Mr. Speaker, of course when I said we were against everything the Liberals stood for, I was just in rhetorical flight, which I say is not a bad starting point, generally speaking. I really do believe that.
What was the truth about how that whole so-called debate about what our position should be vis-à-vis the Americans in the war in Iraq? Here is how it evolved, in case the member is guilty of selective memory. The government would not bring a motion to the House. The prime minister did not have the guts to bring a motion to the House. He stood there and said that actually it was too difficult for us to debate, that it was too difficult a thing to even discuss among ourselves, that in fact, Canada would not even make a recommendation to the Security Council. What he would say was that Canada was paralyzed, that we would have to do whatever Germany and France told us to do, because we could not have a debate or a vote. That was disgusting in my opinion.
Rather than call the Americans “bastards”, which is what happened on that side, rather than call them names, as they did over there, what we said was we should engage the Americans in a debate. Certainly we should have had a debate in this place. There would have been nothing wrong with saying that we support our allies, that we wanted to see Saddam Hussein's government toppled. They could not even say that over there. Then we could have said what we should have done about that.
That would have been an interesting and useful debate in which we could have concluded, as we did in Afghanistan, to send in some troops. We could have said we would help with logistical support. We might have just wished them well. I do not know what we would have done, but the debate should have been in this place and not in the backrooms of the Prime Minister's Office, hiding behind his desk, afraid to confront the issue and tell Canadians even where he really stood on it.