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Handwritten letter from President Saddam Hussein to the American people.
7 July 2006.
In the name of God, the Merciful,
the Mercy-giving.
“And among the Believers are men who are true to that which they pledged
to God. Some of them have fulfilled their pledge by death and some of
them still are waiting and they have not altered in the least. That God
may reward the true men for their truth and punish the hypocrites if He
will, or relent towards them, for God is forgiving, merciful. And God
repulsed the infidels for their wrath. They gained no good. God
averted their attack from the Believers. God is strong, mighty.” [Qur’an
33:23-25].
To the American people:
Peace upon those who believe in peace and desire it, and the mercy of
God and His blessings.
I
address you in this letter from the place of my confinement, as my
attempt on the basis of my moral, human, and constitutional
responsibility so that no one among you might say that no one came to us
with a message of peace after the war began, refuting the arguments for
it and desiring peace for you and for our upright, loyal, heroic
people. And as I say this, I do no know whether my brothers and
comrades who are leading the Resistance outside the prison have come to
you with a letter before or not. That is because the “democracy” of
your leaders has prevented me since my arrest and until now from getting
newspapers and magazines or hearing radio and television and has
isolated me from the world and has isolated the world from me so that I
might not hear or see anything from outside my place of confinement.
Is
this the true face of democracy and human rights that they advocate
outside America!? Or have your rulers lied about it? This includes the
killing of people in prisons and jails, some of them by means of the
pistols of the American investigators. Or has all of this along with
other details that would turn an attentive person’s hair white been
concealed from you by your officials such that you do not know the
truth!?
Anyway, I address you with this letter of mine in the hope that it will
reach you and that you will hear it or read it. And on the basis of my
responsibility to bring the facts before people, whatever their color or
nationality, for that is our duty to them, just as they have a duty to
us not to accept evil.
I
address you today as my attorney the eminent lawyer and Professor Ramsey
Clark has asked that I write this letter of mine to you. Professor
Ramsey has presented an excellent example of a humanitarian in his
person and in his colleague Professor Curtis Dobler, both of whom left a
positive personal impression on me. On this occasion I wish to salute
their courage as they have volunteered for the task although they know
the dangers that surround them in carrying out their duty, in particular
after criminals have killed four of the defense attorneys.
People of America, it still seems to me that the officials in your
government are still lying to you and are not giving you true
explanations of the reasons that led them to embark on their aggression
against Iraq. In what they have said about the reasons they have
deceived, from the starting point, not only the international community,
and in particular the European Community but also the peoples of America
themselves, knowing beforehand that the facts were contrary to what they
were declaring. Untrue is what they said, after their lies were
exposed, about having been deceived by their intelligence agencies and
by the stooges that they brought along to serve as their puppets in
Iraq, just as old imperialism and the old empires of the 19th
and 20th centuries used to do. What we are saying is based
on many facts, the major ones being as follows:
1.
The inspection teams – that came to Iraq in the name of the United
Nations and carried out searches even of some private houses as well as
government departments, presidential palaces and government documents –
those teams knew that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction because
most of the leading members in those teams were Americans and British
and in addition they had spies and volunteers of other nationalities.
Those teams searched Iraq piece by piece from one end to the other and
never found any information contrary to what they and others were told
by Iraqi government representatives. The inspections lasted for more
than seven years. And in addition to the teams that traveled by car and
on foot, they used spy planes, helicopters, and satellites in space.
The American and English officials thought that this was their historic
chance to strike Iraq and destroy its legitimate aspirations and the
lofty cultural and scientific achievements made in the course of 35
years, making use of the information gathered by their spies in the
inspection teams and making use of the so-called war on terror after the
11 September incident that struck America. They shuffled the cards to
bring up the goals that they had already decided upon earlier, and these
were not the goals that they publicly announced at the starting line.
It
was their assessment that the unjust embargo had not destroyed Iraq’s
will nor halted its legitimate aspirations to develop economically,
culturally, scientifically, and as a civilization in the conditions of a
new independence. They believed that Iraq had come close at that time
to breaking the economic embargo as the result of the cooperation of
those who cooperated with Iraq on the basis of mutual benefit and
fraternal national feelings as far as the Arabs were concerned. The
officials in your country thought that this was their chance to impose
their will on the world by means of their control of the Middle East’s
oil and its production and marketing in new ways and for new goals –
those about which we spoke in and before the year 2003 – in addition to
attaining one of their Zionist goals and winning support in the
election. Iran and its lackeys played a dirty role in making aggression
appear attractive and in facilitating its implementation.
