[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 116 (Thursday, September 23, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H7446-H7448]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 ADDRESS BY HIS EXCELLENCY AYAD ALLAWI, INTERIM PRIME MINISTER OF THE 
                            REPUBLIC OF IRAQ

  Prime Minister ALLAWI. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of 
Congress, distinguished guests, it is my distinct honor and great 
privilege to speak to you today on behalf of Iraq's interim government 
and its people. It is my honor, too, to come to Congress and to thank 
this Nation and this people for making our cause your cause, our 
struggle your struggle. Before I turn to my government's plan for Iraq, 
I have three important messages for you today.
  First, we are succeeding in Iraq. It is a tough struggle, with 
setbacks, but we are succeeding. I have seen some of the images that 
are being shown here on television. They are disturbing. They focus on 
the tragedies, such as the brutal and barbaric murder of two American 
hostages this week. My thoughts and prayers go out to their families 
and to all those who lost loved ones.
  Yet, as we mourn these losses, we must not forget either the progress 
we are making or what is at stake in Iraq. We are fighting for freedom 
and democracy, ours and yours. Every day we strengthen the institutions 
that will protect our new democracy, and every day we grow in strength 
and determination to defeat the terrorists and their barbarism.
  The second message is quite simple, and one that I would like to 
deliver directly from my people to yours. Thank you, America. We Iraqis 
know that Americans have made and continue to make enormous sacrifices 
to liberate Iraq, to ensure Iraq's freedom. I have come here to thank 
you and to promise you that your sacrifices are not in vain. The 
overwhelming majority of Iraqis are grateful. They are grateful to be 
rid of Saddam Hussein and the torture and brutality he forced upon us, 
grateful for the chance to build a better future for our families, our 
country, and our region. We Iraqis are grateful to you Americans for 
your leadership and your sacrifice for our liberation and our 
opportunity to start anew.
  Third, I stand here today as the Prime Minister of a country emerging 
finally from the dark ages of violence, aggression, corruption, and 
greed. Like almost every Iraqi, I have many friends who were murdered, 
tortured, or raped by the regime of Saddam Hussein. Well over 1 million 
Iraqis were murdered or are missing. We estimate at least 300,000 are 
in mass graves which stand as monuments to the inhumanity of Saddam's 
regime. Thousands of my Kurdish brothers and sisters were gased to 
death by Saddam's chemical weapons. Millions more like me were driven 
into exile. Even in exile, as I myself can vouch, we were not safe from 
Saddam; and as we lived under tyranny at home, so our neighbors lived 
in fear of Iraq's aggression and brutality.
  Reckless wars, uses of weapons of mass destruction, needless 
slaughter of hundreds of thousands of lives and the financing and 
exporting of terrorism, these were Saddam's legacy to the world. My 
friends, today, we are better off, you are better off, and the world is 
better off without Saddam Hussein.
  Your decision to go to war in Iraq was not an easy one, but it was 
the right one. There are no words that can express the debt of 
gratitude that future generations of Iraqis will owe to Americans. It 
would have been easy to have turned your back on our plight, but this 
is not the tradition of this great country. Not for the first time in 
history you stood up with your allies for freedom and democracy.
  Ladies and gentlemen, I particularly want to thank you and the United 
States Congress for your brave work in 2002 to authorize American men 
and women to go to war to liberate my country because you realized what 
was at stake, and I want to thank you for your continued commitment 
last year when you voted to grant Iraq a generous reconstruction and 
security funding package. I met many of you last year, and I have in 
Iraq accepted your commitment to our country that you have come to see 
firsthand the challenges, and the progress we have and we are making.
  Ladies and gentlemen, the costs we know have been high. As we have 
lost our loved ones in this struggle, so have you. As we have mourned, 
so have you. This is a bitter price of combating tyranny and terror, 
our hardworking families, every American who has given his or her life 
in the cause and every American who has been wounded to help us in our 
struggle. Now we are determined to honor your confidence and sacrifice 
by putting into practice in Iraq the values of liberty and democracy 
which are so dear to you and which have triumphed over tyranny across 
our world.
  Creating a democratic, prosperous, and stable nation where 
differences are respected, human rights protected, and

