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Mr. Keetch: In fairness to the Secretary of State, he indicated that he agreed with the Prime Minister that the Black Watch would be home by Christmas.
Pete Wishart: We will see. The bunting and flags have been put away now, but we will wait with great interest to see the Black Watch come home. If one regiment deserves to come home for Christmas, it is most definitely the Black Watch. Regardless of what the Secretary of State says and his reassurances, morale is now an issue in the Black Watch. The Secretary of State may be reassured by speaking to self-selected officers in Iraq, but hon. Members deal with the families. We have to respond to the telephone calls to our offices from anxious parents who wonder what on earth is going on. We have to try to find the answers on their behalf.
I have detected a darkening of mood since the call was made placing the Black Watch on notice to move. The regiment has already done two tours of duty in Iraq and been away for four Christmases. It is now being deployed to the most dangerous of theatres, but those who serve in it will perform their task with their customary professionalism and high standards. Regardless of what some of them may feel about the politics of the job, they will get the job done, and they will do it well.
It is impossible to consider the redeployment without a cursory glance at the politics. For me, the decision has politics written all over it. I have great difficulty with the military case for redeploying the Black Watch to the American sector. It has been said many times that there is an overwhelming number of American forces in Iraq. America is the last world superpower. If it does not have enough forces, it should bring more across from the States. Why is it that 650 Scottish infantrymen have to go there to back up the Americans in the American sector? What on earth are they going into? A mess of the Americans making. It is a military quagmire because of the razed-earth policy—the shoot-on-sight policy. They will experience real difficulties and I feel sorry for those people who will be asked to perform this most dangerous of tasks.
The soldiers of the Black Watch will once again put their necks on the line for the Government. They will do that with their high standards and professionalism, but they will also do it with heavy hearts, not because of what they have been asked to do militarily—they will follow orders and ensure that the job is done—but because while they do the Government's bidding abroad, they have been stabbed in the back at home by a Government who are determined to amalgamate them out of existence.
I reaffirm my support for the campaign to save our regiments. I do not need to tell the Minister that there is overwhelming hostility to his plans to amalgamate them
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out of existence. The campaign has spread all over Scotland, not just in recruiting areas like my own. In fact, it has galvanised communities. It has been fantastic. Usually when hon. Members get the petition board out and head down to town centres to get signatures, we are met with hostility and indifference, but not in this campaign. People are queuing up to sign. A little town called Alyth in my constituency has fewer than 3,000 people. I will present a petition next week from that town with 2,000 signatures in favour of saving our regiments.
The people of Scotland have run a vocal and affectionate campaign. What is it about the way in which we organise our regiments that has attracted such affection? It might have something to do with tradition. People might like the way that they do things and enjoy and appreciate the links with the community. I think it is more than that, however. People have the confidence and reassurance that our armed forces are the best in world. They are the best not because of accident but because of design—how they are structured into regiments. That is why they have such significant support from people all over Scotland. Our armed forces are the envy of the world and the way in which the regimental system works is the envy of many armed forces throughout the world. We tinker with that loyalty, determination and comradeship at our peril.
On Saturday afternoon we will all come together again to reaffirm our support for the regiments in the city of the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Luke). We will try once again to rally the troops to save our regiments. That will be cross-party and involve representatives from the Opposition parties and Labour, who will be there to put the case for saving the regiments. However, I am disappointed by the attitude of the Conservatives. I listened to them at their conference. On Monday, the Leader of the Opposition said that they would definitely reverse any decision to abolish any Scottish regiment. On Tuesday, the shadow Defence Secretary, the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames), said that any reversal of the decision would be impossible. On Wednesday, there was a clarifying statement saying that they may be inclined to save some of the regiments given the right timeline, situation and conditions. The public are looking for better and more wholehearted support from the Conservatives.