2.
The American officials did not withdraw from Iraq after they became hard
pressed, but declared that the facts were contrary to what they had
claimed before the invasion that took place in March and April of the
year 2003. If they had been truthful when they claimed that they had
been deceived as a result of the information they had been given and
which they used as the cover for their invasion, and which they declared
at the time was sufficient justification for the invasion – declaring at
the time that it involved things that they said affected the security of
the United States – then they would have withdrawn from Iraq after
discovering that that information had been false. They would have
apologized to the heroic Iraqi people, to the American people and to the
people of the world for what they had done.
None of the Americans asked their government before the war how Iraq, a
country that had still not emerged from backwardness, could threaten the
security of a country like America across the Atlantic. And for that
matter why would Iraq want to threaten America, which at that time had
not violated the territory of Iraq. If the American officials wanted to
promote the claim that Iraq’s threat was precisely involved in the
opposing stances taken by Iraq and America over the Zionist occupation
of the land of Palestine and other Arab land, it could be said that Iraq
is not the only state that takes an opposing stance to that of America
in regards to the issue, whether that be Arab states or other states in
the world. Furthermore, who has authorized America to make the
countries of the world tailor their policies to America’s measurements,
and if they don’t oblige, then war should be waged against them? How
can one understand America’s call for democracy if it does not permit a
difference of opinion even in issues of a regional character, to say
nothing of international ones?
Another lie was the claim of American officials that Iraq had links to
what they called terrorism, although British Prime Minister Blair
declared that Iraq does not have any ties to so-called terrorism and had
no internationally prohibited weapons, forcing Bush to declare the same
thing. Despite that, none of the important American personalities asked
President Bush on what sort of rational analysis or what sort of
realistic information this claim rested. Do you know, esteemed ladies
and gentlemen, why they didn’t ask? Because some of your prominent
personalities are directed in what they do by hidden forces that
distorted the image you received of Iraq’s positions. They had been
laying the groundwork for years to facilitate aggression from the
start. Therefore no one asked the American officials, for example, why
no Iraqi took part in the events of 11 September!? And if the
participation of individuals in the attack on American targets isn’t to
be taken as proof of the involvement of any country in those events,
then how do you accuse a state like Iraq, the features of whose
political system are known, of so-called relations with terror? How can
you consider this charge to be one of only two on the basis of which
aggression was launched against the people of Iraq, destroying their
property and achievements and bringing their lives under daily and
direct threat?
Do
you know, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, that I asked one of the
American officials who talked with me perhaps two weeks after my arrest,
just what was it that you based those false charges on? He said that as
far as the weapons of mass destruction were concerned, “we didn’t have
anything to confirm what you were saying.” And as for the links to
terrorism, he said, because you, Saddam Hussein, did not send a letter
of condolence to President Bush after the incident [of 11 September].
I
smiled bitterly and told him: as regards your claim that you didn’t have
confirmation of our statements, it seems that your officials lie and
imagine that officials in countries around the world do not tell the
truth, or that many of those who have relations with you in fact do not
tell you the truth, neither when they oppose your policies nor when they
agree with them. This is a dangerous matter, not only for the countries
of the world but because they then pose a danger for America as well, if
nobody in the world will tell America: ‘this is a mistake’ and ‘this is
unacceptable’! And at that time when American planes were striking
targets in Iraq and destroying public and private property, killing
Iraqi citizens including women and children for no reason and imposing
on Iraq their unjust embargo, prohibiting Iraq from importing even
pencils for children to use in primary schools, what exactly is it that
should obligate Saddam Hussein to send a telegram of condolences to the
president of the state whose officials have committed all those crimes,
unless it be out of hypocrisy and weakness? But because I am neither a
hypocrite nor a weakling I didn’t send Bush a telegram of condolence.
But I did agree on the telegram sent containing condolences in the name
of the government of Iraq and sent by Comrade Tariq Aziz, the Deputy
Prime Minister, to our friend Ramsey Clark and through him to the
stricken families.
Are the great states so deluded as to imagine that whoever does not send
a letter of condolence deserves that war should be waged against him,
his country, and his people!? Here you see how the American officials
used even your own blood to promote their reckless, aggressive policy.
Is this the kind of morality that people should have? Or men? Or
officials? There is nothing graver than for disasters to ravage people
who have been stricken by delusions, committed wrongs, and wantonly
despised the roles of others. The worst disease of the American
officials who involved the Americans in war against Iraq is this.
3.
