Excerpts of Testimony of Ahmad Chalabi, President of the Executive Council, Iraqi National Congress

Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Near Eastern and South Asian Subcommittee

2 March 1998

I am here as an elected representative of the Iraqi people, and in their name I am proud to
speak
with you today. I think that it is important that the appeal of the Iraqi people for freedom be
heard by the American people, whom you represent.

For too long, U.S.-Iraq policy has been decided by a small group of so-called experts who
view
the Iraqi people as incapable of self-government, as a people who require a brutal dictatorship to
live and work together. Such a view is racist. It runs counter to 7,000 years of Iraqi history and
to the universality of the principles of liberty and democracy central to United States foreign
policy.

The Problem: Saddam

I am here today to appeal to the larger America, the America that believes in liberty and
justice for
all …. Iraq is the most strategically important country in the Middle East. It has a central
geographical position, a talented and industrious population, abundant farmland and water, and
lakes and lakes of oil. Iraq has the largest oil reserves of any nation on Earth. Iraq has so much
oil that most of the country is still unexplored. This enormous wealth, this enormous potential is
the birthright of the Iraqi people. It has been stolen from them by a tyrant.

You must realize that the Iraqi people are Saddam’s first victims. Saddam’s gang of thugs
took
absolute power in 1968. Since that time, the Iraqi people have been driven into slavery, murdered
by the hundreds of thousands, and shackled to a rapacious war machine responsible for the deaths
of millions. And if the appeasement recently negotiated by the United Nations secretary-general
now being debated in the United Nations Security Council is allowed to stand, it is the Iraqi
people who will be the first to suffer another slaughter.

Kofi Annan went to Baghdad to negotiate with Saddam Hussein. Kofi Annan is proud of the
fact.
Kofi Annan said that the agreement he negotiated was different because he negotiated with
President Saddam Hussein, himself. Kofi Annan praised Saddam as a decisive man, as a man he
could do business with, as a man whose concern was for his people.

Saddam is a mass murderer who is personally responsible for the genocidal slaughter of at
least
200,000 Iraqi Kurds; two hundred and fifty-thousand other Iraqis — Arabs, in this case; and tens
of thousands of Iraqi dissidents in the last 10 years. Max van der Stoel, the U.N. Special
Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iraq, has documented the repression of Iraq as the gravest
violation of human rights since the Second World War. I might add that the secretary-general has
ignored last year’s diplomatically inconvenient conclusions of the United Nations Commission on
Human Rights at the United Nations General Assembly deploring Saddam’s atrocities.

The Iraqi people cannot ignore this horror. They must live with it every minute of their lives.
I
have fought Saddam from the very first days of his terror. I have lost family members, thousands
of friends and associates, and millions of countrymen to Saddam’s death machine. I am
sickened
to see the secretary-general of the United Nations smile and joke and shake hands with this
despot. I am only comforted by the fact that the civilized world, and the American people,
will not stand for it. The United States House of Representatives and the United States
Secretary of State have — and soon, I hope, the United States Senate will — call for Saddam’s
indictment on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The evil of
Saddam
must be confronted with the strong arm of justice, not with the limp handshake of
appeasement.

To make matters even worse, the Secretary General also found it expedient to criticize
UNSCOM, the United Nations Special Commission charged with disarming Saddam’s nuclear,
chemical, biological and missile programs. Kofi Annan called Captain Scott Ritter and the
UNSCOM inspectors “cowboys” and implied that they should respect Saddam’s sovereignty. I
know from my own sources in Baghdad that Scott Ritter is an American hero
…. Scott Ritter is
no “cowboy”; he is a former United States Marine who fought against Saddam in the Gulf War
and who has been working selflessly for the United Nations to make Saddam honor the terms of
the cease-fire ever since. Rather than attack him, the Secretary General would do well to honor
him. He is one of the best warriors the international community has produced in its quest to
control Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.

