[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 18708]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   IRANIAN PRESIDENT'S SPEECH AT U.N.

  (Ms. FOXX asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, we witnessed an Iranian dictator 
lecture us on freedom, democracy and justice. Ironically, in his own 
country, this tyrant denies his own people the basic rights of freedom 
of speech and freedom to assemble. Women are denied rights of 
inheritance, divorce and child custody, and youth of their rights of 
self-expression and economic creativity.
  While he may resent us for being powerful, he does not realize that 
the foundation of our power is rooted in the freedom of our great 
people to pursue happiness, to innovate and to speak freely. These 
rights are denied to the people of Iran, and that is why, even with the 
soaring prices of oil, more than 40 percent of the Iranians are living 
below the poverty line.
  Today in Iran dissent is brutally repressed, and terror is the 
regime's only instrument for domestic or foreign policy. This tyrant 
accuses the free world that they are denying the people of Iran their 
rights to nuclear energy, yet he forgets that the Islamic regime is 
denying the great people of Iran their God-given rights to self-respect 
and human dignity. He spoke of universal justice, yet he denies the 
Holocaust, and has threatened to wipe Israel off the map.
  This regime wrongfully portrays the war on terror as a war of 
civilizations, yet uses every opportunity to export its brutal 
ideology, violently, to the other nations. We are not at war with any 
religion or civilization. We are at war with terrorism and terrorist 
interpretations of any religion. We need to protect the civilized world 
from the threat of Islamic fascism.

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