Another day, another news story concerning Iraq! If someone is whinging about whether the 2003 war was legal or not, others are complaining about the lack of WMDs or something else.
Recently, the burning issue has been about whether Prince Harry should be deployed to fight in the south of the country. First he was to be deployed, then his deployment was under review, then reconfirmed and now cancelled because of a combination of new intelligence and existing fears of the Prince and those under his command being at greater risk of attack from insurgents than would normally be the case. The whole issue has been mishandled by both the army and the media, with the later in particular being guilty of abusing their freedoms by being prepared to put the Prince’s life at greater risk of death to increase their revenue. Not content with having a hand in his mother’s death and harassing his brother’s ex-girlfriend almost to an early grave, now the media are out to bury Harry himself six feet under.
Should Harry be deployed in Iraq? Yes, he should and he wants to serve his country. The army should have respect his wishes not to be treated differently from his army colleagues and the fact that he is spared from conflict but others are not and would be court-marshalled for refusing to deploy in Iraq is the height of hypocrisy and a national disgrace. When Harry decided to join the army, he knew full well that he was potentially signing away his life. Thus, if Harry’s deployment in Iraq meant that the insurgents would spend more of their time and resources trying to harm and kill him and his friends instead of innocent civilian men, women and children, then that would certainly be more preferable than the continuation of the bloody and evil status quo. If the army are not prepared to deploy Harry in Iraq, yet compel other service personnel into action against their will, then the government are morally obliged to withdraw all British ground forces from the country as soon as is possible. It is either all for one and one for all or nothing at all!
The issue of WMDs
Were there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? It is quite clear that there were and thus both George W. Bush and Tony Blair were telling the truth on that score. Not only were WMDs smuggled out of Iraq by Saddam Hussein to Russia and China via Syria and international shipping docks such as Rotterdam, Netherlands in exchange for cash to finance a Baathist insurrection after the then-impending Anglo-American military liberation, but also some WMDs are still being discovered in Iraq today. Over the past six months, American forces have discovered hundreds of WMDs still left over from Saddam’s rule. Let us not forget, that shortly before the Coalition of the willing launched their military liberation campaign, United Nations’ weapons inspectors still found Iraq in possession of illegal WMDs in violation of previous UN resolutions. Even when hostilities between Iraq and the Coalition finally broke out into open conflict, Iraq still launched illegal missiles at Kuwait in a futile attempt to destroy the Anglo-American bases in the country.
Two more things should be noted with regard to WMDs. Firstly, Saddam himself was often misled about the reality of his WMD programme by his own scientists. These scientists took advantage of Saddam’s intellectual ignorance to gain greater financial and material privileges from themselves by overstating the progress they had made in his realising his objectives. If Saddam Hussein himself could be misled into believing that he had a stronger hand militarily than was the reality, can anyone blame the United States and Great Britain for taking him seriously? Secondly, what exactly can be considered a weapon of mass destruction? The consensus is that any biological, chemical and nuclear weapon is a WMD, but doesn’t common sense remind us that anything can become a WMD if it is in the possession individual or group that intends to use it in a violent and homicidal manner?
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