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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 3 Hansard (23 October) . . Page.. 4071 ..
MR PRATT
(continuing):25 years, not counting the major massacres, such as in al-Anfal, where 100,000 Kurds were taken away and murdered. To say that an intervention was hardly justified is to entirely miss the point.
Mr Wood
: That was never the reason for going there. Remember the weapons of mass destruction?MR PRATT
: Yes it was, Mr Wood. It was one of the three objectives. I will get to weapons of mass destruction in a moment. Baghdad is still a dangerous place, but it is safer than it was. The claim of 10,000 dead soldiers is absolutely erroneous. It is now known that a few thousand-Republican Guard soldiers, who fought to the bitter end because they thought that they were going to a higher place-made up the death toll.Most conscripts fled the battlefield and went home. That is all they ever wanted to do. To say that we have a massive problem of scapegoating in the community is, again, erroneous. Yes, there are racial incidents in schools. But to talk about scapegoating, as you did today, is to overdo the issue, and to overdo these things is to be divisive. I would simply say that the Chief Minister quite overdid these issues today, which is out of order.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
The Assembly adjourned at 6.20 pm until Tuesday, 18 November 2003, at 10.30 am.
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