U.S. War Crimes Ambassador Reviews Saddam Hussein's Criminality
The Case for Justice in Iraq
By David J. Scheffer
Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues
Monday, September 18, 2000
Middle East Institute and the Iraq Foundation
National Press Club, Washington, D.C.
Thank you, David Mack, for your kind introduction, and thanks to you
and to the Middle East Institute and the Iraq Foundation for
sponsoring this important conference on the crimes against humanity
and war crimes of Saddam Hussein and his regime. It is good to be
among so many groups and individuals who are dedicated to the pursuit
of justice, democracy and the rule of law for the Iraqi people. I am
here to tell you all that the United States looks forward to the day
when justice, democracy and the rule of law will prevail in Iraq.
I want to do three things this morning, by way of starting us all on a
series of interesting presentations on different aspects of the case
for justice in Iraq. First, I want to recall to everyone's attention
the reason we are here -- the need to address the continuing
criminality of Saddam Hussein's regime. Second, it has been almost a
year since I saw many of you here in Washington last October, when I
spoke at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the subject
of Iraqi war crimes, or at the Iraqi National Assembly in New York
shortly thereafter. I want to update you on what the U.S. Government
has been doing to promote accountability for Saddam Hussein's 20 years
of criminal conduct. Third, I think you will find of interest some of
the reaction, in Baghdad and elsewhere, to what we -- and many of you
-- have been doing to promote the cause of justice in Iraq.
Let me be clear at the outset. Our primary objective is to see Saddam
Hussein and the leadership of the Iraqi regime indicted and prosecuted
by an international criminal tribunal. If an international criminal
tribunal or even a commission of experts proves too difficult to
achieve politically, there still may be opportunities in the national
courts of certain jurisdictions to investigate and indict the
leadership of the Iraqi regime. The United States is committed to
pursuing justice and accountability in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda,
Cambodia, Sierra Leone and elsewhere around the world. We are also
committed to the pursuit of justice and accountability for the victims
of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
I. The Criminal Record of the Regime of Saddam Hussein
Let me turn to my first main point, the need to address the criminal
record of Saddam Hussein and his top associates for their crimes
against the peoples of Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and other countries. To the
United States Government, it is beyond any possible doubt that Saddam
Hussein and the top leadership around him have brutally and
systematically committed war crimes and crimes against humanity for
years, are committing them now, and will continue committing them
until the international community finally says enough -- or until the
forces of change in Iraq prevail against his regime as, ultimately,
they must.
This may seem self-evident to all of you here today. Interestingly, in
my discussions of this issue I have found some people who will agree
that Saddam Hussein is a criminal, but who are genuinely unaware of
the magnitude of his criminal conduct. Those who want to gloss over
Saddam's criminal record often want to gloss over the need for him to
be brought to justice. This goes to the very heart of why his conduct
deserves an international response, so I find it useful to review what
we now know of the criminal record of Saddam Hussein and his top
associates.
1. The Iran-Iraq War. During the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein and his
forces used chemical weapons against Iran. According to official
Iranian sources, which we consider credible, approximately 5,000
Iranians were killed by chemical weapons between 1983 and 1988. The
use of chemical weapons has been a war crime since the 1925 Chemical
Weapons treaty, to which Iraq is a party. Also during the Iran-Iraq
War, there are credible reports that Iraqi forces killed several
thousand Iranian prisoners of war, which is also a war crime as well
as a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, to which Iraq is
a party. Other war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by
Saddam Hussein and the top leaders around him against Iran and the
Iranian people also deserve international investigation.
2. Halabja. In mid-March of 1988, Saddam Hussein and his cousin Ali
Hassan alMajid -- the infamous "Chemical Ali" -- ordered the dropping
of chemical weapons on the town of Halabja in northeastern Iraq. This
killed an estimated 5,000 civilians, and is a war crime and a crime
against humanity. Photographic and videotape evidence of this attack
and its aftermath exists. Some of this is available to scholars and
God willing -- to prosecutors through the efforts of the International
Monitor Institute in Los Angeles, California. More visual evidence is
available from Iranian cameramen, who collected their images of the
victims of this brutal attack -- most of whom were women and children
-- in a book published in Tehran. The best evidence of all is from the
survivors in Halabja itself.
I am proud to say that the United States has been working with groups
such as the Washington Kurdish Institute and scientists like Dr.
