The Second Gulf War (Iraq war) can be defended

No, I will not drop the humanitarian argument - it is the most important point in the whole debate and your failure to respond to it is why I am at an advantage in this debate. Clearly you have admitted yourself that Saddam's regime was a brutal dictatorship which murdered literally millions of people. Your response to why we should have invaded is that these actions all took place in the past. Firstly, no they didn't. The murdering of innocent civilians continued up until the last days of the regime and thus there was an argument for invading at the time in order to stop the murder and genocide that was happening at the exact same time: https://tbinternet.ohchr.org... I used these especially notable historical atrocities such as Halabja as evidence of the overall barbarism of the regime and as proof of its continuous murderous brutality which lasted right up until the invasion. Furthermore, even if those actions did happen in the past then surely the perpetrators should still be brought to justice? Are you suggesting that murderers or rapists shouldn't be punished because the crime was already done? Why do you think there was a war crimes trial for the Nazis? There is still a strong argument for going into to Iraq to bring the regime to justice for the atrocities that it had committed. You CAN use evidence from the past but because the evidence you used was completely irrelevant nonsense that had absolutely nothing to do with the subject that we are discussing right now then I can dismiss it. I haven't failed to prove that Iraq produced WMDs; for heaven's sake they used WMDs! I gave you the example of Halabja. Chemical weapons (which count as WMDs) were used (illegally) on innocent Kurds in what is known as the Anfal Genocide. Those same weapons were kept and produce in Iraq and by Iraqi manufacturers. 1959 " August 17 USSR and Iraq signed an agreement for the USSR to build a nuclear power plant and established a nuclear program as part of their mutual understanding. 1968 " a Soviet supplied IRT-2000 research reactor together with a number of other facilities that could be used for radioisotope production was built close to Baghdad. 1975 " Saddam Hussein arrived in Moscow and asked about building an advanced model of an atomic power station. Moscow would approve only if the station was regulated by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but Iraq refused. However, an agreement of co-operation was signed on April 15, which superseded the one of 1959. After 6 months Paris agreed to sell 72 kg of 93% uranium and built a nuclear power plant without IAEA control at a price of $3 billion. https://dspace.ucalgary.ca... The regime tried countless numbers of times to gain nuclear weapons and even continued up until the last months before invasion to flout agreements over nuclear weapons and other WMDs which is revealed in this report by the UN survey group's investigation into illegal Iraq nuclear weapons program: https://www.globalsecurity.org... He also did have the means to produce these weapons. He intended to continue his program once sanctions had been lifted. Furthermore, his regained oil wealth allowed him to boost his weapons production. As far as intervention goes, clearly we can't intervene everywhere. In this case of Cambodia we could not have intervened because China and the USSR both backed the regime and we would have risked nuclear war if the west had invaded, although given the chance I would have supported it. As far as Rwanda goes, we should have invaded. The biggest failure in that genocide was the lacklustre response of the international community. The UN did not get involved enough and as a result almost a million innocent Rwandans were butchered. Had we have intervened earlier, the death toll could have been much. much lower. So, when the international community has the ability to end a brutal regime (which we did in Iraq, 2003) and if that regime is so brutal (which it was) that military intervention is justified, then the west MUST intervene. And I support that. I do not care about the cost of the war. We should spend as much as it takes to save innocent lives. Also, there was genuine concern over oil at the time. Furthermore, sanctions on Iraq, by the west in response to the invasion of Kuwait, were lifted after the regime was toppled thus making oil more readily available. Moreover, with Saddam poised to attack Saudi Arabia (which he actually invaded!), there was a genuine oil-based, economic threat to the west. This was a legitimate concern of both Bush and Blair. This is a minor point but it still is another argument for intervening - to stabilise the middle-east and to halt Saddam's domination of oil production. So, you can bring up actions in the past as evidence of a point that relates to the specific action of the 2nd gulf war. Your examples were not about the regime of Iraq nor the war itself but of the whole history of western foreign policy in the middle-east (which is NOT what we are discussing). Yes the west has been hypocritical, but so what? My examples were used as evidence of things that had an effect on the actions surrounding the war itself and so are legitimate examples. The reality is that the regime was inherently murderous and barbaric and thus its brutality justified its overthrow. Furthermore, its growing power was a threat to middle-east politics and the western economies and there is clear evidence that it obtain WMDs and was trying to build a nuclear arsenal. This is justification enough even despite the overwhelming moral reason to invade. All my opponent has done has moaned about western foreign policy and denied the attempt to gain nuclear weapons. On that basis I am very proud to propose the motion that the 2nd Gulf war was completely justified.