Missing cabinet documents relating to the 2003 Iraq war are unlikely to reveal the impulses that drove John Howard to a disastrous foreign policy decision.
Sometime around mid-2003, a colleague of then-secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ashton Calvert, asked after the cabinet submission authorising Australia’s commitment of military forces to Iraq.
As senior diplomats recall, Calvert fumed. “What do you think we are running here? A f---ing debating society? There is no cabinet submission.”
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James Curran is professor of modern history at Sydney University.
