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Ministry of Defence

I know that the hon. Gentleman was not in the House when the decision was taken to invade Iraq, but as someone who has been to Iraq four times, including a week ago, may I ask him not to take as gospel everything that he reads in the newspapers? Clearly, the situation in the south and the north is very different from that in and around Baghdad. I do not recognise his description as applying to southern Iraq. In the south, effective regional and local government have been working for two or three years.