Let us be clear, however, there was no legal or moral basis for this war. The post hoc justification on the basis of the horrific nature of the regime is, perhaps, the most selective use of selective information I have seen in a long time in the House. Of course, Saddam Hussein was a brute. I knew that and said so in the House 20 years ago. When we were feeding his army during his illegal war on Iran – which he fought because he was encouraged to do so by the United States and Britain – I did not hear one sanctimonious word about human rights from Fianna Fáil or any of its allies during that period because its friends in the meat industry made money out of that bloodthirsty regime. I ask them to spare me their post hoc humanitarian concern for the people of Iraq. When we were making money out of the situation there, they did not care. The should also spare me that concern, particularly in light of the fact that the governments of half the countries that have joined the alliance to liberate Iraq are also brutal tyrannies. I refer here to the countries peripheral to Iraq, which were part of the former Soviet Union and among which there is not one democracy. Some of them have dictators who have been planted permanently in place with US aid because they have accepted American bases. Spare me the humanitarian concern when what in fact one is doing is stabilising dictatorships in the region – in Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and all those places where there has been one dictatorship after another. Let us not bother talking about Tunisia, Morocco or Saudi Arabia.