Christine Gosden to document the suffering of the people of Halabja
and -- just as importantly -- to find ways to help the people of
Halabja treat the victims and bring hope to the living. Working with
local authorities, we are looking for ways to help investigators,
doctors and scientists document this crime and plan the help that the
survivors need and deserve. We know they will not get that help from
Saddam Hussein. As one example, to help war crimes investigators, the
U.S. Government is today announcing the declassification of overhead
imagery products of Halabia taken in March 1988, the best image we
have that was taken a little more than a week after the attack. We
hope this will serve as a photo-map to enable witnesses to describe to
investigators, doctors and scientists what they were during those
terrible days of the Iraqi chemical attack and its aftermath.
3. The Anfal campaigns. Beginning in 1987 and accelerating in early
1988, Saddam Hussein ordered the "Anfal" campaign against the Iraqi
Kurdish people. By any measure, this constituted a crime against
humanity and a war crime. Chemical Ali has admitted to witnesses that
he carried out this campaign "under orders." In 1995, Human Rights
Watch published a compilation of their reports in the book Iraq's
Crime of Genocide, which is now out of print. Human Rights Watch needs
to reprint this book. Human Rights Watch estimated that between 50,000
and 100,000 Kurds were killed. Based on their review of captured Iraqi
documents, interviews with hundreds of eyewitnesses, and on-site
forensic investigations, they concluded that the Anfal campaign was
genocide. I challenge anyone to read the evidence cited in Iraq's
Crime of Genocide and come to any different conclusion.
4. The invasion and occupation of Kuwait. On August 2, 1990, Saddam
Hussein ordered his forces to invade and occupy Kuwait. It took
military force by the international community and actions by the
Kuwaiti themselves to liberate Kuwait in February 1991. During the
occupation, Saddam Hussein's forces killed more than a thousand
Kuwaiti nationals, as well as many others from other nations. Evidence
of many of these killings is on file with authorities in Kuwait and at
the United Nations Compensation Commission in Geneva. Saddam Hussein's
forces committed many other crimes in Kuwait, including environmental
crimes such as the destruction of oil wells in Kuwait's oil fields,
massive looting of Kuwaiti property -- Saddam's son Uday appears to
have treated Kuwait as his personal used car lot. As well, Saddam
Hussein's government held hostages from many nations in an effort to
coerce their governments into pro-Iraqi policies. During the war,
Iraqi authorities also committed war crimes against Coalition forces.
War crimes against American service members were detailed in a report
to Congress and in an article by Lee Haworth and Jim Hergen in Society
magazine back in January 1994.
5. The suppression of the 1991 uprising. In March and April of 1991,
Saddam Hussein's forces killed somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000
Iraqis, most of them civilians. The story of the uprising of the Iraqi
people is one of courage and hope for the people of Iraq and has been
told by men such as former Iraqi General Najib al-Salihi in his book
Al-Zilzal, "The Earthquake," The story of the uprising that started in
the south, a part of the country traditionally neglected and deprived
by Saddam Hussein's government in Baghdad, deserves to be better known
outside of Iraq. Most of those killed were civilians, not resistance
fighters -- a distinction that Saddam Hussein did not respect in 1991
any more than he has before or since. This qualifies as a crime
against humanity and possibly also a war crime.
6. The draining of the southern marshes. Beginning in the early
1990's, and continuing to this day, Saddam Hussein's government has
drained the southern marshes of Iraq, depriving thousands of Iraqis of
their livelihood and their ability to live on land that their
ancestors have lived on for thousands of years. This is clearly not a
land reclamation project, or a border security project, as some of
Saddam's defenders have claimed. Instead, as groups such as the Amar
Foundation have begun to document, Saddam's efforts have served to
render the land less fertile, and less able to sustain the livelihood
or security of the Iraqi people. This qualifies as a crime against
humanity and may possibly constitute genocide.
7. Ethnic cleansing of ethnic "Persians" from Iraq to Iran, and an
ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing of the non-Arabs of Kirkuk and
other northern districts. This ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing
was documented by the former U.N. Special Human Rights Rapporteur for
Iraq, Max van der Stoel in his reports in 1999.
