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Four Corners – American Dreamers (2003)

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A meeting of minds education content clip 1

Original classification rating: PG. This clip chosen to be G

Clip description

News footage shows John Howard and George Bush at a press conference together at the White House prior to the invasion of Iraq. Despite the phalanx of media, they appear relaxed and seem the best of mates, with the US president calling the Australian Prime Minister 'John’.

Curator’s notes

by Janet Bell

Jonathan Holmes is the presenter of this very fine piece of award-winning journalism. He had been the ABC’s foreign correspondent in the US and living in Washington so this current affairs documentary is a distillation of what he picked up about the growing power and influence of the Neo-cons during his tenure there. It’s a powerful reminder of the role of the foreign correspondent in this era of costcutting when media organisations try to save money by not appointing journalists to foreign postings. Having a journalist on the ground in Washington assured us here in Australia of a firsthand account of the shifting political landscape in the States and a thoughtful account of the rise and rise of the Neo-cons into power.

By simply using a piece of interview footage, and combining it with well-written narration, Holmes clearly and cleverly illustrates a complicated situation.

George W Bush, the newly elected leader of the USA with the world’s most powerful fighting force, is seen relaxing with one of his most loyal allies, the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard.

It’s obvious that Australia will be part of the 'coalition of the willing’, ready to assist the US to mount a pre-emptive strike to capture and disarm Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction that the Americans insist are there, despite the failure of the best efforts of Hans Blix, the UN’s weapons’ inspector, to find them.

Jonathan Holmes came to Australia from the UK in 1985 as the newly appointed executive producer of Four Corners when the program had been in the doldrums for some time. He had been a star reporter with the BBC’s Panorama program and arrived to apply intellectual rigour to what had become an ailing Four Corners and inject it with a new breed of reporters and producers, including Chris Masters and Bruce Belsham. The associate producer was the award-winning journalist Peter Manning who took over control of Four Corners when Jonathan stepped down to become a reporter on the program and then to run the ABC’s documentary unit, which was also revived under his leadership. These days, Jonathan Holmes is one of Australia’s most experienced senior television reporters. In early 2007, he made an extraordinary two-part series for Four Corners investigating the Australian Wheat Board scandal.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

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.