Why has Iraq disappeared from The Australian's list of blog subjects?

1 June 2007

Re a Mark Day story on the national ID card:

A worthy subject to be sure. Well done on raising it.

But seeing as you mention Iraq, why has that disappeared so abruptly from the Australian’s list of blog subjects?

I’d like the Australian to return to the main game - even if it means taking more of the flak from readers that your Iraq blogs drew last year.

In the final months of 2006, you published hundreds of responses to Greg Sheridan and Paul Kelly’s increasingly gymnastic opinion pieces and blogs on Iraq. Many of those responses asked for some admission of responsibility for helping shape public opinion behind the invasion.

 For months these requests were answered with silence; then, in the end, they elicited tangential critiques of the way the war was executed, and even fantasies of last-minute success.

That war has turned an entire nation into a terrorist training ground. An estimated 655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. Our opinion-leaders are every bit as responsible for enabling it as our political leaders. We need to tell them they misled us, and to hear their explanations.

Four years on, politicians, despots and generals have all paid for their mistakes. Why not Op-Ed writers?