ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, the world changed. It changed irrevocably for many people throughout the world and for none more so than the citizens of the USA when 3000 innocent civilians were murdered in a terrorist attack on New York and Washington. Within a few days, Prime Minister John Howard, who

America's leaders realised that September 11 was the tipping point of a decade-long period of increasing global terrorist attacks principally, but not only, against American interests--from the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 and the Bali bombing in 2002. By September 11, enough was enough.

The USA and its allies, in assessing likely future terrorist attacks, zeroed in on Iraq. The decision was made by Washington and London--both of which asked Australia to consider military participation--to remove Saddam Hussein from power. The Iraqi tyrant, remember, had been in breach of seventeen UN Security Council resolutions. He had the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction, but he was playing cat and mouse with the UN weapons inspectors. The question was whether he was still developing WMD. In fact, many observers argued he possessed them.

For instance, our now Prime Minister, then the opposition foreign affairs spokesman, said on September 9, 2002: "I've said repeatedly that there is a significant threat of weapons of mass destruction from Iraq." A month later, Kevin Rudd told the State Zionist Council annual assembly: "Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction ... That is a matter of empirical fact. If you don't believe the intelligence assessments, you simply read the most recent bulletin from the Federation of American Scientists, which lists Iraq among a number of states in possession of chemical ... biological weapons and with the capacity to develop a nuclear program."

Bear also in mind Saddam Hussein's regime tortured and murdered an average of 70,000 people every year over a fifteen-year period. In 1988, 5000 Kurds lost their lives in the gassing at Halabja. Many of us would remember the photograph of the father in rigor mortis with his baby in swaddling clothes, one of the victims that day. We also remember the attempted genocide of the Arabs in the southern marshes and arguably the greatest act of human environmental vandalism in the draining of those marshes.

So by the early part of this decade the decision was taken that the world would indeed be a safer place without Saddam Hussein. Simply put, in a post-September 11 world, the risk could not be taken that he be allowed to build weapons of mass destruction. True, following the removal of the Iraqi tyrant from office, large collections and storage of weapons of mass destruction were not found. But, according to US authorities, there have been 260 mass graves found with as many as 300,000 dead Iraqis within them.

It is easy to look back in hindsight on what has happened since the removal of Saddam Hussein in March 2003. The first year witnessed several missteps: the "deBaathification" of the Iraqi public service, the dismantling of the Iraqi army, the provision of basic Iraqi services principally from Western contractors--US ones in particular. Those things, in hindsight, would be done differently.

But it's worth remembering that a Middle East with Saddam Hussein ruling Iraq would be more dangerous than it is today. The Iraqi tyrant would again be pursuing WMD, and we might never have discovered Libya's nuclear program or stopped A.Q. Khan's nuclear proliferation network. Twelve million Iraqis, moreover, risked their lives to vote and elect their own government. Since 2003, Iraqis have been the subject of terrorist attacks. Americans and other allies have given their lives in the name of Iraqi democracy and the values that we in Australia hold dear and for which we stand.

Since September 11, we have faced a group of fanatics who are not only virulently anti-American, but committed to building a violent political utopia which denies fundamental political and religious freedoms. Their attitude to the treatment of women is incompatible with a civil society, must less a peaceful world. We are dealing with people here who see education and the liberating power it brings to those who are oppressed as things which should be fundamentally opposed.

The reach of the Islamists is long. Not only are these extremists located across the Middle East--and they have done everything within their means to destroy Iraqi democracy and prospects for peace--but they are based throughout North Africa, almost all of Europe and down to our part of the world in South-East Asia. We have responsibilities in this case to the Iraqi people, their democratically elected government, the nations in the region surrounding Iraq and our key ally, the USA. We also have a duty to stand up for our fundamental values and see the job through for the Iraqi people.

Al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, wrote in July 2005 to Abu al-Zarqawi, the now deceased but then head of al Qaeda in Iraq, to set out al Qaeda's agenda for Iraq. The aim, he said, was to remove the US forces from Iraq, build an Islamic authority and take it to the level of a caliphate, to take the Islamic jihad to the secular states in the region, and destroy the state of Israel.

WE ARE IMMENSELY PROUD of what Australian troops--members of the Royal Australian Navy, the Royal Australian Air Force and the Australian Army--have done and continue to do in Iraq on our behalf, in our name, under our flag and for our values in support of the Iraqi people and Australia's strategic interests in the region and throughout the world.

As a matter of record, it should be understood that the Overwatch Battle Group--originally the deployment of some 450 Australian troops in April 2005--was, paradoxically for some Australians, to protect Japanese engineers undertaking important civilian and military engineering projects in Al Muthanna province in central southern Iraq. As progress was made, the Howard government made the decision, at the request of the Iraqis as well as our US and British allies, that we would move to an overwatch posture that required us to increase the number of troops that we had deployed and change the composition to make it sufficiently robust. That is why we opposed vehemently the notion of a phased withdrawal of combat troops, as argued by the Rudd government, then in opposition, in 2007.

Those men and women over four rotations of the battle group have performed superbly. We have suffered six casualties--six were wounded--and thankfully no men or women in our uniform have been killed doing overwatch operations, engaging the Iraqis locally, undertaking training of the Iraqi forces or providing security of the most robust nature should the Iraqis, whom we have been training, not be able to undertake the tasks of security themselves. The Australian Army training team has done a superb job based in Dhi Qar province, along with the operational Overwatch Battle Group in Tallil, overseeing operations in Dhi Qar and Al Muthanna and contributing to the training of what are now 33,000 Iraqi security forces that have been trained by the Australian Army.

