'offensive’ behaviour in relation to WMD are a reference to the checkered history of United Nations (UN) weapons inspection in Iraq. In August 1998 the UN inspectors withdrew from Iraq. From 1999 to 2001 the UN Security Council passed a series of resolutions amid some controversy over the USA possibly using UN inspections for spying. Weapons inspection would not resume until five months after this press conference.

• President Bush’s comments on Saddam gassing his own people are a reference to the poison-gas attack on 70,000 people in the Kurdish town of Halabja on 16 and 17 March 1988. It occurred during the Iran–Iraq war when Halabja was held by Iranian troops and Iraqi-Kurdish guerrillas allied with them. The gas was dropped from the air by Iraqi Government forces. Between 4,000 and 5,000 people died at the time or shortly after. Almost all were civilians.

• Bush’s words in the interview 'As I’ve told the American people and I told John, we’ll use all tools at our disposal to deal with him’ make it fairly clear that by June 2002 the US President had decided that Saddam needed to be dealt with militarily. Throughout 2001 and 2002 Bush renewed the declaration of a national emergency in relation to Iraq. In November 2002 he announced a 'coalition of the willing’ to disarm Iraq. On 20 March 2003 the invasion began.

• The careful editing of the interview and Jonathan Holmes’s commentary on what is said help construct his argument that a pre-emptive strike on Iraq was inevitable, but they fail to highlight that Howard was in Washington in 2002 not to discuss war but to lobby for an end to US trade barriers against Australia. Whenever Howard emphasised Australian–US friendship and the countries’ long-standing relationship, as in the clip, it was with this subtext in mind.