Maurice Hayes (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I find a good deal to support in what Senator Browne said, but I stop short of endorsing his scepticism about the bone fides of the Government.

All war is filthy – we all know that. The first casualty of war is truth and we just labour on from that. We are in danger of almost canonising Saddam Hussein by having produced an anti-hero in the form of the American President. That is a terrible position for us to get ourselves into.

The innocent Iraqi people have suffered and they will suffer more. What is important is to bring that suffering to an end as quickly as possible. That will not be effected simply by telling people to stop in their tracks now and return home.

Senator Norris talked about the spirit of Macbeth. There is another Shakespearean character who boasted, "I can call spirits from the vasty deep," to which the response was:

Why, so can I, or so can any man;

But will they come when you do call for

them?

Ours is a small voice and we do not want to imagine that it can be magnified to that extent on the world stage.

Let us imagine what would happen if the war stopped now. This is an aspect of Senator Browne's analysis which I found quite telling. The Minister of State indicated the plight of the Iraqi people, how their standard of living had fallen. It had fallen for two reasons, one being the regime under which they were living and the second, to which Senator Henry referred, is due to the United Nations sanctions, to which we all subscribed. The sanctions were the result of the regime. The other cause of their immediate and terrible suffering is the war.

I agree with Senator Browne that the last Gulf War stopped about a week too soon without achieving its objective. Simply to stop things now and leave people in the hands of a corrupt regime would not effect any great improvement. Apart from praying for a rapid end to the war, for the minimisation of casualties and for as little destruction as possible of the infrastructure, we need to use whatever influence we have to ensure that a humanitarian programme is put in place under the aegis of the United Nations and the EU rather than a military or an imperial occupation.

Reference was made to the fact that there were two American shadow governments waiting to move in, one from the State Department and the other from the Pentagon. That could only be disastrous. This needs to be considered in the wider geopolitical sense. Attention needs to be paid to the running sore of Israel and Palestine. I hope the Minister of State can redouble his efforts in that regard.