Iraq? Let's not go there

MPs are off on their hols on Wednesday and by the time they return, we may be at war with Iraq. Not that their absence will inconvenience the Government in any way, for the Prime Minister has refused to commit himself to a vote in the House of Commons before deploying British forces, a position to be expected from someone with his aversion to robust questioning. On the contrary, there is every sign that preparations for an Anglo-American attack are at an advanced stage, with key reservists due to be called up in September and British troops being pulled out of a whole series of Nato exercises planned for the autumn.

This is an extraordinary situation, for I have not come across anyone who can explain why there is this sudden urgency to get rid of Saddam Hussein. To put it another way, I am still waiting for the killer fact, the astounding piece of information which means that Saddam's regime is such a threat to world peace that it can no longer be tolerated. Let me be clear: I am in no doubt that he is a nasty piece of work or that the Iraqi people would be immeasurably better off without him. The question I am asking, as August approaches and normal political debate is suspended, is about timing.

The Ba'ath party came to power in Iraq in 1968 and celebrated with televised hangings of its opponents, including Iraqi Jews and communists; Saddam, as vice-chairman of the revolutionary command council, enjoyed a ringside seat. Seldom has a regime taken less care to disguise its true nature, as an American intelligence report conceded five years later, describing Iraq as a classic one-party state dominated by the army and riddled with informers. Saddam ousted his old boss, General Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, in 1979 and has been in sole charge ever since. He has tortured and murdered his people, tried to build weapons of mass destruction (WMDs in the jargon) and invaded neighbouring countries on two occasions.

Nothing new there, then. British ministers have also conceded, reluctantly perhaps, that there is no convincing evidence linking him either to al-Qa'ida or last September's terrorist attacks on the East Coast of the US. As for that famous intelligence dossier, promised to us in the spring and supposedly exposing Saddam's latest attempts to build biological weapons and long-range missiles, it still seems to be languishing somewhere in the Cabinet Office. So does this mean there has been an undeclared change of policy by the British Government, which now intends to go around overthrowing nasty regimes? Nice idea, but Iraq would presumably be No 1 on a hit list that includes, just to name-check some of the worst offenders, China, Burma and North Korea.

Whoa, let's not go there. What remains is the suspicion that the preparations to attack Iraq are prompted not just by Blair's understandable distaste for Saddam but his too-close relationship with the American President. George W Bush has many reasons for wanting this particular Middle Eastern adventure, from a desire to finish his dad's left-over business to a pressing need to divert voters' attention from a series of gargantuan financial scandals. It would be amazing, in the circumstances, if the President wasn't planning to invade somewhere or other, but the problems of failed states do not end with that other buzzword of the moment, "regime change".

The Ba'ath party is a fascist organisation, whose founders in the 1940s were admirers of Hitler and Mussolini; civil society barely exists in Iraq, which has been terrorised by Saddam's Jihaz Haneen, an organisation modelled on Hitler's SS, for 34 years. Post-war reconstruction would be an awesome and expensive task, which is not an argument for refusing to attempt it. But it is legitimate to ask, when the US government has demonstrated its brief attention span in Afghanistan, who is going to carry it out? And here are some other questions MPs should be asking themselves before they head for the beach: do we want to live in a world where the US decides which regimes are tolerable and which are not? Are we happy to see the US government once again displaying its contempt for the international community and the United Nations? I think we should be told before British troops risk their lives in Iraq. Oh, and don't forget to pack your buckets and spades, everyone.