After I was arrested they made vain attempts to use intimidation and
threats against me. One of their generals conveyed that intimidation
and host threats and tried to bargain with me, promising to let me live
if I agreed to read in my own voice and sign a prepared announcement
that was shown to me. That stupid announcement called on the people of
Iraq and the courageous Resistance to lay down arms. They said that if
I refused, my fate would be that I would be shot just like Mussolini, as
my interlocutor put it. But, as you know me and would expect of me, I
disdainfully refused, not even touching that dirty document with my hand
and sullying myself with it. I told them if I were given the chance to
address my people, I would call them to more resistance.
Seven days later, to reinforce themselves, they sent a group to talk
with me. They said they were from an American University and that they
wanted to engage me in a broad discussion. I agreed and I confirmed to
them that Iraq didn’t have any of the things the American officials
claimed and I advised them [the US] to leave Iraq quickly and apologize
to the people, warning them that they were going to get what they now
are facing and what they are now embroiled in – in fact, the fate I
expect for them is worse than what they are facing now – and they will
never have an adequate chance to pull their arms and equipment out of
Iraq if the two halves of Iraq engulf them, and they will engulf them,
God willing, because our people are deeply rooted and conscious. They
know that our liberation can be clean and complete only with their
unity, and that tolerance must be the basis for the orientations of our
people within their ranks, and that wounds must be bound up, not ripped
open.
I
say, I told them all that at that time but they didn’t change their
methods; they didn’t replace the keys of falsehood, and they are still
knocking on the doors of wrong, failing to try the door of legitimacy,
even though they now know. In this connection, attached to this letter
are some verses from a long ode; a selection of 56 verses. [Not
translated here.]
4.
It is neither reasonable nor convincing that a country like America to
which the doors of the intelligence agencies in the east and most of the
countries of the west have been opened did not know the truth and could
not know the truth. Although I am convinced and believe that many
countries in the world have an interest in war or wars, she [the United
States] does not have an interest in war even though she might believe
she does. The contrary, in fact, is the case.
America is a big country on the other side of the Atlantic. It has
developed a unique unparalleled power such that I think some people
there imagine that it is on its way to attaining the crown of the world
all for itself as a world empire. Have they not learned a lesson from
their war in Viet Nam? The west used to promote the idea that world
Communism and the Soviet bloc threatened their interests and also the
security of the entire west. But despite that promotion, this was
nothing but a flimsy cover. Nevertheless, America used it and wrapped
itself in it until the heroic Vietnamese people expelled them by force.
As
to their invasion of Iraq, it came in a situation that made the first
step easy from the standpoint of the reaction of the international
community because of the international balance of forces. But it came
in a situation that might make it more costly that its war in Viet Nam.
That is because when America was expelled from Viet Nam it did not lose
its standing, or we might say it only lost a small part of its
standing. But when it is expelled and routed from Iraq, which has no
great power to support it directly, it will lose the fundamental basis
of its standing.
In
fact it has now already lost the foundation for that standing and its
reputation has begun to decay. It is no longer able to wield the big
stick that it formerly threatened to use. It used to accomplish more by
threatening to use force than by really using force. I will go further
and say that after its war in Iraq, that stick no longer frightens many
people and America has come to need the silence of the smallest and
simplest countries and tries to please them in order to get them to stay
quiet about America’s crimes and reckless, deviant policies.
Before, many of the world’s countries used to court the United States
and most countries in the world, all except a few, used to fear her
threats or parried them with defensive arguments. But now Mao Zedong of
fond memory is laughing in his grave because his prediction has been
fulfilled and America is a paper tiger. This is by the will of the
Living Eternal God, and by His agents on earth, the heroic Mujahideen in
glorious, virtuous, militant, jihadist Iraq. So God bless the heroic
people of Iraq and God bless the jihad and the mujahideen.
Esteemed ladies and gentlemen of the peoples of America, the time has
come to an end in which greatest and best-equipped armies could scatter
the organized formations of the opposing army and thereby bring a war to
a close. Now you see our courageous army, our heroic people, and our
Mujahideen replacing the system of organized formations with a new kind
of warfare. And when the Americans on the ground become targets in the
vicinity of the guns of the revolutionaries, who attack them as deadly
human bombs with nothing more than their bodies filled with faith in
God, American superiority is worn down over time. In fact in the near
future that superiority will become a burden whose equipment will be
difficult to withdraw. So, will America trust the voice of rationality
and logic that calls for the preservation of what still remains, or will
Satan the deceiver and the hate-filled supporters of Zionism keep
pushing the Americans until the waves swallow them and they sink to the
depths of the raging sea?