I do not support the war. I never have and never will. I want the Black Watch home. They have been away far too long. What we are asking them to do is a step too far. I want an exit strategy. I do not want any more of these brave young men placed in the dangers that they face today. We must have solutions. Our solution is simple: replace the coalition forces with coalition of forces from Muslim countries. It should seem not like a coalition of occupation, but like a real force for change and democracy in Iraq. The situation is getting worse. We are entering into a quagmire. Let us stop digging and start looking for solutions.
4.59 pm
Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab):
I, too, pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Iain Wright) for an excellent maiden speech.
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The war was wrong. It was undertaken under false pretences. There were no weapons of mass destruction. We were not greeted as liberators. Because of that false assumption, there was no proper plan to make the country safe post-war. It has not made the middle east safer or the Israel-Palestine conflict less virulent. No link has been proven between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda—they detested each other. A police state was turned into a failed state, making it more amenable for terrorists to operate in. As regards the war on terror, it was the wrong target. President Mubarak of Eygpt warned:
"Instead of having one bin Laden, we will have one hundred bin Ladens."
Up to 40,000 people, many of them civilians and innocents, have been killed in the war and its aftermath.
Apart from the continuation of an arms embargo, I did not support economic sanctions. Some have argued that they worked. Certainly there were no WMDs. But the sanctions targeted and impoverished the poor, in effect bringing early death to millions of Iraqis over the decade. Sanctions weakened the ability of the opposition in Iraq to bring about change. However, the point is well made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) that
"had Al Gore won the 2000 US election, the sanctions policy would have continued and the UK Government would have continued to support them claiming 'containment worked'".
The war was a Bush family project. Saddam referred to George W. Bush as "son of the viper" and George W. reminded journalists in 1993 that Saddam
"tried to kill my dad".
Bush senior wrote in his book that in the Gulf war he did not push beyond Basra further into Iraq to Baghdad because there was no viable exit strategy and American troops would become occupiers in a bitterly hostile land. Bush junior saw that as not finishing the job. He and his neo-cons were determined to do so, whatever the relevance or the consequence.
The mass graves testify to the appalling nature of the Saddam regime, but they were a joint venture with the Reagan Administration. That Administration set out to weaken the Islamic revolution in Iran. It used Saddam as a client to initiate war. It supplied him with weapons, radar and targeting equipment and even facilitated the supply of chemical weapons from German sources. After the 1991 Gulf war, the Bush senior Administration, having exhorted Saddam's opponents to rise up, suddenly realised that many of them were Shi'as—likely allies of Iran—and refused them access to Saddam's weapons, but allowed his troops to come through their lines to perpetrate the slaughter of the Shi'as and thereby maintain him in power.
Many people believe the war on Iraq was driven by greed for oil, and I agree, but there are two commentaries that are worth putting on the record in Parliament. First, Elaine Storkey, writing in The Independent on 17 April, stated that the war was underpinned by religious rationalisation, a belief that the "civilised world" must move in to "set the barbarians right", and an unfaltering conviction that
"we are civilised and we will therefore do good".
"There is nothing Christian about seeing Iraq as a battleground for good and evil"
"there are no civilised people in the Christian world, just people created by God with intrinsic dignity and significance."
"The danger of the mind-set based on our occupation of civilisation is evident. We do not face the questions straight."
Secondly, Ben White stated in Middle East International on 23 January that it is possible to detect a "superhero mentality" in the American Administration—a conception of America as
"a superhero figure who, while essentially law-abiding, is permitted to break the normal community regulations in order to protect everybody from a greater evil".
In a flawed assessment of good and evil, the American Administration has afforded itself superiority above the law. These commentaries point to a false perception of superiority in the US and UK, justifying war even when it is contrary to international law and opinion.
The vast majority of UK troops in Iraq do a difficult and courageous job, but they have been misused in a bad cause. Their presence with the US troops is the very basis of insecurity. Deemed to be foreign troops occupying Iraq, they generate resistance in the form of a national war of liberation. The US does not plan to leave. It wants its hands on the oil reserves and leverage over neighbouring Arab states, so the insecurity and killing will not end.
