Those who are protesting vehemently against war in Iraq badly need to heed the voices of Iraqi refugees and defectors.

Hadi Kazwini is an Australian-Iraqi engineer and writer who came to Australia as a refugee in 1997. Recently she wrote that Iraq has been in a state of war since 1980.

"Hussein's regime dragged our people into two bloody and stupid wars. One million were killed and half a million left disabled…The regime brutally silenced those who rebelled in March 1991; in the south 180,000 innocent people were killed."

"Four and a half million Iraqis have left their country in the past 12 years; perhaps 18 % of the population. Most are intellectuals and professionals. It is the first migration in Iraqi history.

Another refugee Safi Hasjhim says: "We know that no swift war in Iraq could ever be more devastating than the losses we have incurred over the past 35 years."

There have been estimates that 1.3 million Iraqi people serve in the security, police and military and another 3 million are informants - out of a population of 23 million. Hadi Kazwini points out that people in the West have no idea what it is like to live under such brutal totalitarian regime.

"People in the West have no idea what it is like to live under such a brutal totalitarian regime. People are in a state of fear that is beyond imagination…Foreign journalists are not able to reflect the everyday suffering and agony of the people. The Iraqis do not usually share this with foreigners out of fear of the regime."

Rania Kashi who has lost 17 of her relatives as Hussein's victims challenges the peace marchers.

"Are you willing to allow Hussein to kill another million Iraqis? The Iraqi people have been protesting for years against the war - the war that Saddam has waged against them. Where have you been? Why is it now that you deem it appropriate to voice your disillusionment with America's policy in Iraq when it is actually right now that the Iraqi people are being given real hope, however slight and precarious."

Zainab Al-Suwaij is the executive director of the American Islamic Congress and knows the horrors of war too well. She was born and raised in Iraq and suffered eight years of bombing raids on her hometown of Basra after Saddam invaded Iran. She was part of the popular uprising of most of Iraq's 18 provinces against Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War. But the promised American help never came but stood by as Hussein crushed the rebellion and his reign of terror resumed. Zainab Al-Suwaij (just) managed to escape though tens of thousands were killed.

"Could it be possible that President George W. Bush will bring justice and liberation where his father failed? Sometimes I feel I am back in Karbala. We are waiting for the Americans once again."

Dr Al Jabiri was once political mentor and friend of Saddam Hussein until the dictator ordered the deaths of Jabiri's son and brother. Dr Al Jabiri was held under house arrest and interrogated for 11 years until he was allowed to leave for medical treatment in America. He is critical of those countries who do not support a war on Iraq.

"The French and Germans are being selfish, and they are not looking at the suffering Iraqis."

As the permanent members of the UN Security Council argue over Iraq, the irony is that Saddam is a monster they have in part created. Until sanctions were introduced he supplied them (particularly France and Germany) with oil and used the payments to purchase their weapons. Since the 70's Saddam has exploited every opportunity to portray the West (especially US) as the villain and Iraq as the victim. In an article in The Australian Financial Review Friday 7 March, international affairs consultant Graham Barrett wrote: "What a hoot it must be for him (Saddam) to witness the reruns of Tony Benn prostrating himself before the presidential personage; to see the faithful Tariq Aziz's hands being fondled by the Pope; to observe all those millions of anti-war Westerners out on the street; to glimpse the arrival of volunteer hostages; to watch the UN Inspectors Clouseau hurrying from site to site, when what they are looking for will not be found until after - or during - a war."

The few scientists and those close to Saddam who have managed to escape have all testified that he never has had any intention of complying with UN resolutions on disarmament and has continued to work relentlessly on secret biological chemical and nuclear weapons programs.

Scientist Khidhir Hamza fled Iraq in 1994 and at the beginning of his memoir, Saddam's Bombmaker (2000) wrote "I am lucky to be alive" as he was aware of how many others had been killed by Saddam's agents not only in Iraq but also in exile.

"No-one who has worked closely with Saddam has lived to tell the whole, inside story - not just of his clandestine programs to build nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, but of the horrible man himself and his palace intrigues."

In 1961 Hamza won a scholarship to study in America; however in 1969 he (along with other scientists and engineers) was called upon to return to Iraq to serve his country. If they refused there was the threat of parents and family members back in Iraq being arrested and even tortured. In June 1974 he and others were sent to France to purchase a nuclear reactor plus training and spare parts for $US300 million).

For the next 16 years Hamza traveled abroad to procure technologies and scientific data for the secret weapons programmes. In 1987 he learned of a sprawling network of underground facilities (much of the technology for these and the facilities came from Germany). He came perilously close to putting an atomic bomb in Saddam's hands. He suddenly realized "I couldn't kid myself any longer: I was an important cog in an evil machine…what had started out, for me, as a rational plan for national defence…had become a Bhagdad-based Murder Inc."

In 1995 he escaped and was taken into protection by the CIA.

"The CIA… had no idea how far we'd gotten with the bomb. They didn't seem to know who I was. They had no idea that our scientists were still working on bomb design and explosive lenses in new, hidden locations around Baghdad. It sounded to me as if they'd been lulled by Saddam's phony documents, or blinded by his concealment schemes…It blew my mind".

Hussein Kamel (Saddam's son-in-law) who defected in 1995 and Wafiq al-Samarrai both have corroborated what Hamza has revealed to the CIA.

Wafiq al-Samarrai said in 1998. "Facilities for the production of chemical and biological weapons were dismantled already before the UN inspectors arrived. They were taken to secret places and reassembled again. All documents have been hidden in such a way that strangers will never find them."

It is a pity that millions of people around the world are blinded by what they believe are US motives such as oil. The easiest way to get oil would be to lift the sanctions and leave Saddam in power. And why are people blaming the West (particularly America) for the suffering imposed by sanctions. Saddam has had plenty of money for food and medicines for his people but has spent the proceeds from both permitted and clandestine sales of oil (via Turkey to mainly France) on numerous presidential palaces, bunkers and smuggled weaponry.

There are no peaceful solutions when we are dealing with tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot or Saddam Hussein. The real question is not whether the war will take place but when the war that has been going on for a generation will finish. There are only two sides of this cruel war: on one side stands Saddam and his regime and on the other stand the people of Iraq. Once the Iraqis trust that this time the Americans will keep their promise they will give plenty of help as they did in 1991.

The peace demonstrators need to listen more carefully and remove their blinkers.