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Foreign Affairs and Defence

My hon. Friend makes a valuable and correct point. The longer the troops stay when they are unwelcome, the harder it is for them to go, the more brutal is the departure and the more humiliating is the endgame. When the United States finally had to leave Vietnam in 1976, we all have memories of US helicopters evacuating people from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon. I plead with the Government to think carefully about the situation in Iraq and to give us some proposals and plans for the withdrawal of British and US forces from that country. They should think also of the longer term consequences within the region of the illegal nature of the war.