Madam Speaker, I really am astounded by the ability of the member to allow her ideology to triumph over reason, common sense and historical experience. I do not know where she has been for the past decade.
She said that the technical agreement on modalities today somehow represents a historic breakthrough and that Iraq has now officially complied with the UN resolutions. There are no inspectors testing Iraq's willingness to comply. It was a promise to comply, the same promise which the world has heard time and time again and which has been broken time and time again. What gives the member reason to believe that has changed? Does she not agree that only the very clear threat of military action has once again brought Iraq back to the table?
Further, in terms of her absolute blind belief in the ability of the United Nations to solve problems, would she not agree that sometimes responsible democratic countries must take action to save lives and to protect the peace and international order when international institutions fail to do so? Would she not agree that the international community would have been responsible to have intervened in Rwanda to save the 800,000 civilians who were slaughtered and who were not protected because of UN inaction?
Does she not agree that it was responsible for NATO and Canada to intervene in Kosovo and protect innocent Kosovars in the face of UN inaction because of a Russian veto? Would she not learn from the historical experience of the League of Nations in the 1930s and its failure to act to preserve the international peace where international institutions failed to do so?