Don Lydon (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Tom Kitt, to the House. He is doing a fine job and it is recognised by all sides of the House.

It is important to go back to the invasion by Iraq of its non-threatening neighbour Kuwait. The Iraqis claimed that it belonged to Iraq at one time. Whether it did is neither here nor there because it was an act of blatant aggression against a non-threatening state. The invasion was then repulsed by the US-led coalition forces. In that conflict, thousands of Iraqis, mostly young conscripts, needlessly died.

Since that time, over a ten year period, the bombing of Iraq continued on a regular basis by both US and UK forces. Severe sanctions were put in place which resulted, indirectly, in the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children every month. This was because of the regime that existed. UN inspectors went into the country searching for weapons of mass destruction, which they never discovered and no regime change occurred. The excuse for going to war was that weapons of mass destruction existed and could be deployed within 45 minutes. The leaderships in the UK and US lied to their parliaments and their people about the existence of these weapons of mass destruction and about the potential of Iraq to launch strikes using them. At the time I did not believe that war was necessary. Earlier in the year, Pope John Paul II said:

No to war. War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity. War cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good except as a very last option.