The position of the Liberal and National parties, in government and in opposition, remains the same: in all of our deployments we remain committed to the cause until the job is done. That means that when the government in the country where we are deployed is confident that its own forces are able to provide for its own security then it is time for us to leave. That should always be subject to conditions on the ground. We made the decision last year that if the conditions were to be right on the ground in 2008, as they now are, then it would be appropriate to bring the battle group home but to replace it with a training capability which would of course include a force protection element.

In other words, the dramatic security improvement on the ground in Iraq in the past year has allowed the withdrawal of Australian troops to take place in an orderly and peaceful manner. Yet the Opposition would prefer to have seen a continuing presence of our Training Team to further increase the rate at which we are training the Iraqis to look after their own security.

Progress has been made in Iraq because of the leadership of the US President and his key military advisers late in 2006. President Bush's decision to support a surge of US military forces in Iraq was criticised roundly here in Australia, both in the political arena and in the commentariat. To .put an additional 30,000 US troops into Baghdad to take it to twenty brigade combat teams was a significant step on the part of the US President but one considered necessary to bring improvement to the security situation in Baghdad and in Iraq generally.

As a result, the leadership of Nouri al-Maliki and the democratically elected government of Iraq, the improvement of the provision of services and the efforts of nations such as Australia and the UK and other nations in areas of Iraq outside Baghdad, significant progress has been made. So, in al Anbar province--which had been the home of al Qaeda in Iraq--where in October 2006 we had 3200 terrorist events, we now have in the order of 100 a month. We have had whole days with no terrorist incidents at all. Ramadi, Fallujah and many other areas of Iraq--these are areas where once an Abrams tank would have been required to go through them but where now instead there is much more order, good governance, peace and co-operation.

Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA, recently pointed out that the surge of US forces has led to a near-defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq. There would have been very few--particularly very few on the government benches--who only six or twelve months ago would have even hoped that that would be the case. Thank God we have made progress. The Simon Fraser University in Canada has also documented that deaths from terrorist acts since 2001 outside of Iraq have declined 40 per cent.

THERE ARE THREE principal reasons why we have made considerable progress globally against terrorism. First, the battle in Afghanistan, to which we are strongly committed and should remain so for the foreseeable future, has denied al Qaeda a strategically important sanctuary. Second, the Sunni insurgents, and in particular al Qaeda, have attacked both Shiite and Sunni targets in Iraq and throughout the world, and in the process have marginalised themselves in the Muslim world. Third, the surge in Baghdad, and the courage and determination of not only the USA but also the UK and Australia to stand by the Iraqis and to make sure that we were able to see that terrorism would not be able to take root in Iraq has meant that al Qaeda would not be able to run operations within Iraq, in the region, or indeed throughout the world.

When Australians see their soldiers come back from Tallil in central southern Iraq in coming weeks and months, they can be proud that our troops have done the job that they were asked to do, allowing the Americans to do the heavy lifting in Baghdad, which in turn has brought significant progress throughout much of Iraq.

The Australian battle group, which is the fourth of those that was deployed to Iraq, has engaged in many things. We are very proud of the fact that they built the bridge at Samawah. They have assisted with veterinary clinics, ambulance facilities, electricity, roads and the refurbishment of schools and hospitals. For all of these things, as one soldier said to me during one of my visits as then Minister for Defence: "The Iraqi people seem to appreciate greatly what we are doing for them."

I might also say to Australians, who were led to believe last year that, if there were to be a change of government, our troops would leave Iraq, that the battle group is leaving and, were it up to us, we would be replacing it with a suitably equipped training facility for central southern Iraq.

But it is worth remembering that there remain about 1000 Defence Force personnel across the theatre of Iraq. We have the P3 Orions, which provide essential surveillance activity, particularly over the Gulf, and the frigate, which is in the Gulf, as part of a task force often coalition ships protecting two vital Iraqi oil terminals. We have got the security detachment in Baghdad, comprising 110 troops. We also have our C130 Hercules, which do an absolutely extraordinary job transferring equipment and our people throughout the operational theatre. We have a logistics operation. We have a joint headquarters task force. We are in the multinational forces task force. In all, we will still have about 1000 of our men and women across the theatre of Iraq, and we are immensely proud of them.

It is often said by Australians who are well-meaning that our soldiers have been lucky in avoiding deaths in Iraq. And indeed there has been some luck involved in their deployment. But several reasons explain why we have not sustained the casualties of some of our allies: the outstanding leadership of the men and women who lead at all levels in the Australian Defence Force; the judicious planning, both militarily and at a government level, for the operations we have undertaken; the level of equipment and the nature of equipment provided to our troops, which I consider to be better than any of our allies; the training which is undertaken by Australian Defence Force personnel; and the Australian character. In my experience, even twenty-year-old privates see themselves not only as soldiers but as educators, diplomats, aid workers and teachers.

If every Australian could only see them, whether in Iraq or in other parts of the world, they would be even more proud of them than they already are.

Dr Brendan Nelson is the leader of the federal Opposition. This is an edited extract from his parliamentary response to the Prime Minister's statement on withdrawing Australian troops from Iraq on June 2.