Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by apologizing. It seems that I mistakenly misled the House yesterday. In a question I asked, I said that three Iraqi divisions of 50,000 men were defeated in two days by 15,000 jihadists near the city of Mosul. I later consulted The Guardian to verify the information and cross-referenced it with information from the Iraqi government, and apparently 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and 30,000 Iraqi police officers and constables who were defending the city of Mosul were routed in two days by 800 jihadists. They were outnumbered 75 to 1, but they won. Imagine. We are going to be supporting the people who lost even though they outnumbered their opponents 75 to 1.
Second, my question about the relevance of this debate is this: does this desire to put an end to the debate arise from information obtained today about the fighting, which is that air strikes have been ineffective and the Turkish government has officially called for our soldiers to intervene on the ground?