"The purpose of British troops in Iraq is to discover and destroy any weapons of mass destruction," said the defence minister, Geoffrey Hoon, regarding the deployment of troops to the Gulf in coalition with American forces. The consequential expulsion of the regime of Saddam Hussein has, no doubt, benefited a country suffering from years of sanctions and oppression. His murderous regime has denied the Iraqi people a democratic government, and crushed those who fought to get one. It will never be known the total amount of people murdered by the dictator, when their only crime was to seek the freedom taken for granted in the West. The tragic deaths of British soldiers during the conflict has provoked many a debate as to whether the war should have happened in the first place, and whether the deaths of the young soldiers were in any way justified by the immeasurable benefits to the country and its people. Especially when the country in question is considered by some to be such a long way away that it is irrelevant whether he does have the weapons of mass destruction or not, for he doesn't have the weapons capabilities to reach us with them anyway. Yet with the ever-growing threat from international terrorism, it cannot be denied that a Nation's security now begins a long way past its" borders. The overriding question which arises now the bulk of the conflict is over, is whether the deaths of British soldiers in a far-off country will, in time, be considered worthwhile, or whether they will have been in vain.
Ever since the dropping of the two atomic bombs by the United States of America on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on the other side of the world in 1945, no country in the world is now "safe" from these weapons. The USA had shown the world that distance and oceans did not matter any more, for mankind had finally harnessed the military capabilities to render this problem obsolete.