8. Continuing unlawful killings of political opponents. Many groups
have documented Saddam Hussein's ongoing campaign against political
opponents, including killings, tortures, and -- lately -- rape. As
some of you may know, the regime has been using sexual assaults of
women in an effort to intimidate leaders of the Iraqi opposition. We
salute the courage of opposition leaders such as General Najib
al-Salihi for speaking out about this crime. The regime is also
carrying out a systematic campaign of murder and intimidation of
clergy, especially Shi'a clergy. The number of those killed unlawfully
is difficult to estimate but must be well in excess of 10,000 since
Saddam Hussein officially seized power in 1980. The number of victims
of torture no doubt well exceeds the number of those killed.
Who is responsible for these crimes? Like Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam
Hussein did not commit these crimes on his own. He has built up one of
the world's most ruthless police states using a very small number of
associates who share with him the responsibility for these criminal
actions. The non-governmental group INDICT some time ago developed a
list of 12 of those most deserving of international indictment. To
refresh everyone's recollection, they are:
1. Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq and chairman of the Revolutionary
Command Council (RCC). I will have more to say about the RCC shortly.
2. Ali Hassan al-Majid, "Chemical Ali," reviled for his enthusiasm in
using poison gas against Iraqi Kurds and in the Iran-Iraq war. He also
turned up in Kuwait during the occupation and, more recently, as
governor in the south of Iraq during recent periods of repression
against the people there. When someone shows up at crime scene after
crime scene, the pattern of evidence becomes clear.
3. Saddam's elder son Uday, a commander of a ruthless paramilitary
organization that maintains Saddam's hold on power.
4. Saddam's younger son Qusay Saddam Hussein, the Head of the Special
Security
Organization, reputed by many to be Saddam's likely successor.
5. Muhammad Hamza al-Zubaydi, Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq.
6. Taha Yasin Ramadan, Vice President of Iraq.
7. Barzan al-Tikriti, former Head of Iraqi Intelligence.
8. Watban al-Tikriti, former Minister of the Interior.
9. Sabawi al-Tikriti, former Head of Intelligence and the General
Security Organization.
10. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command
Council and former Head of the Revolutionary Court.
11. Tariq Aziz, Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq.
12. Aziz Salih Noman, Governor of Kuwait during the Iraqi occupation.
II. Building the Case: What the United States Has Been Doing
The charges are clear. The targets of prosecution are identified. Let
me turn to a brief description of what the United States has been
doing in the past year to gather the evidence of Iraqi crimes against
humanity, war crimes and genocide.
First, we have undertaken an analysis of the de jure case against
Saddam Hussein. This is important because a more straightforward de
jure case can greatly simplify the work of prosecutors. As some of you
know, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
took advantage of Slobodan Milosevic's official role as President of
the FRY in 1999 to indict him for crimes against humanity in Kosovo,
whereas he has not yet been indicted for his responsibility for crimes
committed during the 1991-95 wars in Bosnia and Croatia, when he was
nominally only President of Serbia.
The de jure case against Saddam Hussein and his top associates is
rock-solid. To summarize briefly, Article 37 of the current Iraqi
constitution names the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) the supreme
body in the state. Articles 42 and 43 state that the RCC has the power
to promulgate laws and decrees that have the force of law Article 38
states that the RCC chairman is also the President, who is responsible
under Article 57-59 for the acts of the Iraqi military and security
services. The RCC chairman and Iraqi president is, of course, Saddam
Hussein.
We have also been doing our part on the de facto case. Our second area
of work has been in connection with one of the most important archives
of evidence-millions of pages of captured Iraqi documents taken out of
northern Iraq by Human Rights Watch and the U.S. Government. We
scanned these onto 176 CD-ROM's. Last October, we announced we had
given a set of the 176 CD-ROM's to the Iraq Foundation, along with a
grant to make the full collection of these documents available on the
Internet to scholars, journalists and, eventually, prosecutors
worldwide. I know the Iraq Foundation and the Iraq Research and
Documentation Project have been working hard on that project, which I
will let them describe further.
Third, the U.S. Government has another archive of millions of pages of
documents captured by U.S. forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq during
Operation Desert Storm. I announced on August 2 that we have been
working to declassify these documents and that we were giving the
first of these to the Iraq Foundation. Today, I am announcing that we
have given several hundred more to the Iraq Foundation, as well. I
will let the Iraq Foundation describe further what is in this
collection.
Fourth, the U.S. Government has an extensive archive of classified
documents relating to Iraqi war crimes during the Gulf War. Since
October, staff from my office have located and reviewed these
materials. If you remember the final scene of "Raiders of the Lost
Ark," where the Ark is being wheeled into a warehouse of crate upon
crate, I should tell you that that warehouse does exist -- it's in
Suitland, Maryland -- and that my staff found these materials on Iraqi
war crimes ... located safely right next to the Ark of the Covenant.
