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News Story Investigation 1 The Invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq Annie Lauren Crockett 

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2001 Invasion of Afghanistan | Animated History

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2003 Invasion of Iraq (1/2) | Animated History

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Robert L. Grenier is a longtime CIA officer who served as the CIA's top counter-terrorism official (2004-2006).

Grenier joined the CIA in January 1979 and worked field assignments in North Africa, Middle East and Western Europe till 1991. Grenier was station chief in Algiers, Algeria in 1990. He served as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Peter Tarnoff (1993-94) and first Chief of Operations, Counter-Proliferation Division (1994-96). From 1996 to 1999, Grenier was Director of Operational Training at Camp Peary, Virginia.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq

In 2001, Grenier was the CIA station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, where he helped plan covert operations in support of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. In the summer of 2002 he was promoted to the chief of the Iraq Issues Group, where he helped coordinate covert operations in support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Grenier served as Director, CIA's Counterterrorist Center for about a year, but was fired from that position on 6 February 2006 by the Director of the National Clandestine Service Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr. . He was succeeded by Michael D'Andrea. In 2006, Grenier joined Kroll, Inc., as Managing Director.

CIA leak case and Libby trial

In early 2006, Grenier was identified in court documents in connection with the CIA leak grand jury investigation and charges against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Grenier told Libby on June 11, 2003, one month before the leak of Valerie Plame's CIA identity, that Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and was involved in arranging Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger. Libby claims to have forgotten about the conversation.

On January 24, 2006, Grenier testified in Libby's trial on perjury and obstruction of justice charges, telling jurors that Libby asked him for information about Joseph Wilson's investigatory trip to Niger on June 11, 2003, and that he reported back to Libby about Wilson's wife's involvement in the trip, as well as Wilson's wife's employment by the CIA, later on June 11. Grenier did not mention Plame's name to Libby, which appeared in a column by Robert Novak a month later.

Grenier testified that it was unusual to get a call from Libby, and unusual to be called out of a meeting with CIA director George Tenet to supply Libby with answers. Wilson was sent on the February 2002 investigatory mission by the CIA, Grenier said, because the Office of the Vice President wanted answers about reports of uranium purchases from Niger, although the State Department and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research were interested in the CIA's take as well. Grenier testified that later media reports about the leak, which suggested Libby may have originally learned about Plame a month later from journalists, prompted him to contact CIA lawyers about his earlier conversations with Libby. According to Grenier, Libby thanked him personally a few days later for the information about Wilson's trip, telling him it had been "useful".

In 2009 Grenier was appointed Chairman of ERG Partners, an independent financial and strategic advisory firm solely focused on the security and intelligence sectors. He is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Chairman's profile at ERG Partners

Like the Wild, Wild West. Plus Al-Qaeda. The Washington Post, March 30, 2008

Terrorism Experts Predict Long Hunt for Bin Laden , April 9, 2008

Israel's cost benefit calculation Al Jazeera English, March 1, 2010

Livni's guidance on Arab democracy, Robert Grenier, Al Jazeera English, 9 March 2011

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Robert L. Grenier is a longtime CIA officer who served as the CIA's top counter-terrorism official (2004-2006). Grenier joined the CIA in January 1979 and worked field assignments in North Africa, Middle East and Western Europe till 1991. Grenier was station chief in Algiers, Algeria in 1990.

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Alexander John Gosse Downer AC (born 9 September 1951) is a former Australian politician and diplomat who was leader of the Liberal Party from 1994 to 1995, Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 2007, and High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 2014 to 2018.

Downer was born in Adelaide, the son of Sir Alick Downer and the grandson of Sir John Downer. After periods working for the Bank of New South Wales and with the diplomatic service, he was appointed executive director of the Australian Chamber of Commerce in 1983. He also served as an advisor to Liberal leaders Malcolm Fraser and Andrew Peacock. Downer was elected to parliament at the 1984 federal election, winning the Division of Mayo in South Australia. He was added to the opposition frontbench in 1987.

After the Coalition lost the 1993 election, John Hewson's position as leader of the Liberal Party came into question. Downer successfully challenged for the leadership in May 1994, thus becoming Leader of the Opposition. He initially had high approval ratings, but after a series of gaffes resigned the leadership in January 1995 and was replaced by John Howard. He was the first Liberal leader to fail to lead the party to an election, and remains the shortest-serving leader in party history.

