Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for being here to take the issue and the Ceann Comhairle for allowing it. If Bashar al-Assad deliberately used chemical weapons on his own people, that is horrific. He should certainly be held to account. He has done bad things previously but the refusal to look for evidence and to have an independent inquiry is worrying. If the response to the assumption that there was a chemical weapon attack is a military strike, then we have a higher level of responsibility to ensure that it took place. The site should be visited, the evidence should be found and taken to the UN Security Council and, if necessary, to the Hague to initiate criminal proceedings.

In Iraq back in 2003, there was no proof of any of the claims of the weapons of mass destruction. In Libya, there was no proof of the claims that Muammar Gaddafi was going to slaughter many people but this assumption was used as a pretext to bomb the living daylights out of the country. The same people who cheerled those disastrous wars are cheerleading this aggression now.

Saudi Arabia approves of the airstrikes. This is because Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, the US and the UK have been helping to fund these so-called moderate groups who end up being cousins to ISIS, al-Qaeda and al-Nusra. These groups are trying to take over the government of Syria which, like it or not, is a pluralistic society. The US, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are promoting and funding this extremist jihadi movement. They want a regime change.

This particular US attack was not the most deadly attack in Syria that the US staged last week. Many of the people calling for the US to intervene in Syria don’t seem to realise that it is already at war there. In Syria and in Iraq, over recent weeks and months, US air attacks have hit mosques, schools and apartment complexes and have killed many hundreds of civilians to the extent that those who monitor this, such as the Airwars group, have estimated that the US has now surpassed Russia in its killing of civilians by bombing raids.

As investigative journalist Mr. Allan Nairn claims, the murder of civilians is simply calculated out of existence as people forget that numbers are not valueless. Mr. Nairn said the following:

Within the U.S. system, those killings of civilians are excused, because the U.S. was not targeting those civilians per se. They just happened to be next to the targets, so they died in the explosion. So the U.S. system says it’s OK .... They calculate how many civilians they predict will die by accident. So, in a certain sense, it’s an accident. But in another sense, if you were applying domestic criminal law standards, it wouldn’t be considered an accident. They could be charged with criminally negligent homicide. They could [even] be charged with various kinds of manslaughter.

The death toll from a 17 March US airstrike in the Iraqi city of Mosul has risen to more than 300 civilians, including many children. While speaking to Mr. Jeremy Scahill on "Intercepted" this week, the former Ohio Democratic Congressman, Mr. Dennis Kucinich, laid out precisely why we should not fall into line with the hawks and warmongers and sleepwalk to the tune of the arms industry. In October 2013, then-President Obama sent Mr. John Kerry to meet Russia's Foreign Minister to come to an agreement to end the fighting in Syria. There were reports that the Pentagon and the CIA were opposed to any agreement with Russia. They did not want to share any intelligence with them. An agreement had been made between the Russians and Mr. Kerry but less than a week later, there was a US bombing attack on a Syrian army base. Approximately 100 Syrian military soldiers were killed and that ended the agreement. Effectively, the Pentagon and the CIA overruled the President of the United States and the Secretary of State and decided they were not going to tolerate any kind of agreement with Russia. They bombed a barracks in a country the Russians had been invited into to protect. This was a calculated effort to drive a wedge between the US and Russia so that the permanent war machine can just keep going on and on. There is no money in peace.

I plead with the Irish Government to take a neutral position. I would not defend for a second what Assad does or what the Russians do, but I wish to God everybody would stop bombing any part of Syria.

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