I see that in Helen Clark's speech to the Labour Party conference in the weekend she again rejoiced about how 'hardly a day goes by' when she does not reflect on how correct she was not to send troops to Iraq. History is being rewritten to suggest that Clark and the Labour Party were against the war on terror. This conveniently forgets a few things:
- Labour fully participated in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (which isn't actually going a whole lot better than in Iraq).
- Labour sent a frigate to the gulf to help the US in the war
- Clark was quite ambivilent about sending troops to Iraq, professing a strong preference for a UN-mandated invasion, but an invasion nonetheless
- She fully believed that Iraq possessed 'weapons of mass destruction' and spoke numerous times in the lead up to the invasion about the need to disarm Sadam Hussein.
- Clark refused to have any criticism of the invasion of Iraq (until many months into the invasion when it was obviously a disaster)
For a fair opinion on this, see Nicky Hagar's argument that Clark and co put pragmatism before principle on the whole issue.