When the Howard Government came to power in 1996, Downer was made Minister for Foreign Affairs. He served until the government's defeat in 2007, making him the longest-serving foreign minister in Australian history. Downer left politics in 2008, and was subsequently named Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on Cyprus. He held that post until 2014, when he was appointed High Commissioner to the United Kingdom by the Abbott Government.

Downer was born on 9 September 1951 in Adelaide, South Australia. He is the third of four children born to Sir Alexander "Alick" Downer and Mary Downer (née Gosse); he has three sisters. The Downer family has a long history in South Australian politics. Their earliest ancestors were Mary Ann Downer (1792-1868) and her son Henry Downer (great-grandfather) a tailor (1811-1870) who traveled from England in 1862 aboard the Eden settling in Adelaide. Downer's father was Minister for Immigration in the Menzies Government and later served as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. His paternal grandfather, Sir John Downer, served twice as Premier of South Australia in the late 19th century, and was later one of the inaugural members of the Australian Senate. Downer's maternal grandfather was the businessman and philanthropist James Hay Gosse, whose father was the explorer William Gosse.

Downer was educated at Geelong Grammar School in Australia, then in England (while his father was High Commissioner) at Radley College between 1964 and 1970. He subsequently completed a Bachelor of Arts in politics and economics at Newcastle University in Newcastle upon Tyne. From 1975 to 1976, he worked as an economist for the Bank of New South Wales, before entering the Australian Diplomatic Service, where he served until 1982. Some of Downer's time in the Diplomatic Service was spent at a posting in Brussels, where he undertook a French language training course. He then worked as an adviser to the then Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser and subsequent Leader of the Federal Opposition Andrew Peacock. Prior to the 1981 by-election Downer unsuccessfully sought Liberal Party preselection for the seat of Boothby. From 1983 to 1984, he also served as the Executive Director of the Australian Chamber of Commerce. In 1984, he was elected to the federal Parliament as Liberal member for Mayo, in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia. He held this seat until his resignation from Parliament in 2008.

Downer held a number of positions on the opposition front bench from 1987 onwards. When the Liberals unexpectedly lost the 1993 election to Prime Minister Paul Keating, after the election Downer became Shadow Treasurer replacing Peter Reith who had resigned from the portfolio. During this time, Downer began to be talked of as a possible leader, and in May 1994 he succeeded John Hewson as leader of the Liberal party after defeating him in a leadership ballot. (Hewson intended to resign if the Coalition lost the 1993 election, but stayed to prevent Howard succeeding him.) Downer was the first Parliamentary leader of the Federal Liberal party to come from South Australia.

As Liberal leader, Downer initially attracted record levels of public support, even when incumbent Prime Minister Paul Keating launched a series of attacks on Downer's privileged background. Then aged forty-three, he was perceived as a fresh-faced alternative[citation needed ] to a government in its 12th year of power.

Several months after becoming leader Downer's support base was quickly eroded, however, by a series of embarrassing public blunders. One was the emergence of a 1987 speech to the far-right Australian League of Rights. Another was the sacking of John Hewson from the shadow ministry in August 1994. During 1994, Downer expressed interest in repealing the Mabo Legislation if elected at the next federal election due to be arranged by 1996. A damaging incident emerged from a formal dinner attended by Downer. While promoting the Liberal slogan "The Things That Matter", in a reference to abusing husbands, Downer quipped that the party's domestic violence policy would accordingly be named "The Things That Batter". Downer also found it difficult to handle the gulf between monarchists and republicans in his own party but resolved the dispute by promising to establish a constitutional convention to consider the issue. By the end of 1994, his approval ratings had dwindled to 34 percent after being as high as 53 percent.[citation needed ]

Another event in 1994 that would spell the end of Downer's leadership was his decision for the Coalition to support the Keating Government's sexual privacy legislation. The issue divided the Coalition with several MPs and Senators either voting against the legislation or abstaining from it.

