Madam Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence, that of other members in the House who are here to listen, and the pages who are eager to work extra overtime. I am sure they have had their eyes opened to what goes on in this place in their first week of work here.
I originally was not going to speak on this topic but after listening to it for three nights now I have a few things I would like to add.
I would like to begin by telling members about Keith Primrose. Members would not have heard of him and I had actually forgotten about him because, as a matter of fact, I knew Keith Primrose about 46 years ago. He was a fine young guy in my class in grade 9. He seemed to occasionally get into trouble with other people because he was somewhat abrasive. Other than that I had very little to do with him and we got along fine, until one day, without provocation and without announcement, he came up behind me with a relatively heavy book or binder or something and smashed it as hard as he could on my head. Now I was raised in a home where we were taught to be non-combative, to not be aggressive, to not be violent. I had a very bad headache for the rest of the day, but I did nothing except to say to Keith Primrose that I did not appreciate what he had just done to me.
Lo and behold, not very much later, Keith Primrose, when we were down in the locker room one day, and I will never forget this, attacked me. He just started to try to beat me up. He made a mistake. What he forgot was that he was a city mouse and I was a country mouse. I was used to throwing bales and other things, so even though I was maybe a little overweight even then, I had pretty good muscles.
It took but three seconds and I had him subdued. In typical schoolyard fashion that means that he was spread-eagled on the floor and I was on top of him holding his wrists down, at which point he began to spit at my face. I told him I would not do that if I were him, since gravity would help me better to do to him what he was doing to me. But I did not do it to him. I just held him there for the longest time. Now afterwards I had to go and wash my face, but I just held him. I just sat on the sucker until finally I said “When you're ready to tell me that you will never, ever touch me again I will get off, otherwise we're just staying here”, at which point he spit at me again. Eventually his anger subsided and he said okay, he would give up. He could not do much. I was about 180 pounds at that time and I was quite capable of holding him down and not letting him move.
Why do I tell that story? Because there are ways of restraining a bad person, but it must be done. If we do not confront such a person and restrain him and do not bring him finally to the place where he is not the all powerful one, he will continue to wreak havoc. What does that have to do with this Iraqi war? I point directly to the fact that I think there is a principle here which directly relates to this individual.
A number of my colleagues and a number of people from all of the parties in this debate have talked about the fact that this is a person not to be trusted. The one example that I do not think has been indicated very often is that here is a man who at one stage had several of his daughters, three or four, leave the country with their husbands and their children to tell the rest of the world about what a tyrant this man was. They were so concerned about what was happening to their country and their families in that country that they even were ready to go public against their father, but they knew they had to escape from the country.
What did our friend Saddam Hussein do? He sent them a message saying that he missed his children, his daughters and his grandchildren, asking them why they did not all come home, saying that all would be forgiven but to just please come home. Do we remember that? This is that same man. They made the mistake of trusting him and they went home.
I understand that within a couple of days he personally took the lives of every one of his daughters' husbands, the fathers of his own grandchildren. He had them arrested, brought to his place and shot. This is the person with whom we are dealing. He will break trust even within his own family. Do we need to restrain this person? The fix is in. The evidence is clear. This is a person who is totally irrational. Does he have weapons? There is a lot of evidence that indeed he does.
Since 1998, UN inspectors have been basically driven out because Saddam Hussein will not let them into certain places. He has attempted to buy articles needed to build nuclear weapons such as the long aluminum pipes which are needed to get uranium up to weapons grade. I do not know whether he has been successful but I bet he has, somewhere indirectly.
He has these kinds of weapons. Is he ready to use them? It is for no other reason than to promote his agenda, if he allows the United Nations to go into his country. It is for no other reason than to promote his agenda, if he promises to negotiate and make commitments. We have every reason in the world to be totally suspicious of this person. I do not believe we can allow him to do anything other than give the UN inspectors total access to every location in that country for the security of the people and the neighbouring countries around Iraq. I think we would be doing them a great favour.
Not many months ago Americans and Canadians went into Afghanistan. Pictures came back to this country showing people in the streets singing and cheering. They were finally free from an oppressive regime. I believe the people of Iraq would love to be freed from this person who is acting like a total tyrant and dictator. They are totally in bondage to him.
He does not permit elections. In Canada at least we have the hope of an election within every five years, and if we do not like our government, we can change it. We take that for granted. This guy controls Iraq and has no intentions of giving that up. There are no elections. The only way he could be replaced is if someone were to overpower him, and that has been attempted.
A small part of his army tried to take him out but he found out. If I remember correctly, he had some 200 generals or lieutenants of his armed force arrested and summarily executed publicly. This was done to show the people not mess with Saddam Hussein. This guy totally controls that country and those people. If we were in such a country would we dare to raise our hand? Who would dare to even say that the guy should be replaced? We would be arrested and executed. We in this country have no idea of the magnitude of that kind of oppression.
We need to stand alongside our other allies who want to put an end to this kind of terrorism. We need to be strong. Let us give the United Nations a chance. However we have to remember that the United Nations had those resolutions. When Saddam Hussein said there would be no access to various places contrary to the agreement, the United Nations folded. That was three years ago. Where has the United Nations been?
I agree 100% with the President of the United States when he says if the United Nations cannot not fix it, then he has no choice but to do it. It would be wonderful if the United Nations could come together and do the job right.
I believe the United Nations itself is at risk if it does not act decisively and strongly in this instance because if it fails to stop this tyrant, then the United Nations has become a useless organization. We need to make sure it has an opportunity to do that. We need to stop that person.
I should ask for unanimous consent to go on for five more minutes as my time is up. Otherwise I would have a lot more to say on this topic.
