In his opinion piece, Oh, to be so morally complacent, Robert Manne stopped short of calling John Howard a psychopath. He said:

The world now generally acknowledges the injustice and illegality of the invasion and the catastrophe that, even after the appointment of the so-called national unity Government, now confronts Iraq. Are Bush and Howard really unable to see what it is that they have done? I can only speak with confidence of the Prime Minister.

Howard took this country to war on the claim that he knew that Saddam Hussein had a vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that posed a terrible danger to the world. This turned out to be entirely false. Howard argued that an invasion to bring about regime change in Iraq could not be justified. When weapons of mass destruction were not discovered, he argued that regime change was precisely the reason we had gone to war. Howard argued that the war would be swiftly concluded and that the people in Iraq would welcome the invading forces as their liberators. Three years after the invasion, the rate of insurgency is steadily increasing; 82 per cent of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence in their country of occupying forces; the country is descending into unspeakably brutal Shiite-Sunni civil war; very many tens of thousands of people who would be alive today, were it not for the invasion, now lie dead.

Even if Howard continued to defend his actions strenuously, if he at least was anxious or agitated about this state of affairs, I would be able to feel for him some respect. What unnerves me is the calmness of his demeanor, the apparent near-entire absence in him of a troubled conscience or the kind of self-scrutiny that might lead him eventually to remorse. Howard is one of the most nimble but also one of the most morally complacent politicians I have ever observed.

Howard rightly asks us to contemplate the pain of the families of the 3000 innocent people who were murdered on September 11. Does he, do we, feel nothing for the families of the tens of thousands of Iraqis whose lives have been lost in the killings and the murders that have occurred since the invasion of Iraq, for whose involvement in which our Prime Minister was honored, in Washington last week, with a black-tie dinner and a 19-gun salute?

Several online dictionaries give this definition of a psychopath:

A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse

Writing about corporate psychopaths in The Times of London, Giles Whittell, adds the following conditions for psychopathic behavior:

insincere, arrogant, insensitive, remorseless, shallow, impatient, erratic, unreliable, unfocused, parasitic, dramatic, unethical and bullying.

Let's take a look at these definitions as they apply to John Howard:

• Our Johnny is clearly a standout psychopath. He, and by virtue of his leadership, the Liberal Party, is overwhelmingly amoral. That is, neither moral nor immoral, but simply lacking in moral standards, principles or criteria (Random House Dictionary).

• He is without empathy or remorse. His continuing refusal to comprehend the extent of his crimes against humanity both at home and in Iraq, speak volumes for his dissociated personality.

• Unlike his favourite stand over man, Bill Heffernan, Howard's aggression is more aggressive-passive. He is too pragmatically mundane to lose his temper. Instead it manifests in peevish protests at interviewers who ask questions he doesn't want to answer. If only one of them would keep pushing him until he explodes.

• Similarly, he keeps a tight lid on his arrogance. It only shows when he has defied reality by conning the rubes yet again. You can tell he's being arrogant by the way he walks. Instead of the usual stumbling, awkward gait of the inauthentic man that he is, the walk suddenly attains a risible jauntiness.

• Insincere? The larval dodderers in those retirement villages he used to visit ad nauseam think he's the most sincere person since Jesus Christ. But we know better. He is more like a neurasthenic car salesman whose lack of TV-commercial enthusiasm is misinterpreted as sincerity as he paints the lemon gold.

• John Howard is insensitive to the core, but as the politician's politician he has learned to appear sensitive when there is a vote to be won. His insensitivity and insincerity both spring from the same dark hole in his desiccated heart.

• At first glance, he could not be said to be perverted, at least not in the sexual sense. But perverted he is, for playing the pied piper from hell for a generation of Australians. He has not only led them into the valley of greed and fear, but he has encouraged the worst in his ministers and backbenchers. He has turned formerly decent people such as Philip Ruddock and Amanda Vanstone into political vampires.

• Howard's shallowness is legendary. He knows only politics and sport. The "politics" he knows is small and self-serving; no "big pictures" for him, just wedges and deceit. As for sport, he has turned it from a weekend pastime into the national reason for existence.

But his shallowness doesn't stop there. Turning the country into a replica of an animated cardigan, he has shut down the minds of Australians by turning them away from tertiary education in favour of trades. Let's face it; a nation of tradesmen is not going anywhere. The natural human quest for knowledge has been undermined and presented as an endeavour fit only for Communists and other un-Australians. To make sure no one transgresses this great call for mediocrity, Howard has made higher education all but impossible for anyone but the financial elite.

• Parasitic? He hardly knows where to fasten himself next: one day it's on Dubya's shoe, the next it's in Dubya's pocket, the next it's on Dubya's back. Where he really fits best is up Dubya's arse.

• He was unethical well before becoming Prime Minister, but with the establishment of core and non-core election promises and the subsequent trashing of his Code of Ministerial Responsibility, he has become the most unethical Prime Minister in Australian history.

• Howard's bullying is subtle. Not because he is subtle, but because he is too much of a wuss to frighten anyone. Instead he draws his power from those around him, as formidable an array of political thugs as any man of small stature has ever assembled.

• There are a few psychopathic tendencies that don't apply to John Howard. He is not a criminal per se, although his policies favour big business, which is little more than a legalised Mafia. You can't call him erratic because he never deviates from his heartless path. Likewise, he is always reliable and focused; there is nothing else in his life to distract him. And the last thing he will ever be accused of is being dramatic. Except for that one, evil-charged moment when he defined the Australia he has made: "WE will decide who comes to this country, and the circumstances in which they come."

If you read the Whittell article you will come to the conclusion that psychopaths inhabit the corporate world almost exclusively. But they are also found almost exclusively as leaders of nations. It is to Australia's undying shame and embarrassment that its leader John Howard -- as full-blown a psychopath as any -- is such a dill as well.

-- Chet LaMerde