Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this debate, in particular in my capacity as spokesman for the official opposition on Canada-U.S. relations, which are much at play in the issue that the House considers this evening.
I rise today to urge the House and the government to support the strongest action possible in ensuring that Saddam Hussein's regime is fully disarmed of weapons of mass destruction and their components, and rendered incapable of threatening the region or supporting terrorism in the future.
Full disarmament is the goal we should be seeking as a country. Neither the official opposition nor the American or British governments are seeking war, contrary to some of the comments we heard in this place last night. Rather, we are seeking the dismantling of Saddam's deadly arsenal so that the world's most terrible leaders are no longer able to threaten us with the world's most terrible weapons. Disarmament, not war, is our goal and should be the goal of the civilized world.
Given what we know about Saddam Hussein and his past behaviour, we must be realists enough to recognize that, regrettably, military force may well ultimately be a necessary step to achieving disarmament. Inspections under an adequate mandate will not be sufficient to ensure full disarmament and full compliance with the 1991 ceasefire. The goal is not to have Hans Blix and his bureaucrats spend a few weeks in Baghdad hotels or to ensure that Russian and French egos are not bruised at the Security Council.
Rather, the goal, and about this we must be absolutely clear, is and should be to ensure that Saddam is never in a position to hold Kuwait, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iraqi Kurds or Shiites or for that matter American and Canadian citizens in Europe and North America through terrorist networks, or anybody else, hostage with the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Real disarmament, not a half-baked compromised inspection program, is and must be the goal of the government and the United Nations.
Some members of the House have asked, sometimes in a spirit of honest questioning and sometimes in a sophomoric reactionary anti-American spirit, “Why the focus on Saddam Hussein and Iraq?” They raise of course the fact that he is not the only brutal dictator afoot in the world today. North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Libya and other countries have governments which routinely abuse human rights. Of course that is true.
Indeed all five permanent members of the UN Security Council, along with countries such as India and Pakistan, perhaps including North Korea and Iran, possess nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction or may be capable of acquiring them.
However, Saddam Hussein is unique in the world in running a brutal and dictatorial regime which either has or is actively pursuing weapons of mass destruction and has demonstrated the willingness to use them. Furthermore, Iraq is a known sponsor of global terrorism. It is subsidizing, as we speak, Palestinian suicide bombers who kill innocent Israeli civilians to the tune of $25,000 a piece. It has trained al-Qaeda operatives in manufacturing and using chemical weapons, not to mention the fact that the Czech intelligence service has demonstrated that Mohammed Atta, the ring leader of the September 11 attacks, met with a senior Iraqi official in Prague last year.
As long as the Iraqi regime persists with its weapons program, we do not know when one morning we may wake up to the reality of sarin gas in the New York subway, anthrax spores in postal stations somewhere in the western world, or indeed a dirty nuclear bomb being detonated in the streets of Tel Aviv.
After September 11 of last year, it is unconscionable to allow this threat to persist. Brutal regimes which not only possess or pursue weapons of mass destruction but have shown a willingness to consider their use cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged. This should be beyond debate. The only question, a question on which reasonable people can certainly disagree, should be how to pursue the end of disarming the dangerous and deadly Iraqi regime. There is room for disagreement about the details, for example, about the balance between the need for an effective, credible threat of force and the importance of a broad-based multilateral coalition, or about whether there should be one United Nations resolution or two.
For the most part, after some weak and wobbly talk in August and September of this year, what we have heard in the last 48 hours from the Prime Minister and the foreign and defence ministers has been a responsible engagement about how best to address the Iraqi threat.
Unfortunately there are still some in the Liberal Party who are not engaged in this kind of responsible debate but are engaged in irresponsible rhetoric that puts the President of the United States and Saddam Hussein on an equal moral footing. We heard this last night. The member for Brampton West--Mississauga quoted people from the fevered swamps of the far left in the United States such as Ramsey Clark and Robert Fisk.
Many speakers asserted that President Bush's concern about the regime in Baghdad, an issue he has raised repeatedly, starting with the state of the union speech in January, was simply about mid-term elections. The member for Scarborough--Agincourt compared the president's tactics to Saddam Hussein, saying:
The United States is going into congressional and senate elections and needs an external evil to rally Republican voters to go to the polls...What irony. The same [method] is practised by Saddam Hussein...
The member for Oakville, a committee chair, went one step further, comparing George Bush to the Nazi regime in Germany when she said:
When we moved in World War II as Allies, we were moving against the idea of one nation aggressively invading and taking over another. This is exactly what George Bush is now proposing.
Comparing the American willingness to lead an international coalition of democratic forces to enforce United Nations resolutions against one of the world's most brutal dictatorships to the aggression of Adolf Hitler, I submit, is totally irresponsible engagement in this debate.
She also ridiculed the intervention in Afghanistan when she cynically said:
...it was supposed to be a war against terrorism, it turned out to be bombing Afghanistan and its innocent civilians. He was really after terrorists who were born in Saudi Arabia, but he would not think of bombing Saudi Arabia because that might destroy his cheap supply of oil.
I find it hard to believe that anybody can think the world would be better off if the Taliban were still denying women the right to go to school and Osama bin Laden was still plotting terror attacks in the Afghan mountains. I suggest that this member has disgraced the Canadians who participated in the action in Afghanistan. This kind of anti-American hostility is irresponsible coming from members of a governing party of a NATO nation and a G-7 member.
Many members in this debate have suggested that there is no evidence of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. I do not know what evidence they need to persuade them apart from what has been presented in the public forum.
I have in my hands the dossier presented to the British parliament on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. It is the assessment of the British government compiled by the joint intelligence committee of the three intelligence branches of the United Kingdom government, of a labour government, a party historically hostile to the foreign policy of the United States. Their main conclusions are:
Iraq has a usable chemical and biological weapons capability, in breach of UNSCR 687, which has included recent production of chemical and biological agents;
Saddam continues to attach great importance to the possession of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles which he regards as being the basis for Iraq's regional power. He is determined to retain these capabilities;
Iraq can deliver chemical and biological agents using an extensive range of artillery shells, free-fall bombs, sprayers and ballistic missiles;
Iraq continues to work on developing nuclear weapons, in breach of its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and in breach of UNSCR 687. Uranium has been sought from Africa that has no civil nuclear application in Iraq;
Iraq possesses extended-range versions of the SCUD ballistic missile in breach of UNSCR 687 which are capable of reaching Cyprus, Eastern Turkey, Tehran and Israel. It is also developing longer-range ballistic missiles;
Iraq's current military planning specifically envisages the use of chemical and biological weapons;
Iraq has learnt lessons from previous UN weapons inspections and is already taking steps to conceal and disperse sensitive equipment and documentation in advance of the return of inspectors.
If the civilized world does not take firm action, preferably multilateral action, and the UN does not work, it fails the challenge and demonstrates that it has become another talking shop like the League of Nations, unwilling and incapable of challenging dictators of this nature, then we must join the growing number of allies in taking action lest this dangerous dictator possess weapons which can hold the free world hostage.
Let us not give Saddam Hussein the opportunity to develop a nuclear warhead that he can attach to a Scud missile and, for instance, make good on his word to destroy half of Israel, which he promised to do in 1991. I submit that we must be prepared to act in a multilateral fashion with our allies if and when necessary.