Who, after all, appointed the American government to be the world
policeman, to form the world in the mold that it likes, giving national
orders to the countries of the world?
Saddam Hussein, ladies and gentlemen, is an honorable patriot and an
honest man. He is a statesman resolute in implementing the law, just,
but benevolent. He loves his people and his nation. He is
straightforward, doesn’t double-cross or deceive. He speaks the truth
even against himself. Do tyrants like Bush like such characteristics?
If he were a person like De Gaulle or even like Reagan, perhaps he would
understand them, or at least would not abhor them. But I must say to
you that your country will discover more, esteemed ladies and
gentlemen. It has lost his reputation and his standing. Indeed the
American who used to travel around the world respected and safe and
welcomed wherever he went, is now no longer able to step outside America
without a mine detector. And the State Department issues warnings for
you constantly about what world regions are dangerous to American lives
It
was American officials and their polices themselves that have created an
atmosphere of anti-American hatred in the world by means of their
arrogant behavior, their haughty aggressive attitude, their lack of
respect for international law and the security of the world – including
the security of my Arab Nation through their support for the Zionist
entity in Palestine – and other world and human issues.
Today you are in a bad predicament with the world and nobody can rescue
you but yourselves. If you reform, you will open for the world and for
yourselves a new opportunity. But if you are heedless, that is your
decision. What you need is free and fair competition and peace in order
to have security.
The years that followed the 18th century had long gone when
they came as invaders to the Middle East to bring back memories of
things that awaken and arouse. The Middle East, and the Arab homeland
in particular, was the cradle of prophets and messengers from God. Is
the cradle of the prophets, where the prophets are buried in their
tombs, also the home of devils and their mirror images – the malicious
invaders?
We
have believed, and our faith was suited to us,
Then came the Zionists with a devil for a guide.
They stormed in on us as invaders, unjust.
The did not stop their advance nor sit still,
Their diabolical patron has prepared their dilemma.
But as for us, we have the Merciful God as Patron.
People of America, despite the crimes your government inflicted on our
people, our Arab Nation and humanity, the people of Iraq – and I mean by
that the Iraqis, not those with split loyalties who prefer to serve
foreigners rather than their own people – I say the free people of Iraq
even in their present circumstances are not thinking about their destiny
alone but about the destiny of others wherever it’s possible to create a
solution that treats a painful problem.
On
this basis I said to some Americans when I was in my prison, why don’t
you come to an agreement with the Resistance to designate a country with
a charter and power to which the Resistance can hand over those American
soldiers whom they capture, rather than executing them as currently is
said to be taking place. In fact the extent to which the Resistance is
responsible for this is unknown, but people who are equitable know that
America has not abided by international law in any of its activities in
Iraq, including the Geneva Conventions regarding prisoners and
detainees. The Resistance has no secure place in Iraq where prisoners
can be kept. So whether the Resistance is at all responsible, or
whether the responsibility lies with some other parties that have no
connection to the Resistance, the justification for it is that there is
no secure place for prisoners to be kept.
Therefore in order to fulfill humanitarian needs and to eliminate the
justification [for killing prisoners] I make this proposal to you and to
the national Resistance and to anyone concerned, and I make this with
the best of intentions. If you accept it and respect the Geneva
Conventions then the argument of those who kill rather than detain
prisoners will have vanished. But if your government does not accept
it, then it will bear the responsibility for refusing and for whatever
befalls our people and the heroic Resistance as a result of your
government’s violation of international law. This will be particularly
true if the number of American prisoners increases in the future, and we
think that it will increase. Or is it that your government can’t see
anything until it feels it?
Esteemed ladies and gentlemen, the time has come for your government to
look at all people as equals before international law regardless of the
size of the countries to which they belong. Whoever violates
international law in his policies and the behavior of his army, he alone
must bear the consequences for that policy. And if his policies are not
in accordance with the letter of international law, he has no right to
call others to protect his rights in accordance with that law.
Esteemed ladies and gentlemen, whoever missed his or her chance to take
action to try to prevent the war still has a chance to act to end it and
bring back peace and freedom to Iraq in accordance with the choice of
its people without foreign interference by anyone whoever that may be.
People of America, I address you not from weakness nor as a supplicant.
I, my people, my brothers, comrades, and my nation – we address you on
the basis of our moral and human responsibility. I tell you that
officials whom you know, and first among them your President, lied to
you and deceived you and tricked you using the media that portrayed Iraq
to you as incorrigible, and Saddam Hussein as a hateful dictator, and
that his people hate him and that his people are just waiting for their
chance to get at him. Some of them just wallowed in lying falsehood to
the point that they openly declared that the Iraqis would meet the
invading armies with roses and celebration.