On 9 January 1995, internal Liberal Party polling showed that with Downer as leader, the Coalition had a slim chance of holding its marginal seats in the next election, let alone of winning government. On 11 January, Downer launched a major policy statement with ten policy commitments and criticised Liberals he saw as undermining his leadership. Downer negotiated in mid-January with now back-bencher Hewson, but this resulted in Hewson publicly declaring he wanted the shadow Treasury portfolio, which was held by Downer's deputy, Peter Costello. On 26 January 1995, he resigned as Liberal Leader and John Howard was elected unopposed to replace him. Downer pledged his support to Howard and said he would " kneecap" anyone who undermined Howard's second attempt at winning the prime ministership.

With a tenure of just over eight months, Downer is to date the shortest-serving leader of the federal Liberal Party. He is also, alongside Brendan Nelson, one of two federal Liberal leaders never to lead the party into an election. On opposition leadership, he said in 2008, "The moment when I wanted to [leave] was just about the first day I started in the job. There was many a time from the first day onwards when I thought to myself, How the hell can I get out of this?"

Downer is also the only Liberal leader to become a minister after his tenure as leader had concluded.

Given choice of cabinet position in the incoming Howard government elected in March 1996, Downer became Minister for Foreign Affairs, a position he held until 3 December 2007. He became the longest-serving Foreign Minister of Australia on 20 December 2004.

One of Downer's earliest initiatives as Foreign Minister was to work with New Zealand to broker a peace agreement in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, which ended a long running civil conflict.

In 1996, Downer took the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to the United Nations General Assembly where it was embraced by most members of the world body. Pakistan, India and North Korea were among those who failed to ratify the treaty and went ahead in developing nuclear weapons capability. In 1999, the U.S. Senate rejected ratification of the treaty. Downer stated

It's pretty hard to say on the one hand that we feel very strongly about Pakistani and Indian nuclear testing and on the other hand the U.S. Senate won't ratify the ...treaty... The last thing the United States wants to see is a resumption of nuclear testing or the proliferation of nuclear weapons - and it is the last thing Australia wants to see. By refusing to ratify this treaty, the United States Senate has done a lot to undermine the arms control agenda that the international community, including Australia, has been working on.

In 1999, Downer assisted the United Nations to hold a referendum in East Timor and in negotiating the entry of the INTERFET peace keeping force into East Timor.

In 2003, ASIS installed listening devices in the Palace of Government in Dili, and later Downer signed a controversial agreement with the government of East Timor for mining of gas and oil reserves in the Timor Gap. The agreement was criticised as unfair to East Timor and attracted a bipartisan letter of reproach from 50 members of the United States Congress. The reserves were closer to East Timor than Australia but claimed by Australia on the basis of a treaty made with General Suharto in 1989.

As Minister for Foreign Affairs, Downer played a role in the diplomatic dispute known as the Tampa affair in 2001 in which Australia denied permission for the MV Tampa to dock at Christmas Island, having picked up a number of asylum seekers trying to get to Australia by boat. Downer also played a role in the subsequent negotiation of the " Pacific Solution" in which Australia held asylum seekers off-shore in foreign jurisdictions.[citation needed ]

Downer supported Australia's participation in the Iraq War. He argued that Iraq, the Middle East and the world would be better off without the regime of Saddam Hussein and he defended the claim that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq.

In August 2004, he made the claim based on official assessment reports that North Korea's Taepo Dong ballistic missile had a range sufficient to reach Sydney, a view disputed by some.

In 2005, Australian members of the spiritual group Falun Gong launched action against Downer in the ACT Supreme Court alleging that his department had unfairly limited their freedom of expression.

In March 2006, Downer said the Australian Government opposed selling uranium to India. Downer was quoted as saying "Australia had no plans to change a policy which rules out uranium sales to countries like India which have not signed the UN's nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)." Following the conclusion of the US-India nuclear agreement, the Australian Government said it would export uranium to civil nuclear facilities in India subject to several conditions, one of which was the conclusion of a bilateral safeguards agreement.[citation needed ]

In April 2006, he appeared before the Cole Inquiry regarding the oil for food scandal and testified that he was ignorant of the huge kickbacks paid to the Iraq government, despite claims by the Opposition Labor Party that many warnings that had been received by his department from various sources. The Cole inquiry made it clear Downer had been unaware of the kickbacks.

In July 2006, it was claimed that six months before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Downer had argued that participating in the invasion would be commercially beneficial for Australia. Downer expressed concern that the war might lead to America taking all of Australia's wheat market.

