The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
violent and
aggressive nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime. His record of
internal
repression
and external aggression gives rise to unique concerns about the
threat
he
poses.”
•
Saddam
Hussein used patronage and violence to motivate his supporters
and
to control
or eliminate opposition. He had pursued a long‑term programme
of
persecuting
the Iraqi Kurds, including through the use of chemical
weapons.
Amnesty
International had estimated that more than 100,000 Kurds had
been
killed or
had disappeared during the 1987 to 1988 “Anfal” campaign of
attacks
on Kurdish
villages. Thousands of Iraqi Shia had also been
killed.
•
Saddam
Hussein had led Iraq into two wars of aggression, against Iran
and
Kuwait. The
Iran‑Iraq War was estimated to have caused one million
casualties.
•
Human
rights abuses continued within Iraq: “People continue to be
arrested and
detained on
suspicion of political or religious activities or often because
they
are related
to members of the opposition. Executions are carried out
without
due process
of law. Relatives are often prevented from burying the victims
in
accordance
with Islamic practice. Thousands of prisoners have been
executed.”
10.
Mr Blair
addressed those issues in his opening statement in the 24 September
2002
Parliamentary
debate:
“People
say, ‘But why Saddam?’ … two things about Saddam stand out. He
has
used these
weapons in Iraq itself – thousands dying in those chemical
weapons
attacks –
and in the Iran‑Iraq war, started by him, in which one million
people died;
and his is
a regime with no moderate elements to appeal to.
“Read the
chapter on Saddam and human rights in this dossier. Read not just
about
the 1
million dead in the war with Iran, not just about the 100,000 Kurds
brutally
murdered in
northern Iraq, not just about the 200,000 Shia Muslims driven
from
the
marshlands in southern Iraq, and not just about the attempt to
subjugate and
brutalise
the Kuwaitis in 1990 that led to the Gulf war. I say, ‘Read also
about the
routine
butchering of political opponents, the prison ‘cleansing’ regimes
in which
thousands
die, the torture chambers and the hideous penalties supervised
by
him and his
family and detailed by Amnesty International.’ Read it all and,
again,
I defy
anyone to say that this cruel and sadistic dictator should be
allowed any
possibility
of getting his hands on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons
of
4
House of
Commons, Official
Record, 24
September 2002, column 5.
172