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Greens question Iraq War

Australian Greens MP Adam Bandt has questioned whether the US-led Coalition’s toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq during the 2003 military campaign was a good idea.

The Melbourne MP said military intervention in Iraq may have allowed Islamic State to step into power across a broad area of the war-torn desert country.

“We need to learn the lessons from the past,” Mr Bandt told Sky News on Thursday.

“Just have a look at history – whether going back a decade, a decade-and-a-half, whether Australian and other Western military intervention in this part of the world hasn’t in fact helped destabilise and create the sort of conditions where groups like IS or Daesh have been able to step into power vacuums and refuel old conflicts in a destabilised environment.

“That’s the demonstrable history of what Western military intervention in that part of the world does. And we’re about to repeat the same mistakes.”

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Mr Bandt was speaking about unconfirmed reports that a Melbourne teenager was involved in a suicide bombing in Anbar province.

Pictures on social media show a young man resembling Melbourne teen Jake Bilardi apparently driving a white four-wheel drive allegedly involved in a suicide attack.

Mr Bandt also questioned whether money to combat Islamic State propaganda has been dispersed appropriately.

“Where is the money, or the resources, that were promised by the Prime Minister, where is it being spent for that on-the-ground activity to stop people like this deciding to get on the plane in the first place?” Mr Bandt said.

The 2003 Iraq War began in March with an invasion by United States, Australian and United Kingdom troops with the stated aim of destroying the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein.

The war officially went until 2011 but fighting has been sporadic ever since. In 2014 Islamic State invaded the country from neighbouring Syria where a destabilising civil war has incubated the organisation, which aims to create a caliphate across state borders.

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