---

Ministry of Defence

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell). He says that the reason for our presence in Iraq is an issue for another day. That did not stop him making an ill-starred intervention on my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), who was against the war. I support the brief but authoritative speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway) on Afghanistan. I shall revert to that in the latter part of my contribution. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) said that linking 9/11 and operations in Iraq was a mistake. It was not a mistake but a deceit, and that is part of the problem. The leaders of the United States and the United Kingdom, who took us into the conflict, perpetrated several other deceits, but that first deceit, most of all, has caused the enormous problems for the liberal west in the whole region. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea made an important and properly learned contribution on Iraq. He reminded me of the view that I took in 2004 when I served on the Select Committee on Defence. On my visit to Iraq, I learned that British and American forces were, even then, as much part of the problem as the solution. If that was the case then, how much more is it the case now, two years on? Our challenge is reconciling an exit from Iraq and trying to sustain the stability of the Iraqi Government, their democratic institutions and the institutions that we are putting in place, with the Iraqi people’s perception of us as the occupying powers. I am not yet satisfied that the penny has dropped with United States forces, or that the rather alarming account of former SAS Trooper Griffin in The Sunday Telegraph last weekend does not continue to represent the mode of operations by United States forces in Iraq. Operating as an occupying force, as though killing Iraqis in Iraq was defending the front line of the United States, sadly appeared to be the rule, not the exception. Former SAS Trooper Griffin’s view was that officers who took a different line on their relationship with the Iraqi population were the exception, although there were honourable exceptions. That account of British forces on joint operations should give us all significant pause for thought. I look forward to the Minister’s comments about whether the style of American operations has started to change, giving the Iraqi people the chance of perceiving Americans differently when they leave.