The Iraq war: ten years on, was it worth it?

Yes — Emma Nicholson

More than 20 years ago I stood on the burning sands of Iraq’s southern deserts and watched in horror as tens of thousands of desperate men, women and children struggled, some barefoot, to reach the sanctuary of marshlands in the east.

I was there as a British parliamentarian after hearing stories of Saddam Hussein’s brutal crackdown on a Shia revolt. One eight-year-old boy I encountered had lost his entire family. He later underwent more than 20 plastic surgery operations in England; just one appalling story of which there are countless thousands. In the restive north of Iraq, Kurdish families were fleeing the wrath of Saddam’s Anfal campaign. Television news showed biblical scenes of men, women and children taking refuge in snow-covered mountain passes. Despite the passage of time, the dreadful human misery I witnessed all those years ago lives with me even now.

Saddam and his wicked henchmen were guilty of war crimes — arguably genocide — and consigning such evil to the dustbin of history along with the likes of Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot is, in my opinion, justification enough for the US-led invasion of 2003.