David Norris (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Conor Lenihan, and thank him for his introductory remarks. It is a pleasure to follow the civilised and humane contribution of Senator Lydon, who went straight to the heart of the matter of the impact on the lives of ordinary decent Iraqis. They are trying to live out their little lives, keep their families together, educate their children and feed themselves. The intervention of the US by its invasion and war of terror has been a catastrophe for them.

The Minister of State spoke of assisting the Iraqi people to make a better life for themselves. Electricity provision and water resources are worse than under Saddam Hussein. The civilian casualty rate is enormous. It has been estimated by a reputable American academic study that as a consequence of the war, there were over 100,000 direct and indirect military casualties. This figure is unchallengeable. One of the most sinister aspects of the American attitude to this is that it makes no attempt to report the number of casualties, especially civilian ones. We do not know what went on in Falluja.

The war was supposed to make matters better. Has it? The situation in Iraq is widely regarded by the most reputable international commentators as an economic catastrophe. Living standards are declining with an increase in poverty, child malnutrition and a 65% unemployment rate. The World Food Programme suggests that one in four Iraqis have to survive on food rations distributed by the ministry of trade, while 2.6 million Iraqis are estimated to be so poor that they regularly sell a portion of their rations to meet other needs. A newspaper reported last week that some Iraqis have resorted to selling their organs, such as kidneys, to survive. This is what we have inflicted on them.

I was one of the few people who protested against the Iran-Iraq war and objected to Ireland selling beef to Iraq at the time. I protested at the events at Halabja and when Mr. Rumsfeld was happy to give another hug to Saddam Hussein. Some companies close to the US Administration, such as Halliburton, have produced new water purification plants. However, they have handed them over to untrained Iraqi workers with the result that water purity standards have gone adrift.

The Minister of State was correct on Saddam Hussein's regime. It was an evil and dreadful regime which engaged in gas and chemical warfare, indiscriminate ballistic missile bombardment of cities and ecological destruction intended to damage its perceived enemies. Does that not sound a little like the American position? Is this not what they have done? Do Members recall the so-called "shock and awe" campaign, involving the obscene fireworks displays we were treated to every night on television? Mention was made of Vietnam. What about the defoliants possibly used in Iraq?

The Minister of State says that we all hope the political process will prevail over violence. Quite so, but the Americans tried to make sure that would not happen. There was an opportunity to negotiate and there were arms inspectors in Iraq, but the Americans planned the outcome. Vice President Cheney and his cronies in Halliburton were planning the attack on Iraq well before 11 September, 2001, which provided a sort of fig leaf. Elections were also held, but the Minister of State knows as well as I do that most people hold that elections held in an occupied territory by an invading army are always suspect.

Let us consider the man the Iraqi elections threw up as President, Mr. Talabani, who has revolved so often that he is the whirling dervish of Iraqi politics. He has been in every conceivable party. He was a Marxist-Leninist at one stage, and a member of the PLO under George Habash. He is a complete opportunist. He has certain things in common with Mr. Rumsfeld. There is a photograph in circulation of Mr. Talibani kissing Saddam Hussein after an agreement in 1991, not very long after the poison gas attack on Halabja. There are quite widespread suspicions about many of these people.

The Minister of State spoke of the international conference. I welcome that but the intention is to demonstrate support for the new Iraqi Government. I do not want something like that. Let us have a conference investigating the situation, one which lets us see what is going on in Iraq, and not a rubber stamp for American tyranny, which is what it is.

What is this bleating about democracy? When did America welcome democracy? It did not do so in Chile, where it bumped off Allende. It did not welcome democracy in Nicaragua, where America subverted a democratic government. America likes planting democracy where it will cause trouble for Russia. In selected states around the Russian borders, America promotes what it describes as democracy, but that is done as an aggressive tactic, rather than in the interests of the people.

I will quote some remarks by Halliburton executives and by people in the American Administration. "Iraq is the new Klondyke" is a very widely quoted phrase. "War is a growth opportunity" is a phrase which reflects the mentality, the psychology we are dealing with in the present American Administration.

The word "insurgency" was also used in the speech by the Minister of State. That word is being used to discredit people who resist. Those people are part of a resistance. I do not always like their tactics, and I deplore the attacks on markets and mosques, but only 4.5% of operations conducted by this resistance hit civilian targets. That fact has been concealed. More than 95% of the attacks are directed against military targets, including the Americans, but the latter control the information in this regard. I deplore everything that negatively affects the civilian population of Iraq.

Senator Bradford mentioned the Amnesty International report, which is important. I have a copy of the press release, though it was embargoed until 11 a.m. One of the main points it makes is that governments are betraying their human rights promises. It states:

A new agenda is in the making, with the language of freedom and justice being used to pursue policies of fear and insecurity. This includes cynical attempts to redefine and sanitise torture.

This is exactly what is happening under the American imperium.

