Waiting for advice that is beyond doubt: uncertainty as Australia’s reason to join the invasion of Iraq

A dominant theme across examinations of the intelligence used to justify invading Iraq in 2003 is that political decision-makers amplified the clarity of their evidence. What has been missed is that Australia did exactly the opposite: here, the political leadership channelled uncertainty, inconclusiveness and doubt into highly effective rhetorical manoeuvres that embraced the imperfection of evidence and, with it, sufficiently weakened arguments that an invasion could take place only with absolute proof. This article examines the role of Australian intelligence amid a complex mix of factors that facilitated those manoeuvres.