[[Page H7447]]

which lives in peace with itself and its neighbors is our highest 
priority, our sternest challenge and our greatest goal. It is a vision, 
I assure you, shared by the vast majority of the Iraqi people, but 
there is the tiny minority who despise the very ideas of liberty, of 
peace, of tolerance and who will kill anyone, destroy anything to 
prevent Iraq and its people from achieving this goal.
  Among them are those who nurse fantasies of the former regime 
returning to power. There are fanatics who seek to impose a perverse 
vision of Islam in which the face of Allah cannot be seen; and there 
are terrorists, including many from outside Iraq, who seek to make our 
country the main battleground against freedom, democracy, and 
civilization.
  For the struggle in Iraq today is not about the future of Iraq only. 
It is about the worldwide war between those who want to live in peace 
and freedom and terrorists. Terrorists strike indiscriminately, at 
soldiers, at civilians, as they did so tragically on 9/11 in America 
and as they did in Spain and Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia, 
and my country and many others.
  So in Iraq, we confront both, insurgency and the global war on 
terror, with their destructive forces sometimes overlapping. These 
killers may be just a tiny fraction of our 27 million population, but 
with their guns and their suicide bombs to intimidate and to frighten 
all the people of Iraq, I can tell you today they will not succeed. For 
these murderers have no political program or cause other than to push 
our country back into tyranny. Their agenda is no different than 
terrorist forces that have struck all over the world, including in your 
own country on September 11.

  There lies the fatal weakness. The insurgency in Iraq is destructive 
but small, and it has not and will never resonate with the Iraqi 
people. The Iraqi citizens know better than anyone the horrors of 
dictatorship. This has passed. We will never revisit.
  Ladies and gentlemen, let me turn now to our plan which we have 
developed to meet the real challenges which Iraq faces today, a plan 
that we are successfully implementing with your help. The plan has 
three basic parts: building democracy, defeating the insurgency, and 
improving the quality of life of ordinary Iraqis.
  The political strategy in our plan is to isolate the terrorists from 
the communities in which they operate. We are working hard to involve 
as many people as we can in the political process to cut the ground 
from under the terrorists' feet. In troubled areas across the country, 
government representatives are meeting with local leaders. They are 
offering amnesty to those who realize there are other ways. They are 
making clear that there can be no compromise with terror; that all 
Iraqis have the opportunity to join the side of order and democracy and 
that they should use the political process to address their legitimate 
concerns and hopes.
  I am a realist. I know that terrorism cannot be defeated with 
political tools only, but we can weaken it and with local support help 
us to tackle the enemy head on to identify, isolate, and eradicate this 
cancer. Let me provide you with a couple of examples of where this 
political plan is already working.
  In Samarra, the Iraqi government has tackled the insurgents who once 
controlled the city. Following weeks of discussions between government 
officials and representatives, Coalition forces and local community 
leaders, regular access to the city has been restored. A new 
provisional council and governor have been selected and a new chief of 
police has been appointed. Hundreds of insurgents have been pushed out 
of the city by local citizens eager to get on with their lives. Today, 
in Samarra, the Iraqi forces are patrolling the city in close 
coordination with the Coalition counterparts.
  In Tall Afar, a city northwest of Baghdad, the Iraqi government has 
reversed an effort by insurgents to wrest control away from the proper 
authority. Iraqi forces put down the challenge and allowed local 
citizens to choose a new mayor and police chief. Thousands of civilians 
have returned to the city; and since their return, we have launched a 
large program of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance.
  Ladies and gentlemen, let me turn now to our military strategy. We 
plan to build and maintain security forces across Iraq. Ordinary Iraqis 
are anxious to take over entirely this role and to shoulder all the 
security weapons of our country as quickly as possible. For now, of 
course, we need the help of our American and Coalition partners, but 
the training of Iraqi security forces is moving forward briskly and 
effectively.
  The Iraqi government now commands almost 50,000 armed and combat-
ready Iraqis. By January, it will be some 145,000. And by the end of 
next year, some 250,000 Iraqis. The government has accelerated the 
development of Iraqi special forces and the establishment of a 
counterterrorist strike force to tackle specific problems caused by 
insurgencies. Our intelligence is getting better every day.
  You have seen the successful resolution of the Najaf crisis and then 
the targeted attacks against insurgents in Fallujah. These new Iraqi 
forces are rising to the challenge. They are fighting on behalf of a 
sovereign Iraqi government and their performance is improving every 
day. Working closely with the Coalition allies, they are striking their 
enemies wherever they hide, disrupting operations, destroying safe 
houses, and removing terrorist leaders.
  But in improving the everyday lives of Iraqis, tackling our economic 
problems is also essential to our plan. Across the country, there is a 
daily progress too. Oil pipelines are being repaired, basic services 
are being improved, homes are being rebuilt, schools and hospitals are 
being rebuilt, and clinics are open and reopened. There are now over 6 
million children at school, many of them attending one of the 2,500 
schools that have been renovated since liberation.
  Last week, we completed a national polio vaccination campaign, 
reaching over 90 percent of all Iraqi children. We are starting work on 
150 new health centers across the country. Millions of dollars in 
economic aid and humanitarian assistance from this country and others 
around the world are flowing into Iraq. For this, again, I want to 
thank you.
  And so today, despite the setbacks and daily outrages, we can and 
should be hopeful for the future. In Najaf and Kufa, this plan has 
already brought success. In those cities, a firebrand cleric had taken 
over Shi'a Islam's holiest sites, in defiance of the government and the 
local population. Immediately, the Iraqi government ordered the Iraqi 
armed forces into action to use military force to create conditions for 
political success.