…Iraq will never be free of weapons of mass destruction as long as Saddam is in
power.
Iraq will never be at peace with its neighbors as long as Saddam’s war machine is in
place.
United Nations diplomats treat Saddam as Iraq’s legitimate government; they cannot be expected
to work for his removal from power. That is the work of the Iraqi people. And I say to
you in
the name of the Iraqi people: Saddam is the problem; he can never be part of any
solution.

The Iraqi people do not support Saddam Hussein. They never have and they never
will.
God knows they do not support Saddam’s insane acquisition and use of weapons of mass
destruction. The Iraqi people know full well the horror of chemical and biological weapons.
Saddam has gassed both the Iraqi Kurds and the Iraqi Arabs, killing tens of thousands of them.
Thousands more Iraqi political prisoners have been subjected to torture and experiments with
chemical and biological toxins. Saddam’s chemical and biological warfare industry enslaves tens
of thousands of Iraqis who are virtually unprotected from their poisonous production. All of Iraq
is threatened with annihilation if Saddam is ever able to launch the war of Middle Eastern
domination he intends.

What Needs to Be Done

The Iraqi National Congress is committed to a future Iraq without weapons of mass
destruction; to a future Iraq which renounces aggression as state policy; and to a future
Iraq at peace with all its neighbors. The Iraqi National Congress asks your help in
removing
the threat of Saddam’s doomsday weapons from our people, from the region, and from the world.
Helping the Iraqi people regain their country is the only solution. Saddam cannot be trusted.
Saddam cannot be negotiated with. Saddam has proven that he will starve and murder every Iraqi
and every person with the misfortune to fall under his control, until he has enough horror
weapons to dominate the Middle East and threaten the world. It is time to help the Iraqi people
remove Saddam from power.

…The Iraqi people need to be supported as they regain their country and reestablish Iraq as a
productive member of the international community …. [A]n Iraqi political program,
consonant
with both United States and Iraqi interests, is already in place in the Iraqi National
Congress. The Iraqi National Congress was founded in 1992, with democratic
conferences of
our Iraqi political forces in Vienna, Austria; and Salahuddin, Iraq. The Salahuddin
conference
of October 1992 was a defining moment in Iraqi politics. Parties from all over the country
and all political strands came together on Iraqi soil and agreed to a future Iraqi
representative government organized as a parliamentary democracy.

United States political support, particularly the support of the United States Congress, was
critical
in providing the hope of a free Iraq that was crucial in forging this consensus. From mid-1988
until March of 1991, there was an order issued by the Secretary of State that banned any member
of the State Department from even meeting the Iraqi opposition. Pressure from Congress opened
the door and led to the fruitful political discussion and past cooperation between the United States
government and the Iraqi National Congress. Cooperation can begin again, perhaps with
another meeting of the Iraqi National Congress National Assembly in Washington, D.C.,
to
encompass the whole opposition and to elect a new leadership for the INC. With the United
States’s political support and the United States’s military protection, the Iraqi National Congress
was able to build headquarters and bases inside Iraq, establish and program television and radio
stations, organize medical clinics, and conduct intelligence and military operations against
Saddam. These activities were undertaken by Iraqis on Iraqi territory, using primarily Iraqi
resources.

***

…It is important to realize that the strength of the Iraqi National Congress, as is the case with
all
democratic movements, is in the people of the country. Through INC broadcasts and
INC
networks and INC diplomacy, the INC is well-known inside Iraq and has a large but
unorganized following. I offer you an example with which you and your constituents
might be
familiar. During the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the Iraqi Olympic flag-bearer defected to the Iraqi
National Congress. Before his defection, he had never spoken to an INC member. And yet from
INC radio, he was familiar enough with the INC program for a democratic Iraq that within hours,
he was speaking for the INC on U.S. and international network television. The INC
popular
base is its greatest strength and Saddam’s greatest weakness.

