Madam Chairman, I have heard from the member in his presentation and from many other members in the House today, especially from the governing party but from the other opposition parties as well, that we should give Saddam Hussein more time. The question that has to be asked is how much more time?
The first resolution that Saddam Hussein agreed to, which started this process since the gulf war, was United Nations Security Council resolution 687 which laid out the conditions of the ceasefire. In that resolution which Saddam Hussein agreed to, the onus was on Saddam Hussein to turn over to the weapons inspectors all of his weapons of mass destruction. It was not the responsibility of the inspectors to find them, which is like looking for a needle in the haystack; the responsibility was on Saddam Hussein to turn the weapons over to them so that they could either destroy or supervise the destruction of these weapons.
The United Nations itself put some numbers to these weapons shortly after the gulf war. It said there were about 30,000 empty chemical warheads found, about 550 artillery shells with mustard gas, 400 biological weapons, 26,000 litres of anthrax, as well as botulinum, VX nerve agent, sarin gas and so on. That is what the United Nations weapons inspectors said that Saddam Hussein had and that is what the weapons inspectors say has not been accounted for to this date. Very little of this product has been accounted for to date and it is 11 years later.
We have gone through a series of 15 resolutions now, always trying to fill a loophole that Saddam Hussein found which he used as an excuse not to comply with the initial ceasefire agreement. We have given him 11 years.
The inspectors have expressed concern that he is continuing to build weapons of mass destruction. We know he would use them because he has used them already on tens of thousands of people, and he has threatened us. He is complicit with dozens of terrorists groups that have made it very clear they would be all too willing to use the weapons on western countries, including Canada.
I have to ask the member, knowing all this and knowing the very real threat that Saddam Hussein and his regime pose to our country and to other western nations, just how much time should we give this dictator?