In August 2006, it was claimed by a former weapons inspector Dr John Gee, that Downer had in 2004 suppressed accurate and provable information that the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was fundamentally flawed. This claim was false.[citation needed ]

As Foreign Minister, Downer initially supported the United States Government's incarceration of two Australian citizens, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Downer later told the US he wanted both released if they were not to be charged. On that basis, Habib was released and Hicks charged.

Following the Howard Government's defeat at the 2007 federal election, Downer declined to make a comeback to the leadership and to serve on the Opposition frontbench, amid widespread speculation that he would resign his seat and seek new employment. He subsequently resigned from Parliament on 14 July 2008 and took a consulting job with Woodside Energy. His resignation triggered a by-election in the seat of Mayo.

On 3 July 2008, the University of Adelaide announced Downer's appointment as Visiting Professor of Politics and International Trade in the School of History and Politics, including contributions to teaching and research, and work with the University's Institute for International Trade. He was also the vice chairman at Carnegie Mellon University, South Australia.

At about the same time, he went into partnership with Ian Smith (a former Liberal Party advisor and husband of former Australian Democrats leader and Senator for South Australia Natasha Stott Despoja) and Nick Bolkus (a former Labor Senator for South Australia) in a boutique consultancy firm, Bespoke Approach.

Also in 2008, Downer discussed the possibility of working as a United Nations envoy to Cyprus with the UN Secretary-General to help revive the peace process. The appointment received the support of the Rudd government, via the Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, and it took effect on 14 July 2008.

He resigned in February 2014 to take up the post of Australia's High Commissioner in London where he replaced former South Australian Labor premier, Mike Rann. On 10 May 2016, according to The New York Times, Downer met with George Papadopoulos in London and information from this meeting caused the FBI to open a counterintelligence investigation into Russia's attempts to disrupt the 2016 US Presidential election, and whether there was any involvement by Donald Trump's associates. Downer told The Australian in a 28 April 2018 interview that, "nothing [Papadopoulos] said in their meeting indicated Trump himself had been conspiring with the Russians to collect information on Hillary Clinton.". Downer remained as High Commissioner until 27 April 2018 when he was succeeded by George Brandis.

He has had a number of board appointments, including the Advisory Board of British strategic intelligence and advisory firm Hakluyt & Company, Merchant Bankers Cappello Capital Corp., the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Huawei in Australia, and the board of Lakes Oil. Downer has said that Huawei should not be considered a potential national security risk. Downer's comments are at odds with an October 2012 US congressional panel's findings that have deemed Huawei a security threat to the US and other nations.

A longtime supporter of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, Downer has played a leading role opposing moves to replace the Queen with a president.

In 2015, he was recommended by British and Australian officials as a possible compromise candidate for Commonwealth Secretary-General but Baroness Patricia Scotland was ultimately elected to the post at the 2015 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

In 2018, he was named to Tilray's International Advisory Board. As of 2019, Downer is Executive Chair of the International School for Government at King's College London.

Downer was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in the 2013 Australia Day Honours. In the same year, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of South Australia.

Downer is an enthusiast of V8 car racing and holds a CAMS racing licence.

In mid-2014, the Downers sold Brampton House in Mount George, though they intended to return to South Australia in 2017.

Alexander Downer was portrayed by Richard Binsley in the 2020 miniseries The Comey Rule. He also was featured in the musical , played by Cam Rogers (2006 Sydney run) and Casey Bennetto (2005 Melbourne run).

1. ^ Mitchell, Alex (3 June 1994). "Radley pins its hopes on Master Downer". Sun Herald. John Fairfax Group Ltd. p. 30.

2. ^ Staff writer (29 August 2006). "Alexander Downer". The Advertiser. News Limited. p. 44.

3. Brough, Jodie, "^ Downer, thoroughbred who came from behind", The Canberra Times, on 23 May 1994, p. 13

4. "^ Mr Steele Hall: A move into the Big League seems certain after hard years in the wilderness", The Canberra Times, Fri 20 Feb 1981, p2.

