David Norris (Independent)

This is a very sad day. I also have been in Baghdad but unlike some of the other people in both Houses, I had a blazing, face-to-face confrontation with Tariq Aziz on human rights.

When I opposed the beef deals on the basis that they were supplying and feeding the Iraqi army, I was criticised by those on the Fianna Fáil benches. Senator Seán Haughey, then spokesman, said what Senator Mooney has, with engaging honesty, echoed here today, that there is no morality in foreign affairs and that even a small country like Ireland cannot afford to take a moral position. That is a disgrace to the Irish people.

If Senators want to know what I was doing over those years and at the time of Halabja and all the rest of it, I spoke out against those atrocities, unlike Donald Rumsfeld who, having supplied the gas to the Iraqis and encouraged them to use it against the Iranians, embraced Tariq Aziz. Those are the people that the Senators opposite are mixing with and those are the people who are covering their hands with blood today. It does not give me any pleasure to watch the building in which I sat, and then stood and shouted at Tariq Aziz, explode in flames. It is about time we realised the impact of this war on the civilian population who were disregarded by the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

We tell these horror stories about people being strung up on lamp posts, which possibly happened, but did any one of the Senators opposite object when the United Kingdom Government licensed the sale to some of these countries of a fully equipped torture chamber? Do they remember that? Was there any morality then? If any one of them had the slightest decency, they would cross the floor today and vote against murder, which is what it is.