Many thousands have died in Middle East because of US and UK’S fatal policies

Back in 2002, when Tony Blair was making his bogus case for war in Iraq, he cited Halabja as his main justification. Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons to gas the Kurds in 1988. This killed 5,000 people.

This, Blair said, showed Saddam was a uniquely evil individual who couldn’t be left with a weapons of mass destruction capability.

None of the media or political class thought to ask the obvious question, which was, where Saddam had got these weapons? Had they done so, they would have found that Mrs Thatcher had spent over £1 billion of taxpayer’s money underwriting arms deals British companies had done with Saddam.

When Saddam defaulted on the payments the taxpayer stepped in to pick up the bill. Some of the conventional weapons deals the taxpayer underwrote were subsequently used against UK forces by Saddam’s army in Gulf War 1.

This was a repeat of the Malvinas war, where many UK firms had supplied Argentina with weapons.

A similar pattern is being undertaken within Syria. In 2002 Tony Blair gave Assad a state visit to Britain, even considering giving him an honorary knighthood. At this time UK firms were selling Assad weapons, including components for his WMD stockpiles. The CIA was rendering suspects for torture to his jails.

In 2000, fresh from his “victory” in Kosovo, Tony Blair travelled to Moscow and defended Putin’s bombing of Chechnya, saying it was not comparable to Kosovo.

The hypocrisy of the media on Aleppo is utterly breathtaking. They have only shown what is being done to Eastern Aleppo. They have completed omitted the crimes of the Alqaeda “rebels”.

By demonising Russia to the point of absurdity the media has turned Syria into a wrestling match with goodies and baddies.

In 1916 the Sykes-picot Agreement was signed to give the UK and France control over Middle East oil resources. Nothing has changed. Anyone with even a basic knowledge of Western foreign policy knows “human rights” has never and will never be a consideration.

The reason for the UK and US outrage on Aleppo is their Alqaeda “rebels” are defeated. Nothing to do with “human” rights. To point out the crimes committed by the US and UK in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere does not make one an apologist or supporter of Putin or Assad.

ALAN HINNRICHS Gillespie Terrace, Dundee Yesterday’s debate on Syria in the Westminster Parliament achieved nothing. Successive British governments failed abysmally when promoting regime change in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine and now Syria and Yemen.

In 2013 the UK Parliament voted not to intervene in Syria. Despite this vote, the government apparently continued to fund terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, with millions of pounds’ worth of weapons. All this despite warnings from diplomats that the situation in Syria was impossibly difficult with so many factions and that diplomacy was the only true option for the Middle East.

A migration crisis of Biblical proportions has resulted, with countless refugees pouring into Europe from the civil wars stimulated across the Middle East, not forgetting the estimated two million refugees from Ukraine alone. The countries have been left devastated and ungovernable.

The UK has paid in blood and treasure for its involvement in these foreign affairs, with armed forces reduced to a bare minimum of 80,000, our diplomatic service impotent, and the national debt burgeoning.

It is past time for a fundamental foreign policy review, to invest in trade, diplomacy and the promotion of peace and prosperity.

The government urgently requires to abandon its desperately costly regime change activities in countries with very different cultures from our own. ELIZABETH MARSHALL Western Harbour Midway Edinburgh