U.S. Army lawyers and investigators did a truly outstanding job of
compiling this evidence and organizing it in ways that will prove
valuable to the staff of a tribunal or commission. Some of the
materials can eventually be declassified. While we do not intend to
make all of these documents public, we have worked closely with past
commissions of experts and tribunals to allow them access to
classified material in accordance with U.S. laws that protect sources
and methods. We would be willing to do the same for a commission or
tribunal looking into the crimes of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen.
I must also salute the work of Kuwaiti prosecutors, the Center for
Research and Studies on Kuwait, and others there in documenting Saddam
Hussein's crimes against the Kuwaiti people. After the liberation,
Kuwaiti authorities undertook a systematic effort at collecting
evidence and documenting Iraqi war crimes in Kuwait. As some of you
know, Kuwaiti prosecutors recently completed a thorough trial of Alaa
Hussein, installed in August 1990 by Saddam. Hussein as the quisling
governor of Kuwait during the early weeks of the occupation. Kuwaiti
prosecutors showed, through their professionalism in that trial, their
ability to present evidence of Iraqi war crimes committed 10 years
ago.
Fifth, U.S. Government officials have been meeting with witnesses and
former Iraqi officials to gather evidence of Iraqi war crimes. There
is no substitute for eyewitness accounts in any criminal prosecution,
before an international tribunal or in national courts. We have
learned a lot in these interviews. As a rule, we treat information
provided to us in confidence, so we leave it to those who talk to us
whether to go public with what they have experienced. There have been
a number of cases where valuable leads have come forward. We
understand other groups are also active in interviewing witnesses, but
I will leave it to them to describe their own work.
Sixth, to support our other work, the U.S. Government has undertaken a
review of imagery to declassify potential evidence of both historical
and more recent Iraqi criminal conduct. We have made public imagery
products showing the ongoing work to drain the southern marshes, and
destroy Iraqi villages. Recently, the Iraq Foundation received a
report of the destruction of the southern Iraqi village of Albu Ayish
on March 28 and April 5, 1999. We were able to locate imagery products
from September 1998 and December 1999 that confirms this account.
Those of you familiar with Jamie Rubin's press briefings of the
conflict in Kosovo will recognize this presentation. [Show] On the
left is Albu Ayish as it existed before Iraqi forces moved in. You can
see the school near the river, here. The buildings surrounding it have
roofs on them. In the "after" picture, here, the school is intact.
That is more than you can say for the buildings surrounding the
school, which bear the signs of destruction from ground level. I will
leave it to Rend Franke if she wants to say more about what happened
to the families at Albu Ayish and surrounding towns in southern Iraq.
Albu Ayish is but one example of what the U.S. Government is doing to
review imagery of Iraqi war crimes.
All in all, we have had a productive year in developing and preserving
evidence of Iraqi crimes against humanity and war crimes. We are the
first to say there is much more that needs to be done. To that end, we
are hoping the Congress will give us the President's full requested
appropriations so that this important work can continue for another
year. We also anticipate further strong contributions to this work by
the Iraqi opposition. The Iraqi National Congress, in particular, tell
us they plan to devote substantial efforts to this cause as part of
its upcoming $8 million work program.
III. The Reaction from Baghdad and Elsewhere
Let me turn to my third main point. One of the most interesting
aspects of our work on documenting Iraqi war crimes, and engaging with
other governments on this issue, has been the reactions we have
received. Let me first talk about Baghdad's reaction, Saddam Hussein
recognizes that he is vulnerable to calls for accountability for his
crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes. Articles in the
international press have reported that the regime takes international
efforts to establish a tribunal seriously. Threats of possible arrest
have caused Iraqi officials to curtail or forgo travel to European
countries whose laws allow arrest under the UN, Convention Against
Torture, The regime has also harassed Iraqis and others who speak out
against the regime's crimes. For example, the regime sent someone with
an Iraqi diplomatic passport -- hesitate to call him an Iraqi diplomat
to try to film participants at INDICT's conference on Iraqi war crimes
in Paris this past April.
