Doug Lorimer

On October 9, Prime Minister John Howard declared that David Pearce, an Australian Army trooper killed by a Taliban-planted roadside bomb in Afghanistan, had died for a “just cause” while fighting “brutal terrorism”. Pearce’s death was only the second combat loss for the 950 Australian soldiers participating in the US-led occupation of Afghanistan. A Special Air Service sergeant died in Afghanistan in February 2002 when his vehicle hit a landmine.

In an opinion piece printed in the October 16 Washington Post, 12 former US Army captains who served in Iraq between 2003 and 2006 argued that the US should either reinstate compulsory military service — “the draft” — or immediately withdraw all its troops from Iraq.

The death toll for US troops in Iraq in September — 66 — was the lowest monthly total since August last year when 65 US troops were killed. However, by the end of last month, a total of 804 US soldiers had died this year in Iraq — 301 more than in the first nine months of 2006.

“In a setback for the United States, Iran won a two-month reprieve from new UN sanctions over its nuclear program on Friday. The Bush administration and its European allies ceded to Russian and Chinese demands to give Tehran more time to address international concerns”, Associated Press reported on September 29.

A statement by federal ALP leader Kevin Rudd that a Labor government would seek to have Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad charged with “inciting genocide” attracted front-page coverage in the October 3 Australian and ridicule from foreign minister Alexander Downer.

On September 29, US-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai offered to meet Taliban leader Mullah Omar and give the Taliban — classified as “terrorists” by the US and its NATO allies — posts in his government.

By a vote of 53-2, the 51st general conference of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, held in Vienna on September 17-21, approved a non-binding resolution sponsored by Egypt calling on all Middle East countries to abide by IAEA safeguards against the development of nuclear weapons.

The US-backed Iraqi government of PM Nuri al Maliki has dropped its demand for the expulsion of US security firm Blackwater, under investigation over the killing of 11 Iraqis on September 16, a government security official told reporters in Baghdad five days later.

Based on a new household survey conducted in Iraq in August, the British Opinion Research Business (ORB) polling agency estimates that the Iraqi death toll from the four-and-half year US war exceeds 1.2 million.

On September 12, Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, a US-backed former crime boss in Iraq’s Anbar province, was killed by a roadside bomb that struck his convoy in the western province’s capital of Ramadi. Sattar died 10 days after he was feted by US President George Bush at a giant US air base in Anbar.