5. ^ TonyWright, (2 July 2008), Taking his leave: Alexander Downer, Australia's longest-serving foreign minister, is set to quit politics, Sydney Morning Herald Retrieved 28 December 2016

6. ^ An Open Letter to Alexander Downer Archived 24 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Australian League of Rights

7. ^ Ward, Ian (December 1995). "Australian Political Chronicle: January-June 1995". Australian Journal of Politics and History. 41 (3).

8. ^ Oxfam Australia :: The future of East Timor Archived 11 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine

9. ^ "Program Transcript - Govt under fire in Bali intelligence row". . Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 18 June 2003. Archived from the original on 5 December 2007.

10. ^ "Program Transcript - Downer backs Guantanamo military commissions". The 7.30 Report. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 2 August 2005. Archived from the original on 8 December 2007.

11. ^ LaFraniere, Sharon; Mazzetti, Mark; Apuzzo, Matt (30 December 2017). "How the Russia Inquiry Began: A Campaign Aide, Drinks and Talk of Political Dirt". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.

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Alexander John Gosse Downer AC (born 9 September 1951) is a former Australian politician and diplomat who was leader of the Liberal Party from 1994 to 1995, Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 2007, and High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 2014 to 2018.

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Craig Michael Whitlock (born 26 March 1968) is a journalist working for The Washington Post, where he is responsible for covering the Pentagon and national security. He has worked as a staff writer for the Post since 1998, and covered the Maryland Statehouse in Annapolis and the Prince George's County police department for almost six years, Whitlock served as the paper's Berlin bureau chief and covered terrorism networks in Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. He has reported from over 50 countries. Before working for The Washington Post, he served as a reporter for the Raleigh News & Observer.

He was awarded the German Marshall Fund's 2005 Peter R. Weitz senior prize for his coverage of international terrorist networks. He is also a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize., most recently in 2013 for national reporting on counterterrorism.

He graduated from Unionville High School where he was editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, The Indian Post. He then went on to Duke University where he was editor of student paper The Chronicle, and has also reported for The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C. In 1996, he married Jennifer Ninel Toth, a journalist who graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and received a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. Whitlock is the son of Dr. Robert Whitlock, a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

He is also known well for recently covering the Afghanistan Papers, a series of documents covering declassified information about the war in Afghanistan. This information mainly focuses on the government's attempts to hide these documents, as they revealed many details about the war (including, but not limited to): The possibility that there never was a strategy for winning, nor was there a reason to be there; The lack of preparation, and; massive unnecessary funds being put into what was arguably always a pointless cause.

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Craig Michael Whitlock (born 26 March 1968) is a journalist working for The Washington Post , where he is responsible for covering the Pentagon and national security.

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The "first" Afghan War, a CIA war in response to 9/11, was directed by the CIA Station Chief in Islamabad. It put Hamid Karzai in power in 88 days. "If you want an insider's account of the first American-Afghan War, you can't do better than this...Important reading to understand where we are today" ( Library Journal).

From his preparation of the original, post-9/11 war plan, approved by President Bush, through to "final" fleeting victory, Robert Grenier relates the tale of the "southern campaign," which drove al-Qa'ida and the Taliban from Kandahar, its capital, in an astonishing eighty-eight days.

"With his ringside seat as the senior agency official stationed closest to Afghanistan, Grenier is able to describe meeting by meeting, sometimes phone call after phone call, how events unfolded" ( The New York Times). In his gripping account, we meet: General Tommy Franks, who bridles at CIA control of "his" war; General "Jafar Amin," a gruff Pakistani intelligence officer who saves Grenier from committing career suicide; Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan's brilliant ambassador to the US, who tries to warn her government of the al-Qa'ida threat; and Hamid Karzai, the puzzling anti-Taliban insurgent, a man with elements of greatness, petulance, and moods.

With suspense and insight, Grenier details his very personal struggles and triumphs. 88 Days to Kandahar is "an action-packed tale, rich in implication, of the post-9/11 race to unseat the Taliban and rout al-Qaida in Afghanistan" ( Kirkus Reviews).

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88 days to kandahar; robert grenier; bob grenier; cia station chief robert grenier; counterterrorism unit; homeland security; cia torture report; war in afghanistan; taliban; mullah omar; hunt for bin laden; capturing bin laden; killing bin laden; brad thor; vince flynn; islamabad station chief; cia black sites; war on al-qaeda; mullah osmani; homeland; claire danes; carrie matheson; marcus lutrell; lone survivor; restrepo; sebastian junger; george tenet; donald rumsfeld; bush administration

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afghanistan - politics and government - 21st century

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Amazon.com: 88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary (9781476712086): Grenier, Robert L.: Books

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What If America Had Never Invaded Afghanistan?