There has been no serious effort at reconstruction or rebuilding Iraq for the people. Recently I pressed the case for a small amount of assistance to help the Karbala eye clinic get going in Basra, in the British sphere of influence. To my astonishment I was told that the UK cannot afford to provide second-hand furnishings and had only £200,000 a year for such purposes.
Cluster bomblets and other unexploded ordinance have not been cleared up.
Reparations continue to bleed Iraq of its much-needed resources well after the fall of Saddam. They go to Kuwait and the big corporations, which have far less right to the money than impoverished Iraqis. We now know, thanks to Naomi Klein in The Guardian, that President Bush's envoy, James Baker, was playing a double game, officially calling for debt relief, but privately, on behalf of the Carlisle Group, promising to maintain the flow of money to Kuwait in exchange for a big payout. That amounted to extortion on the part of the Kuwaitis and theft from the Iraqis.
The UN has been misused in this process. The Foreign Secretary claimed credit for the latest UN resolution, which allows the reparations to continue without being explicit. He cannot have been aware of the Baker role, so he must have been duped. Those reparations are unacceptable. As in the case of Germany after the first world war, they contribute to economic impoverishment and further conflict.
Using Iraqi business and workers rather than private contractors and corrupt US corporations should have been the priority in rebuilding the infrastructure. Why has the UK been voiceless about Halliburton getting huge contracts without competition?
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The Abu Ghraib prison scandal continues to have implications, and not only for the United States. The Minister himself acknowledged that UK soldiers have been involved in the administration of Iraqi prisoners and has named two UK intelligence officers, Colonel Chris Terrington and Colonel Campbell James, who he says were "embedded within" the US unit responsible for the interrogations of Iraqi prisoners. It can be argued that, as with business, the legal principle of joint and several liability should apply. The Prime Minister, on behalf of the UK Government, claims credit for the removal of Saddam. In that case, we cannot properly disclaim responsibility for what the coalition forces do overall.
Many deaths in custody have occurred, a number of which have been at the hands of British forces, and numerous cases are under investigation. The right-wing press in this country is applying pressure to stop the justice process. It points out that the war was illegal in the first place, but the law against wrongdoers must apply. Human rights for Iraqis must apply too, and it is dismaying to see the Government contesting that in the British courts.
The proposed January elections in Iraq are a fig leaf for the Bush election campaign. Elections are, of course, desirable, but they are impractical in current circumstances—I think that that will be acknowledged as soon as the US election is over. The Interim Government are a puppet Government with little support. Shi'as form 60 per cent. of the population, and Ayotollah Sistani is the leader of the vast majority of them. Government should be handed over to him, without elections if necessary, with the agreement that he ensures that Kurds, Sunnis, and Moqtada al-Sadr are represented in his Administration and that proper elections will be held as soon as practical. For that to work, a commitment should be made for the troops to leave.
The Prime Minister chose power—the Bush regime in the US—rather than the 2 million-person march of Britons against the war, who represented majority opinion in this country. That was his interpretation of the national interest. Almost certainly the decision to stand with Bush was made well in advance of the war itself. The justifications have fallen apart and we are left with "we got rid of Saddam." Well, we got rid of 40,000 others too. The UN Secretary-General has indicated his opinion that the war was illegal. There are many other dictators like Saddam, some of whom are worse than him, but they have not been targeted in that way. The Prime Minister told the House that Saddam could stay if he complied with UN resolution 1441, so getting rid of him was not, as we are supposed to accept, a purpose in itself.
I am running short of time, but I want to make this point: our troops who have been killed are victims of messy, unreasonable politics of ingratiation with the inflexible dogmatist in the White House, whose war on terror is unfocused and costly. Even if he is re-elected, our troops need not continue to die for his mistakes, and I will continue to support the campaign to bring them home at an early opportunity. That is not cutting and running; that is facing up to our responsibility to bring about a solution. No solution is possible while foreign troops, UK and US, occupy Iraq—
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