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Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

26 March 2003

Powell Tells Congress War in Iraq is About Removing Saddam Hussein

(The oil of Iraq is for the people of Iraq, he says) (420)
By Merle D. Kellerhals, Jr.
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- Military hostilities in Iraq are not about conquering
the Iraqi people, but about putting down the dictatorial regime of
Saddam Hussein that for all these years has been developing and using
weapons of mass destruction against its neighbors and its own people,
says Secretary of State Colin Powell.
"It's about using the wealth of Iraq -- its oil -- to benefit its
people," Powell said March 26 during a U.S. House Appropriations
subcommittee hearing on the State Department's fiscal year (FY) 2004
$28.5 billion budget. "It's about freeing people from a dictator who
has massacred them, who has kept them under the worst kind of
subjugation, who has tortured them, who has been guilty of the worst
sorts of crimes, who has invaded his neighbors."
Once this regime is removed, Powell said, it will be finally possible
to totally remove Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program from its
infrastructure.
"We can put in place a government that will be responsive to its
people, that will represent its people, and we can use the wealth of
Iraq -- channeled through their new government with their new
government having the responsibility for the use of that wealth," he
said.
Powell appeared before the House Appropriations subcommittee
responsible for the department's annual budget. He told the
subcommittee that a portion of President Bush's $74.7 billion fiscal
2003 supplemental budget request to help pay the cost of military
operations in Iraq will also go to the State Department to help pay
for commitments to coalition partners, Iraqi relief and
reconstruction, the global war on terrorism, and for unanticipated
emergencies. The State Department would receive approximately $7.8
billion, he said.
The vast oil resources of Iraq, which has the second largest known oil
reserves in the world, will be used to help pay for the construction
of schools and vital country infrastructure, and to fund the
operations of the country, he said.
"The oil of Iraq belongs to the people of Iraq," Powell testified.
Plans are being developed to determine how best to protect that asset
so it can be used to the best advantage of the Iraqi people, he said.
"It's the source of revenue to run the country," he said. "It would be
inappropriate to start using it, say, to pay for the weapons or to pay
for the cost of the war itself."
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International
Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site:
http://usinfo.state.gov)



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