Madam Speaker, other questions arise about this military operation. Let me deal with some of them. Is it a specific objective to remove Saddam Hussein? The answer is it cannot be. No-one would be better pleased if his evil regime disappeared as a direct or indirect result of our action, but our military objectives are precisely those I have set out. Even if there was legal authority to do so, removing Saddam through military action would require the insertion of ground troops on a massive scale hundreds of thousands, as the British Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Charles Guthrie, made clear this morning. Even then there would be no absolute guarantee of success. I cannot make that commitment responsibly.
And yet he did
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