Going into Nam and going to Iraq are two sides of the same coin: Menzies on one side and Howard on the other. The "spinner" of the coin, in both instances, is the American Pentagon, swarming with the tentacles of multinational corporations of every colour -including armament manufacturers. Menzies begged the Oz Parliament to let him send an army to VN... kept announcing he had "a letter" (from "our side" of the war) asking us for help. He never did have one, of course, and the Parliament had jeered him at the time at least until the last moment when a letter came asking for some engineers. It was Menzies' attempt to aggrandize himself to the US, just as it was Howard's blatant attempt to do the same. The lies spawned then are damned near identical to those spawned now: The Domino Theory of Communism and the Domino Theory of Terrorism. There's a slight difference. The US did not want us then (until Harry Holt lifted LBJ's left hand into the (until then unpolluted) Australian air and shouted "all the way with LBJ"); but they do want us now... ehhhh, just to hold their hand up again, while they're standing on the high immoral ground of a mountain of dead and maimed innocent Iraqis and US soldiers.