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The story of one spy's last-ditch effort to stop a war

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When we judge historical events, we tend to do so out of context. Yet to understand decisions and to judge them, you have to understand the context.

Soon after I became foreign minister, the Secretary General of the UN rang me and asked if I would release our ambassador to the UN, Richard Butler, so he could be appointed chairman of the UN's Iraq weapons inspection mission, known as UNSCOM. I told him I was happy to.

Butler got the job. Frequently, when I visited New York, Butler would ask to call on me. I appreciated this. He gave me confidential briefings on UNSCOM's progress in identifying Saddam Hussein's compliance with the terms of the armistice after the first Iraq war. The Iraqi dictator was not complying; he was refusing to allow the UN weapons inspectors to visit suspect sites. Butler was convinced Saddam Hussein was concealing his weapons of mass destruction programs.

So when Madeleine Albright asked me in late 1998 whether Australia would support an American led coalition to get rid of Saddam Hussein, I was not surprised. What followed was the bombing of military targets in Iraq by the Clinton Administration. But they left Saddam Hussein in power.

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Fast forward three years and the so called War on Terror was launched in response to the horrific events of 9/11. It was right to drive the Taliban out of Kabul. After all, it had harbored the al Qaeda leadership which planned and directed the 9/11 attacks.

And still, in this new, febrile atmosphere, Saddam Hussein refused to cooperate with the UN. That was madness on his part. And so it came to pass, a decade ago, that this appalling dictator was evicted from power.

That was the right thing to do. Not only had he failed to comply with enforceable demands of the UN Security Council but Saddam Hussein had lost all legitimacy as a civilized leader of his country. He had tortured and murdered tens of thousands of his own citizens, he had waged a war on Iran which killed one million people and he had run a corrupt, kleptocratic, sectarian, self indulgent regime in Baghdad.

Overall, Saddam Hussein was the world's most brutal dictator.
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The fall of Saddam's dictatorship sent a clear message to the world: extreme cruelty coupled with bellicose threats to neighbors won't be appeased. Since those fateful days in 2003, several dictatorships in the Arab world have gone: in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen as well as Iraq. A new political system is struggling into life. The birth is painful and it would be folly to think the Arab world is entering a new placid era of liberal democracy and growing prosperity. There is a very long way to go.

But the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime ushered in a new mindset: that Arabs don't deserve to be oppressed by autocratic kleptocracies and the international community will stand up for the idealistic values which inspired the UN Charter in the closing years of World War II.

I'm one of those few people who occasionally part company with foreign policy realists. They are right to a point. It makes sense to pursue a foreign policy based on national interests. Sometimes we have to do business with regimes we don't approve of. After all, we deal with the Chinese, who take 25% of our exports. And we don't much like their political system.

But there is a limit to this sort of pragmatism. These days we are entitled to take the view that a government which commits the most egregious of human rights abuses loses the authority to remain both in power and a respected partner of the international community. The international community has to stand for something. It has to have some universal values.

None of this is to claim all went well with the invasion of Iraq. It didn't. The Americans should have handed over power to an interim Iraqi government immediately, they should have paid soldiers to stay in the Iraqi army, they should have been less zealous with the so-called de-Baathification process and they should have had more soldiers on the ground after the fall of Baghdad.
Alexander Downer served as Australian foreign minister from 1996 to 2007. This piece orginally appeared on the Lowy Interpreter​.
These days, Iraq has an unsteady democratic government and its economy is growing. There is still sectarian violence which only a return to autocracy would stamp out. And Iraq is a benign player in the volatile world of Middle Eastern politics. All that's a big improvement on pre-2003 Iraq.

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When we judge historical events, we tend to do so out of context. Yet to understand decisions and to judge them, you have to understand the context. Soon after I became foreign minister, the Secretary General of the UN rang me and asked if I would release our ambassador to the UN, Richard Butler, so he could be appointed chairman of the UN's Iraq weapons inspection mission, known as UNSCOM.