The events of 11 September 2001 have been used as an excuse, an alibi, to erode human rights all over the world, particularly in the United States and Britain. I feel very ashamed that anyone can use words like "democracy" in the same context when introducing torture practices not seen since the Gestapo. One such practice is "waterboarding" where, with doctors present, a person is tied to a board and drowned to the point of the lungs being about to burst, and then revived. This is what the Americans are doing.

One must consider the use of language. In the run-up to the Nazi tyranny, the system of language went on the slide. That was done to prepare people for tyranny. The Amnesty International report tells of the attempts by the United States Administration to dilute the absolute ban on torture through new policies and quasi-management speak such as environmental manipulation, stress positions and sensory manipulation.

The report left out the term "extraordinary rendition", in which this country is implicated through the use of Shannon Airport. This is a policy under which the United States Government, through its agencies such as the CIA, feels perfectly entitled to snatch the citizens of other countries, either in their own countries or elsewhere, and refer them to third locations, notably, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Afghanistan where they can be tortured, sometimes to death, in the presence of the CIA. Amnesty International noted one case of a man snatched in this way who disappeared in Syria. Nothing has been heard of him. I doubt very much if he is alive.

What kind of democracy is this? Does this undermine democracy? Even from a practical point of view, a large section of the CIA is opposed to this practice because the information it squeezes out of people using these brutal, Nazi-style tactics, is so unreliable. It leads the CIA off on wild goose chases. It is therefore counter-productive, though only in terms of information, because ultimately, this war is about money, power and oil. There is little doubt about that. The war is creating a huge cost, as several members have said, and has now cost as much as the Korean War.

While framed against a battleship, President Bush told us the Iraqi war was over. That must be almost a year ago. Fighting in Iraq has been prolonged and intense, so the costs have continued to rise. US Congressman John Spratt said that fighting in Iraq is lasting longer and is more intense than anyone expected, and the cost of keeping troops in the theatre of operations is greater than anyone anticipated. So far, $192 billion has been approved by Congress for the war. Where is it going? It is going into the pockets of Mr. Cheney's friends in Halliburton andKellogg, Brown and Root. For five years, Mr. Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton, the world's largest oil and gas company. He continues to receive deferred payments of $150,000 annually and holds shares in the company valued at $18 million, but there is no question of a conflict of interests. Under Mr. Cheney, in 2003 a secret task force in the Bush Administration picked Halliburton to receive a non-competitive contract for up to $7 billion to rebuild Iraq's oil operations. Why did Halliburton get special treatment? Could that have anything to do with Mr. Cheney?

In the course of buying and transporting oil from Kuwait, Halliburton overcharged the American Government by $61 million. I am sure that many people remember the celebrated occasion when Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root, overcharged the American Government $16 million for the feeding of the troops. Halliburton has become a sort of unofficial, unacknowledged arm of the American military establishment. This is exactly what a Republican American President, Eisenhower, warned against, namely, the intrusion of the military-industrial complex into the political arena. However, this is what has happened and it is very dangerous. Where does all of this come from? It is notable that Haliburton was one of the largest political contributors in the run-up to the elections in the United States. Naturally, it received a reward for this and views the opportunities in Iraq as a new Klondyke.

A search committee was set up, under Mr. Cheney, to find a new vice-president and it suggested that the best new vice-president would be Mr. Cheney himself. That is most extraordinary. I cannot put on the record of the House the language used by one of his former colleagues when this fact was discovered.

I am concerned about corruption and the level of inter-penetration between military and commercial enterprises. For example, a company called Free Market Global, an international company that trades in gas, petroleum and other resources, appointed General Tommy Franks, the US army commander, to its board last year. That should give cause for concern to anyone who poses as a democrat.

There are many reasons to be worried. Mr. Cheney formed an interesting group which, in February 2001, prior to September 11, was already planning a merger of interests, or a "melding" as they described it. Those interests planning to attack Iraq and create regime change were to be melded with those interested in the takeover of certain international oil fields. Nobody should doubt that this was all in the pipeline before September 11.

As far as September 11 is concerned, I agree it was a tragedy but one that needs to be kept in proportion. Approximately 3,000 people were killed and for those people and their families, it was dreadful. I will never forget the images of people falling out of skyscrapers, but what did they expect? The US cannot go around trampling on other people's rights, murdering half a million people in Kampuchea, devastating Vietnam, undermining every democratic regime that is viewed to be inimical to their interests and then expect people to do nothing.

I do not believe there is an Islamic threat. The belief that civilisation will be wiped out by Islamic fundamentalists is hysterical. Our civilisation is most in danger from what is happening under the so-called coalition forces.

We should look to George Galloway, who faced down the Senate inquiry. US Senators were using false documents and Mr. Galloway gave them their answer, beautifully, in the Senate. I was ashamed last Sunday to read an article by an ignorant, stupid reporter, who attacked Galloway and attempted to undermine him. She did not attack anything he said but rather his clothes, eating habits, sexual predilections and his sun tan. She did not contradict a single word he said.