I
know that lots of people don’t do a lot of analysis; they don’t have the
time or the ability or the desire to do careful assessments when
presented with falsified news so as to uncover the truth. The American
peoples had no chance to inquire, for example: why, if the people of
Iraq hate Saddam Hussein, how he managed to defeat the Iran of Khomeini
after eight years in the aggressive war that Iran sought to impose on us
under the slogan of exporting the revolution beginning with Iraq?
People of America, the victory over Khomeini’s Iran was not due to the
short length of the war, but came only after eight years of grinding
warfare in which tens of thousands fell and hundreds of thousands on the
Iranian side.
Then if Saddam Hussein were a dictator, why did he establish a
parliament with elections for the first time in the year 1980 during
wartime, when there had been no parliament in Iraq since 1958? If he
and his government were dictators, how could he visit schools,
universities, towns, and villages and spend the night with the people
wherever the sun went down? How could he travel around and lead at the
battle front at night and during the day even in the trenches in the
front lines on the battlefield among the Muslim soldiers!?
Yes, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, your government deceived you, and
you, or rather most of you, had no chance to inquire of themselves or of
others in order to discover the truth because the Zionists in the lobby
who advocated the war together with some of the centers of power were
deceiving you and tricking you, hiding from your eyes the real truth,
exchanging the facts for falsified and slanted information. Last but
not least in this regard, if Saddam Hussein were a dictator hated and
despised by his people, how is it that his people endured him and why
was he chosen President by referendum?
People of America, the misfortunes that have afflicted you and afflicted
our Arab Nation and within it our heroic Iraqi people – including the
breakdown of America’s standing and reputation – were only caused by the
reckless behavior of your government and by pressure from Zionism and
power centers that influenced the government to commit those crimes and
scandalous actions for specific ends that have nothing to do with the
interest of the American peoples. The massacres and blood that now flows
in the streets and countryside of Iraq in torrents – the responsibility
for that falls on America before all others. You know, or rather you
have now come to learn, that neither the stooges whom the American
forces brought in on board their aircraft or as shamefaced presents
aboard their tanks, nor Iran, which pushed and still pushes forward
those who support it and whom they support, would be able to cause the
bloodshed, or the destruction of the honor, and property of our people
and our state had not America undertaken the aggression and invasion and
issued the orders. It is still issuing orders in the Green Zone.
Therefore America bears the burden of all those crimes and outrages. So,
will you put an end to what is going on by using the methods of direct
truth without evasion and digression? Or will you invite the machine of
death to continue to eat away at the flesh of Iraqis and the flesh of
Americans without doing anything to resolve this?
It
is your historical responsibility, esteemed ladies and gentlemen. If
you reform, you could save what remains of the standing and reputation
of America and its legitimate interests. If you do nothing, you will be
keeping silent over something evil. “God grant us patient perseverance
and let us die as Muslims.” [Qur’an, 7:126]
People of America, the wars that your government promotes in the world –
one of them being the war in Iraq – with input from certain centers of
power – which you know better than we – are not in the interests of the
American people. You know better than many how you paid in blood so
that you might liberate yourselves from British colonialism and after
that how the United States of America was unified and what rivers of
blood were shed in order for that to come about. So, esteemed ladies
and gentlemen, how do you accept this interference that abases America
before it abases Iraq? How can you accept not only the invasion but
becoming mired in the internal affairs of Iraq? You know that Iraq is a
land of prophets, messengers, and righteous figures. You know that
Baghdad is the fourth holiest city in the Arab homeland – after Mecca,
al-Madinah, and Jerusalem – in the sight of all of the Islamic world and
all of our Arab Nation. How can one imagine that Iraq could reconcile
itself to colonial rule, even if it comes, this time, under another name
and with other slogans? Save your country, esteemed ladies and
gentlemen, and leave Iraq.
Peace.
God is greatest. God is greatest.
[signed]
Saddam Hussein,
President of the Republic of Iraq and Commander in Chief of the Mujahid
Armed Forces.
7
July 2006.
[Appended to the letter was a selection of poetry by Saddam Hussein
dealing with the homeland, invasion and the struggle for liberation]
Source:
http://www.albasrah.net/ar_articles_2006/0706/sadam_o70706.htm
Italiano:
Lettera del Presidente Saddam Hussein al popolo americano. Italiano
German
http://www.albasrah.net/pages/mod.php?mod=art&lapage=../en_articles_2006/0706/german_saddam_230706.htm
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