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Reasonable people can differ on whether or not we should have gone into Iraq.

I can imagine that the Iraqis undertake the destruction out of fear. If they had denied it, if they had said no, that certainly would have played into the hands of those that would like to take armed action immediately. I have no illusions in that regard.

Had the United States and the United Kingdom gone on alone to capture Baghdad, under the provisions of the Geneva and Hague conventions we would have been considered occupying powers and therefore would have been responsible for all the costs of maintaining or restoring government, education and other services for the people of Iraq.

I believe very deeply in the proposition that what we did in Iraq was the right thing to do. It was hard to do. It took a long time. There were significant costs involved.

We were told this war would be over in a matter of weeks, and that the Iraqis would be able to finance it with oil sales. We were promised it was not a mission of nation building.

It would be a tragedy if the remarkable international coalition against terrorism, successfully marshalled in the aftermath of 11 September, were to fragment over a unilateral U.S. strike against Baghdad.

Had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like a dinosaur in the tar pit - we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of that occupation.

As someone who has seen war first hand, and as a father of three young adults, it was my hope that we could have resolved this conflict and disarmed Saddam Hussein without war. However, this was not the case.