Further, Parliamentary oversight is not the same as Parliamentary LEADERSHIP from which critical decisions emanate. Williams argued for Parliamentary approval for declaring war, not for Parliamentary oversight.

Of course, if you assume as you do, that intelligence had been “deliberately misrepresented in order to manipulate public opinion”, then your argument that it was “deception” and not the result of “resolute …wise leadership”, would be unassailable. But was it manipulation and deception that is the apple of discord.

In your last sentence you concede that a leader decides to go to war and you assert that he would have no difficulty in convincing Parliament to authorise it. Just imagine, in our contemporaneous context, could an American President convince Congress as a “genuine need” to authorise an attack on Iran? Necessary and wise decisions are NOT quantitative but qualitative.

What Williams argues for is parliamentary oversight over what is at the moment an unchecked executive power. And he argues for it because, your statement notwithstanding, there is every indication Australia was taken to war in Iraq not as an “absolute necessity” but on the basis of intelligence which appears to have been deliberately misrepresented in order to manipulate public opinion. That is neither resolute nor wise leadership. It is deception.

Any leader, faced with a genuine need, will have no trouble convincing his parliament to authorise a just war. What’s the problem with that?