  Together with the Coalition partners, Iraqi forces cleaned out 
insurgents from everywhere in the city, capturing hundreds and killing 
many more. At the same time, the government worked with political 
leaders and with Ayatollah Sistani to find a peaceful solution to the 
occupation of the shrine. We were successful. The shrine was preserved, 
order was restored, and Najaf and Kufa were returned to their citizens.
  Today, the foreign media have lost interest and left, but millions of 
dollars in economic aid and humanitarian assistance are now flowing 
into the cities. Ordinary citizens are once again free to live and 
worship at these places. As we move forward, the next major milestone 
will be holding of the free and fair national and local elections in 
January next.
  I know that some have speculated, even doubted, whether these stakes 
can be met. So let me be absolutely clear. Elections will occur in 
Iraq, on time in January, because Iraqis want elections on time. For 
the skeptics who do not understand the Iraqi people, they do not 
realize how decades of torture and repression fueled our desire for 
freedom. At every step of the political process today, the courage and 
resilience of the Iraqi people has proved the doubters wrong.
  They said we would miss the January deadline to pass the interim 
constitution. We proved them wrong. They warned that there could be no 
successful handover of sovereignty by the end of June. We proved them 
wrong. A sovereign Iraqi government took over control 2 days early. 
They doubted whether a national conference could be staged this August. 
We proved them wrong. Despite humiliation and violence, over 1,400 
citizens, a quarter of them women, from all regions and from

[[Page H7448]]