There is another important aspect of the Iraqi reaction, as well,
Saddam Hussein realizes that international discussion of his crimes
against humanity, genocide and war crimes reveals the truth about his
policies towards the Iraqi people for the last 20 years. This is a
regime that maintains its power through crime-whether it be by crimes
against humanity and war crimes, or by killings, torture or the threat
of killings and torture, of Iraqi citizens, and by looting the
property that rightly belongs to the people of Iraq or Iraq's
neighbors. Make no mistake -- those crimes are continuing to this day.
Saddam Hussein clearly fears the truth. Journalists who travel to Iraq
all have "minders." It takes courageous journalists, and documentary
film producers like Joel Soler, to tell any story other than the one
that Saddam Hussein's regime wants you to tell. (I hope you all can
see Mr. Soler's documentary, "Uncle Saddam" at 1:00 this afternoon.)
One recent visitor to Iraq traveled to Baghdad earlier this year and
was shown hospital beds with two patients to a bed. It was only when
he slipped away from his minder that he found out that around the
corner, out of sight, was a room full of empty hospital beds. Last
week, as you read in Barbara Crossette's story in September 12th's
"New York Times", Saddam Hussein kept U.N. humanitarian experts from
traveling to Iraq to assess the true living conditions in Iraq. She
wrote, "President Saddam Hussein, whose government is now probably the
world's most repressive, wants to control all contact between Iraqis
and outsiders, and can in effect veto the assignment to Iraq of even
United Nations officials." Large aid organizations based in Europe
have been barred from areas in Iraq under the regime's controls.
Instead, only small, anti-sanctions protesters, "who bring in
relatively small amounts of aid, are welcomed for their propaganda
value."
Any statistics from Iraq, or taken by Iraqi officials for the U.N. are
seriously suspect. A recent Fellow at the US Institute of Peace,
Amatzia Baram, documented in this Spring's issue of "Middle East
Journal" how the Government of Iraq denies U.N. relief agencies
accurate and reliable statistics on the true conditions inside Iraq.
No reporter should uncritically accept as true any Iraqi statistics,
based on the research and data shown in this article. Iraqi human
rights and opposition groups frequently must work hard and take risks
to get the truth out of Iraq, and I am honored to be here with some of
their representatives today.
Saddam Hussein refused every year to allow the former U.N. Special
Human Rights Rapporteur for Iraq, Max van der Stoel, to visit Iraq to
find out the truth about Iraqi human rights abuses. The new
rapporteur, Andreas Mavrommatis of Cyprus, has not been allowed into
Iraq, either. Efforts to keep U.N. arms inspectors from the truth
about Saddam's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are so
well-known I will not repeat them, except to say there were many "full
and final disclosures." Russian diplomat Yuli M. Voronstov was this
year denied entry to find out the true fate of more than 600 missing
Kuwaitis taken captive by Iraq during the occupation of Kuwait and,
thus far, never returned to their families. Their fate is known up
until the time they were taken to a prison in Basrah, southern Iraq,
and they have never been heard from since. It is true that, a few
years ago, Iraq admitted it had been holding hundreds of Iranian
prisoners of war more than 10 years after the end of the Iran-Iraq
War. When the truth came out, Iraq was forced to release its
prisoners.
All this effort to conceal the truth about what is going on inside
Iraq today is hard to explain without understanding the context of
Saddam Hussein's 20-year record of crimes against humanity by the
Iraqi regime. We know from those who have been in Saddam's inner
office that he admires Josef Stalin, and he has clearly tried to
emulate Stalin's methods of brutality, terror, covering up the truth,
and using propaganda to project a different image. An awareness of the
criminal character of Saddam Hussein's regime puts in context his
current propaganda campaign. No wonder Saddam Hussein is concerned
about efforts to establish an international tribunal that would
document the truth of his 20 years of crimes against humanity,
genocide and war crimes. It would end international support for Saddam
Hussein's campaign to gain personal control of billions of dollars of
Iraqi oil revenues that is now dedicated to the Iraqi people through
the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. Make no mistake -- the United States
is committed to finding ways of improving conditions for the Iraqi
people, but we cannot foresee the suspension of U.N. sanctions except
through full compliance with the Security Council's resolutions that
were adopted precisely as a result of Saddam Hussein's crimes against
humanity, genocide, and war crimes against the peoples of Iraq and
Iraq's neighbors.
The United States has held discussions in the last year with a number
of governments and non-governmental organizations who share the desire
for an international tribunal to indict Saddam Hussein and his top
aides for their crimes. We have also compiled a collection of
arguments from those who don't want to support a tribunal. As you
would expect, none of them withstands scrutiny. Let me share some of
the answers we have given and let you be the judge.
