Iraq: Future Strategic Relationship

This is an opportunity to voice a parliamentary verdict on the excursion into Iraq. The Archbishop of Canterbury, in his modest way, called the Iraq war ““wrong””. It was more than that—it was illegal. The whole idea of regime change is illegal under international law. It was said by very many international jurists and experts that it was illegal. Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, described it as illegal. It was also amoral—it was mass murder for a huge robbery. During the current recession and the banking crisis, we have heard the phrase, ““Small crooks rob banks and large ones own them.”” The really big boys—the US corporate gangsters—steal countries, and that was the intention in Iraq and how the occupation was pursued. It brought about the deaths of more than 1 million Iraqis, and the deaths of 178 British troops and more than 4,000 US troops, as well as many others, on top of a further 1 million who died in the 10 years leading up to the war on account of sanctions. Five million Iraqi refugees were forced to flee their homes. It was and remains a humanitarian catastrophe. This time last year, there was a World Health Organisation conference in Geneva, at which it was reported that the Iraqi Government estimated that 70 per cent. of critically injured people die due to the shortage of competent staff, lack of drugs and equipment. The Iraqi Medical Association and Medact said that Iraq did not have a functioning and reliable health service. The situation was so bad that scissors and needles were the only equipment that some hospitals had. There were no chairs or paper, and hospitals were left to decay. There was a lack of ambulances, with stretchers made from cloth and a shortage of medication. Medical training was non-existent or insufficient. Electrical supply to hospitals averaged an hour a day, and could come and go at any time. Access to a hospital or a doctor was a huge problem because there was no security. It was the Iraqi Medical Association that pointed that out. Oxfam has said that 4 million people regularly cannot buy enough to eat, and 70 per cent. are without adequate water supplies, up from 50 per cent. in 2003 when we went in. Some 28 per cent. of children have malnutrition, up from 19 per cent. when we went in. Because of the climate of fear and the trauma that they have endured, 92 per cent. of children suffer learning problems. Oxfam has also said that there has been a global apathy about all of this, and nowhere more so than in the occupying countries. Human rights abuses have reached a new low. An e-mail came today from Human Rights Watch, the United States organisation, which has just published its 2009 world report. It is worth quoting two bits from it:"““The incoming Obama administration will need to put human rights at the heart of foreign, domestic, and security policy if it is to undo the enormous damage of the Bush years””;" and Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch says:"““For the first time in nearly a decade, the US has a chance to regain its global credibility by turning the page on the abusive policies of the Bush administration…And not a moment too late.””" We have reached a new low: Guantanamo Bay, Haditha, Abu Ghraib, Falluja, extraordinary rendition, phosphorous bombs. All that is damaging to us because our credibility in arguing for high standards of human rights around the world, which are very much needed, has been shattered—shot to ribbons. It has been costly. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) referred to the winner of the Nobel prize for economics, Joseph Stiglitz, and his book, ““The Three Trillion Dollar War””. I have here a review of this book in Tribune, which says:"““Consider just a sprinkling of the Stiglitz-Bilmes catalogues of cost as they attempt to break down the Three Trillion Dollar War: The US spends $16 billion every month on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—on top of 'regular' defence spending; By the year 2017, the American taxpayer will have to finance $1 trillion in interest payments alone to cover the cost of borrowing that money; The total bill for the US will be—and the authors insist that this is, deliberately, a conservative estimate—at least $3 trillion; They add that the rest of the world, including Britain, will probably have to find about the same amount again to cope with their own losses.””" We will be paying the interest on the debt caused by it. The Liberal spokesman mentioned a figure of £20 billion, but I suspect that it will be more than that. The situation has damaged UK armed forces. I have served on the Defence Committee, and I have a lot of time and support for members of our armed forces. The majority of them are very brave, but I do not go along with the bluster that we hear in the Chamber about their being the best in the world. They have often been exposed in Iraq as impotent, and too often as venal, as in the cases of Baha Mousa, Camp Breadbasket and the killings at Amarah of people who had been captured. More seriously, when the Labour Government came to power—again, I refer to my time on the Defence Committee—we were told that our forces would be a force for good. That idea is in the same bin as the ethical foreign policy because of what has happened in Iraq, which is damaging to UK armed forces. The UK has been an active partner in the US ruling coalition.