every ethnic religious and political grouping in Iraq, elected a 
national council. And I pledge to you today, we will prove them wrong 
again over the elections.
  Our Independent Electoral Commission is working with the United 
Nations and our security forces to make these elections a reality. In 
15 out of our 18 Iraqi provinces, we could hold elections tomorrow. 
Although this is not what we see in your media, it is a fact.
  Your government, our government, and the United Nations are all 
helping us mobilize the necessary resources to fund voter registration 
and information programs. We will establish up to 30,000 polling sites, 
130,000 election workers, and all other complex aspects of mounting a 
general election in a nation of 27 million before the end of January 
next.
  We already know that terrorist and former regime elements will do all 
they can to disrupt these elections. There would be no greater success 
for the terrorists if we delay, and no greater blow when the elections 
take place, as they will, on schedule.
  The Iraqi elections may not be perfect. They may not be the best 
elections that Iraq will ever hold. They will, no doubt, be an excuse 
for violence from those that despise liberty, as were the first 
elections in Sierra Leone, South Africa, or Indonesia. But they will 
take place, and they will be free and fair. And though they won't be 
the end of the journey towards democracy, they will be a giant step 
forward in Iraq's political evolution. They will pave the way for a 
government that reflects the world and has the confidence of the Iraqi 
people.
  Ladies and gentlemen, this is our strategy for moving Iraq steadily 
towards security and democracy and the prosperity our people crave. But 
Iraq cannot accomplish this alone. The resolve and will of the 
Coalition in supporting a free Iraq is vital to our success.
  The Iraqi government needs the help of the international community, 
the help of countries that not only believe in the Iraqi people, but 
also believe in the fight for freedom against tyranny and terrorism 
everywhere.
  Already, Iraq has many partners. The transition in Iraq from brutal 
dictatorship to freedom and democracy is not only an Iraqi endeavor, it 
is an international one. More than 30 countries are represented in Iraq 
with troops on the ground in harm's way. We Iraqis are grateful for 
each and every one of these courageous men and women.
  United Nations Resolution 1546, passed in June 2004, endorsed the 
Iraqi interim government and pledged international support for Iraq's 
upcoming elections.
  The G8, the European Union, and NATO have also issued formal 
statements of support. NATO is now helping with one of Iraq's most 
urgent needs, the training of Iraqi security forces. I am delighted by 
the new agreement to step up the pace and scope of this training.
  The United Nations has reestablished its mission in Iraq. A new 
United Nations special representative has been appointed and a team of 
United Nations personnel is now operating in Baghdad. Many more nations 
have committed to Iraq's future in the form of economic aid.
  We Iraqis are aware how international this effort truly is. But our 
opponents, the terrorists, also understand all too well that this is an 
international effort. And that is why they have targeted members of the 
Coalition.
  I know the pain this causes. I know it is difficult, but the 
Coalition must stand firm. When governments negotiate with terrorists, 
everyone in the free world suffers. When political leaders sound the 
sirens of defeatism in the face of terrorism, it only encourages more 
violence. Working together, we will defeat the killers and will do this 
by refusing to bargain about our most fundamental principles.
  Ladies and gentlemen, goodwill aside, I know that many observers 
around the world honestly wonder if we in Iraq really can restore our 
economy, be good neighbors, guarantee the democratic rule of law, and 
overcome the enemies who seek to tear us down.
  I understand why, faced with the daily headlines, there are these 
doubts. I know, too, that there will be many more setbacks and 
obstacles to overcome. But these doubters underestimate our country, 
and they risk fueling the hopes of the terrorists.
  Despite our problems, despite our recent history, no one should doubt 
that Iraq is a country of tremendous human resources and natural 
resources. Iraq is still a nation with an inspiring cultural tradition 
and an educated and civilized people. And Iraq is still a land made 
strong by its Islamic faith which teaches us tolerance, love, respect, 
and duty.
  Above all, they risk underestimating the courage and determination of 
the Iraqi people to embrace democracy, peace and freedom, for the 
dreams of our families are the same as the dreams of families here in 
America and around the world.
  There are those who want to divide our world. I appeal to you, who 
have done so much already to help us, to ensure they do not succeed. Do 
not allow them to say to Iraqis, to Arabs, to Muslims that we have only 
two models of government, brutal dictatorship or religious extremism. 
This is wrong.
  Like Americans, we Iraqis want to enjoy the fruits of liberty. Half 
of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims already enjoy democratically elected 
governments. As Prime Minister Blair said to you last year when he 
stood here, ``Any where, any time ordinary people are given the chance 
to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not 
dictatorship; and the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.''
  Do not let them convince others that the values of freedom, of 
tolerance and democracy are for you in the West but not for us. For the 
first time in our history, the Iraqi people can look forward to 
controlling our own destiny. This would not have been possible without 
the help and sacrifice of this country and its Coalition partners.
  I thank you again from the bottom of my heart. And let me tell you as 
we meet our greatest challenge by building a democratic future, we the 
people of new Iraq will remember those who have stood by us.
  As generous as you have been, we will stand with you, too. As 
stalwart as you have been, we will stand with you too. Neither tyranny 
nor terrorism has a place in our region or our world. And that is why 
we Iraqis will stand by you, America, in a war larger than either of 
our two nations: the global battle to live in freedom.
  God bless you and thank you.
  [Applause, the Members rising.]
  At 10 o'clock and 39 minutes a.m., His Excellency Ayad Allawi, 
Interim Prime Minister of the Republic of Iraq, accompanied by the 
committee of escort, retired from the Hall of the House of 
Representatives.
  The Assistant to the Sergeant at Arms escorted the invited guests 
from the Chamber in the following order:
  The members of the President's Cabinet;
  The Acting Dean of the Diplomatic Corps.

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