The Howard government sent military personnel to the Middle East well before officially authorising Australia’s involvement
John Howard with then US president George W. Bush in the Rose Garden at the White House in June 2004.John Howard with then US president George W. Bush in the Rose Garden at the White House in June 2004.from 2003 and 2004 released by the National Archives contain the first confirmation of what has been widely discussed in the decades since: the government deployed forces well before officially authorising Australia’s involvement in the war on 18 March 2003.
Records show the NSC agreed to “give collective authority to approve specific forward deployments of ADF elements” from a list which had been approved in meetings on 26 August and 4 December 2002. “The committee also noted the importance of highlighting in the government’s public remarks that Iraq had failed to account for significant quantities of weapons of mass destruction that had been documented by the previous UN inspection process,” the NSC minute said.
The Iraq deployment comprised three operations – Bastille, covering pre-deployment and training which transitioned to Falconer, covering combat operations until Saddam Hussein’s government was disarmed, and then Catalyst, through Iraq’s anticipated stabilisation and recovery.
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