I have a fairly clear recollection of a letter that Roger Knapman wrote to one of the newspapers a few months before the invasion of Iraq. (Times? Guardian? I'm not sure.) In it, he said that UKIP would support an invasion of Iraq if and only if: (1) there was a full UN mandate for doing so (2) an invasion was in Britain's interest (3) there was a clear plan for withdrawal afterwards.
I may have the nuances wrong, but I think that was pretty much it. In fact this position isn't a million miles different from the one Anthony Butcher outlines above. The implication is surely that UKIP opposed the invasion, as none of these three very reasonable conditions had been met when the troops went in.
However, if UKIP did oppose the war, it did so very quietly indeed. Maybe this was because opinions within the party differed on this issue and later nobody wanted to rock the boat once our troops were engaged.
Like others here, my personal view is that the invasion was an awful thing. Parliament was misled, an illegal war was fought, and Blair has blood on his hands. I'm truly delighted that Saddam Hussein was ejected from power, but was it worth undermining the UN and alienating the Arab world at a time that the US and UK are confronting such a huge threat from al Qaida? Kerry was right in the debate the other night when he said that invading Iraq in response to 9/11 was like responding to Pearl Harbor by invading Mexico.
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