And it is for this reason that I am here to ask for overt U.S. support, not
covert U.S. action.
Saddam Hussein can only be removed by a popular insurgency; he is coup-proof.

The Iraqi National Congress does not support the program now being attributed to the United
States Central Intelligence Agency, to use mercenary agents to conduct sabotage against the Iraqi
people’s infrastructure. The Iraqi National Congress rejects the Central Intelligence Agency’s
characterization of a small group of ex-army officers as a major Iraqi opposition party. The INC
deplores recent CIA-sponsored broadcasts supporting military rule in Iraq. It is not up to the CIA
to determine Iraq’s leadership; it is up to the Iraqi people …. Open U.S. support for the Iraqi
National Congress and the process of Iraqi democratic reconstruction is the best guarantee of
U.S. interests.

What should replace Saddam is a representative Iraqi government …. We look to the
United States to provide the political, logistical, and military help the INC needs to
confront and replace Saddam. I want to emphasize that the INC does not request any U.S.
occupying force. The Iraqi people are in Iraq; they already occupy Iraq. What is needed is
not a U.S. army of occupation, but an Iraqi army of liberation. Even so, United States
leadership is required.

…The United States must lead. The United States cannot hide behind the fictions of United
Nations enforcements or the will of the international coalition. It was the U.S. force that
devastated Iraq in 1991. It is U.S. force that is on war alert in the Gulf now. Saddam knows he’s
at war with the United States, and I’m sure that the United States servicemen and -women
deployed in the Gulf know this also.

Yet the Iraqi people do not resent this force; they embrace it. This week I was talking to
Colonel
Ken Breyer, now in the Pentagon Office of Low Intensity Conflict, who recounted his experience
with tens of thousands of Iraqi POWs after the cease-fire. To a man, he said, their complaint was
not that the United States had fought Saddam, but that the United States had not helped the Iraqi
people remove Saddam from power.

Conclusion

The Iraqi National Congress believes that the proper response to Saddam Hussein’s
continued violation of the Gulf War cease-fire, to his continued criminal repression of the
Iraqi people, and to his ongoing campaign of international terror is an open United States
commitment to overthrowing Saddam and to the establishment of a representative Iraqi
government.

Immediate actions include: a United States declaration that Saddam is in material
breach of
United Security Council Resolution 687, the Gulf cease-fire resolution; a United States
declaration of military exclusion zones in which Saddam’s armored forces and artillery
would
not be allowed to operate south of the 31st Parallel, north of the 35th Parallel, and west of the
Euphrates River. In these areas the United States would lift sanctions and assist the INC
in
establishing institutions for humanitarian relief of the liberated population, the
maintenance of law and order, and the provision of basic services leading to the
establishment of effective provisional government. This provisional government would
commit to restore the independence, unity, and territorial integrity of Iraq.

The Iraqi National Congress has the operational experience to make such a plan work …. The
INC knows that given any chance of success, millions of Iraqis are willing to risk their lives to
fight Saddam. In March 1991, only seven years ago, 70 percent of the Iraqi population,
over
15 million people, were in open revolt against Saddam. They will rise again.

Give the Iraqi National Congress a base, protect it from Saddam’s tanks. Give us the
temporary
support we need to feed and house and care for the liberated population, and we will give
you a free Iraq, an Iraq free of weapons of mass destruction and a free market Iraq. Best
of all, the INC will do all this for free. The U.S. commitment to the security of the Gulf
is
sufficient. The maintenance of the no-fly zones and the air interdiction of Saddam’s armor by
U.S. forces, assumed in the INC plan, is virtually in place. The funds for humanitarian, logistical
and military assistance requested by the INC for the provisional government can be secured by
Iraq’s frozen assets, which are the property of the Iraqi people. Once established in liberated
areas, the wealth of the Iraqi people can be used for their salvation. All the Iraqi National
Congress and the Iraqi people ask is a chance to free their country.

— End of Excerpts —