George Galloway: We’ve been bombing Iraqis for a hundred years

George Galloway MP, a politician for the left-wing Respect Party and a former Labour MP who was ejected from the party for his support of the 2003 Iraq insurgency, criticised the House of Commons for discussing "imaginary" armies.

"What a tangled web we have woven is abundantly clear to everyone watching this debate," he said.

"The mission creep hasn’t even waited until the end of the debate...there’s a consensus here that there will be boots on the ground."

He pointed out that “there was no Islamist fundamentalism in Iraq” before the 2003 invasion and levelled the blame at the UK for the current situation.

He also emphasised that there was no real moderate opposition in Syria and that "the Free Syrian Army is a fiction.”

He said "the Iraqi army is the most expensively trained and modernly equipped in history" which "ran away leaving its equipment behind it.”

The Islamic State is a “death cult” who can only survive because “they have a population which is acting as the water in which they are swimming” and said "western policies and western occupation” were the main cause of the unrest.

“We’ve been bombing Iraqis for a hundred years.”

He said that the public had seen the folly of war and “the fools in here who draw a big salary”, meaning the MPs, cannot see it.

When heckled about what his solution would be he said “we have to strengthen the Kurdish fighters.”