I just wish my moral compass pointed as unerringly as some of the posters around here.
The fact is, I still don't know.
My gut feeling is "no", but there are few black and white issues, and this one is greyer than many.
I am convinced that Iraq does not present a clear and present danger to the US, or to any of its neighbours in the Middle East. I don't believe that it possesses nuclear weapons. I don't believe that there is any significant link between Saddam Hussein and Al Queda.
All evidence presented so far by the US and the UK has failed to shift me in those beliefs.
Nevertheless, Saddam Hussein is clearly a despot who has brought ruination to his country, misery to his people and terror to his legitimate opponents. In that context, regime change would appear to be exactly what the people of Iraq most need. His use of poison gas and/or nerve agents on the Kurds at Halabja in the late 1980s, including the famous attack pictured by Iranian photographers in 1988 which more than 5,000 civilians, died lives in infamy Ð even though the Reagan administration refused to invoke sanctions because Saddam was then a useful ally against Iran.
Unfortunately, he is not alone. Similarly despotic regimes exist elsewhere in the world. Use whatever yardstick you like and you'll find another regime that fits the bill, be it the development of WMDs, the flouting of UN directives, the contempt from opposition, the abuse of human rights, the tendency to interfere with other nationsÉ the list can go on and on.
Which makes me wonder why there is such enthusiasm for intervention in Iraq, whereas other threats, say North Korea, can be dealt with by diplomatic means, and why the Bush administration in particular is so hell-bent on following a long line of doomed attempts to impose its will on Mesopotamia (my grandfather was awarded the MC in Mesopotamia in the Great War, but that's another story entirely).
I think the crucial point here is nothing to do with TWAT (The War Against Terror) and much to do with regime change, which has been a plank of the Bush administration since before the Al Queda attacks of September 11.
You can choose from a list of reasons, some the froth from the fertile imaginations of conspiracy theorists and some undoubtedly true; unfinished business, a desire to gain control of the world's second-largest oilfield, a need to continue the relentless military spending at home; burning $500 billion a year while other industries lose out to the Far East; a need for a satrapy in the region to act as a bulwark against militant and frightening Islam, imperialism or a simple messianic, crusading belief that the American Way is the only way.
Whatever the reason, Bush and his team of Texan oilmen want to change the guy in charge in Iraq.
To effect that, however, they need to convince the world of the justice of their proposal. Whatever one's feelings on George W Bush, the administration as a whole is not stupid, and it has marshalled its brightest and best to produce the evidence. I have yet to be convinced, and the lies and half-truths that have been set before us as "proof" have only served to deepen my suspicions.
I remember during the 1991 conflict when atrocity stories of Kuwaiti babies were thrown from their incubators by Iraqi invaders were published. A colleague and good friend was a journalist in the region who covered the story. He was completely convinced, and his belief in the barbarity of the Iraqis coloured his subsequent reporting considerably.
Later it was learned that there were no babies and no incubators, and that the tearful "nurse" who had revealed the atrocity tale to the media was a relative of a Kuwaiti politician who had been coached by a British public relations company to help "spin" the war.
In this coming war the spin is already becoming apparent. The ineptitude of Downing Street in getting four press and political administrators to surf the net like jackdaws and cobble together a dossier from any available source beggars belief, and worries me more when presented as a piece of crucial evidence Ð a whiff of cordite from the barrel of the gun, as it were.
As can be seen from the threads here on the Mudcat, there are many "facts" and many figures being bandied about, all with their passionate advocates.
The Foreign Office official line is:
The Iraqi regime has admitted hiding its weapons programme in the past. It did all it could to hinder the UN weapons inspectors until they were forced to leave in 1998. Since then, no one has been able to check up on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
But our intelligence has shown that since 1998 Iraq has persisted with its chemical and biological weapons programmes, and that it is developing ballistic missiles capable of delivering these weapons to targets beyond the 150km limit imposed by the UN. This would allow Iraq to hit countries as far away as Egypt, Greece, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.
We know too that Iraq still possesses all its nuclear weapons expertise and that it is actively attempting to rebuild its nuclear programme and obtain the materials to develop nuclear weapons.
Éat the end of 1998, Iraq's persistent obstruction of the work of the UN inspectors finally forced them to leave. The inspectors were still unable to account for:
*up to 3,000 tonnes of precursor chemicals (approximately 300 tonnes of which, in the Iraqi CW programme, were unique to the production of VX nerve agent)
*up to 360 tonnes of bulk CW agent (including 1.5 tonnes of VX nerve agent)
*over 30,000 special munitions for delivery of chemical and biological agents
*large quantities of growth media acquired for use in the production of biological weapons - enough to produce over three times the amount of anthrax Iraq admits to having manufactured.
Yet Scott Ritter, a former UN inspector and one of the few with first sight of Iraq's programme, states:
From 1991 to 1997, weapons inspections were able to achieve a 90-95% level of verified disarmament concerning Iraq's proscribed weapons programs, according to Rolf Ekeus, the former Executive Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM, the predecessor to Hans Blix's United Nations Monitoring and Verification Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC. This level included all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction production facilities, and the associated manufacturing equipment.
Hans Blix has refuted Powell's claim that Iraq has mobile bio-weapons laboratories, and now France and Germany, with Russian backing, are starting to ask why the UN process cannot continue and something that Blix himself wants.
Iraq, we are told, is an economic and industrial basket-case, ill-equipped to export war and terror anywhere and in desperate need of aid. Saddam himself is a crazed gambler and psychopath, but he wonÕt use his weapons on anyone else, rather he seems them as negotiating chips and a safeguard against an increasingly hostile outside world. And, anyway, it's not our business to interfere in the affairs of other sovereign states.
Then there are the possible consequences of attacking Iraq unilaterally. An Islamic world already mistrustful of the US and the UK would be furious, and would be prey to the sort of jihad-rousing rhetoric that bin Laden delivers so well. Coupled with Americas support for and arming of Israel and its apparent sanctioning of Israeli breaches of UN resolutions, accepted human rights and international morality, that would make the US seem pretty sinister in the eyes of many in the Middle East.
The corrupt, decadent and despotic dynasty currently ruling Saudi Arabia would be very vulnerable to an Islamic revolution (remember bin Laden's causus bellum & that the US had committed heresy by stationing its troops on sacred Saudi soil). Other regimes which now support the US would become more cautions, aware of the dangers at home. The old Cold War domino theory (remember Vietnam also started with a PR-orchestrated untruth) could be put into practice, and where would that lead us?
That sounds reasonable to me, and I haven't even began to imagine the additional cost in human lives, whether exacted by "smart" bombs and high-tech kit, by the bullet of a penny jezail or from malnutrition and cholera. So much so that I'm worried about being branded a cheese-eating surrender-monkey.
So in answer to the question "should" my gut feeling is still "no". "Will" is another matter entirely, and one in which our own Mr Blair is playing a fascinatingly risky roleÉ