-- Until recently, some people said there was no reason to bring
Saddam to justice since most of his crimes took place long ago,
starting right after he seized absolute power in 1979. That argument
doesn't work any more, since other recent efforts for justice in
Europe and Asia have reached back prior to 1979, when Saddam Hussein
murdered his way to the presidency of Iraq. The worst abuses of the
Pinochet era took place in 1973-1979, and the crimes against humanity
of the Khmer Rouge era took place in 1975-1979. As Secretary Albright
has long made clear, there is no statute of limitations for genocide
or crimes against humanity.
-- Some have said that the Security Council should not establish
another ad hoc international tribunal and instead wait for the
International Criminal Court (ICC) to come into force. The ICC Treaty
will not come into force for at least two more years, and it will not
have jurisdiction over crimes committed before the Treaty comes into
force. Therefore, the ICC will be not able to hold Saddam Hussein and
his associates accountable for between a hundred thousand and a
quarter of a million civilian deaths, nor for the tortures, rapes,
lootings and other crimes against humanity and war crimes of the past,
nor for crimes against humanity that are still going on inside Iraq
today, Nor, under Article 12 of the Treaty, is the ICC going to be
able to indict Saddam for crimes he commits in the future inside Iraq
unless the Security Council acts to establish the court's jurisdiction
over his crimes, which we, and others, say should happen right now.
-- Our pursuit of justice in Iraq is entirely consistent with the
objectives of International Criminal Court, objectives we have long
supported. Governments that support international justice need to work
together in real time on the most demanding issues of accountability
of this era -- in places like the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra
Leone, Cambodia -- and Iraq. It would be ironic indeed if the
generation of leaders who drafted the ICC Treaty turned their backs on
the some of the most egregious crimes of our time. The ICC will not
succeed if its supporters are not willing to demand accountability for
war criminals like Saddam Hussein.
-- Finally, there used to be those who said that the threat of
indictment of officials around Saddam Hussein would deter them from
leading a coup against him. The nature of the Iraqi regime -- both in
fact and in law -- is that Saddam Hussein and a very small group of
men around him have wielded absolute power. They are not likely to be
the ones to lead an uprising against Saddam. They deserve to be the
ones held responsible for the regime's crimes against humanity,
genocide and war crimes. When Saddam passes from the scene -- and this
will happen sooner or later -- there will need to be a process of
truth and reconciliation for the bulk of Iraqi society if it is to
make peace with itself. We owe it to the victims of 20 years of the
crimes of this regime to hold accountable those at the top who wielded
absolute power and ruined the lives of millions of Iraqis.
-- The last argument that never gets made, at least publicly, is money
-- that there is profit in doing business with the Baghdad regime
despite its criminal character. Countries that have ratified the ICC
treaty have already expressed, explicitly or implicitly, their policy
decision that economic grounds are insufficient to let a war criminal
off the book. We believe there is much more to gain for international
peace and security from pursuing international justice against Saddam
Hussein than would ever be possible to gain for private profit from
pursuing international commerce with Saddam Hussein. Moreover, in the
end, Saddam Hussein's criminal regime will go. At that time, the Iraqi
people will look up, around them, and see who stood up for justice for
the victims of Saddam. Hussein's criminal regime, and who opposed
efforts to bring the regime to justice, It is in everyone's long-term
interests -- economic, political, and moral -- to side with justice
for the peoples of Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and elsewhere.
IV. Conclusion
In conclusion, let me say this, Iraq is a proud nation. Its heritage
goes back to the days of Hammurabi the lawgiver and the four schools
of Islamic law of the Abbasid Caliphate [Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and
Hanbali], and the great Shi'ite schools of Islamic theology that
Saddam Hussein has sought to destroy. Saddam tries to liken himself to
the great Nebuchadnezzar II, when it is more likely history will judge
him as a latter-day Hulagu Khan, the Mongol conqueror who left Iraq a
legacy of death, devastation and misrule. Mongol conquerors built a
pyramid of the skulls of their victims, Saddam Hussein used helmets of
Iranian soldiers killed during the Iran-Iraq War. The time has come
for Saddam Hussein and his top associates to be held accountable for
their 20 years of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. I
hope you will join with me these next few months in advancing the
cause of justice in Iraq
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