Saddam Hussein undoubtedly used chemical weapons against his own people and the Kurds. However, it should also be remembered that America used Agent Orange against the Vietnamese and there is depleted uranium in the deserts of Iraq at present, which is still causing terrible damage to people living in that area. My main concern with regard to the United States relates to an issue I have raised on many occasions in the House – including on two Adjournment debates, the most recent of which was in 2001 – and on which I have also spoken to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs. I refer to the attitude of the US towards the United Nations convention on biological weapons and toxins, to which 140 nations signed up very rapidly following its introduction in the early 1970s. One unfortunate feature was the absence of any verification protocol to establish whether people were being truthful when they claimed to have destroyed biological weapons. Many countries which had such weapons in the past now say they got rid of them, but how can we be sure?