David Norris (Independent)

I support what my colleague, Senator Ryan, said about the situation in Iraq. It was the type of thing I said last night during the debate on whether we should transmit information to the United States Government. People talked about democracy but since Mr. Bush's election, "democracy" is a word which makes me want to puke every time I hear it. We talked about democracy in the European Union and the way the European Parliament found out that what was being done in terms of transferring this information was illegal but what did it do about it? It was referred to the European Court of Justice and it found it to be illegal but it continued to transmit the information. How democratic is that? They are all sucking up to the United States.

Some of us raised these issues before when the Lancet produced figures over a year ago. It said that more than 100,000 had been killed but it was rubbished and the figure is now in excess of 600,000. The methodology was impugned. The methodology is irreproachable in this case which involved professional epidemiologists. There is no question of doubt whatever. However, we should not be surprised by the reaction. The US Government is deeply criminal. It advocates and practises torture, saturation bombing of civilians, assassinations and murder. It has managed to make a complete botch of the trial of its former ally, Mr. Saddam Hussein. His trial has been vitiated by the way in which it was established. Prejudicial comments were made by the Government there assuming he was guilty before the trial even commenced. A number of advocates of Saddam Hussein were assassinated and then the judge was removed by the Government.