Saddam Hussein read the following message on Iraqi TV on Tuesday, September 18, 2001. The long and rambling text below was released by Iraqi News Agency (INA) the same day. It is an important text because it details the arguments against the United States that are prevelant among many Arab and Muslim peoples around the world.

There exist numerous spelling errors and other typographical mistakes that I have chosen to leave in place. This highlights the communication problems that exist on many levels -- a difference in language and in religious philosophies.

The Iraqi News Agency was founded in 1959 and it currently operates a web site at http://www.uruklink.net/iraqnews This letter was published in the September 18, 2001 edition.


Second open letter from Saddam Hussein to the peoples of the United States, Western peoples and governments

In the name of God, the most Compassionate, the most Merciful.

Once again, we make a return to comment on the incidence that took place in America on September 11, not for its significance as such, but for the implications surrounding it and its ramifications in terms of results on the level of the world of which we are part or rather a special case as a nation known as it is with the basis and uniqueness of its faith.

On previous occasions, we have already said that the United States needs to try wisdom after it has tried force over the last fifty years or even more. We still see that this is the most important thing the world must advise the US about if there is anybody who wants to say something or adopt an attitude towards this incidence, and who is concerned about world peace and stability. This is the case if the US and the world are convinced with the dictum and the verdict, namely that what has happened came to America from without, not within.

It is among the indisputables in the law or general norms, in dealings, in social life, and even political life, that any charge should be based on evidence if the one who makes the accusation is keen to convince others or has respect to that who listens to the accusation or is concerned with it as part of the minimal obligation of his duty. But the US has made the charge before verification, even before possessing the minimum evidence about such a charge. It has even not availed itself the opportunity to verify things, first and foremost. It started a drive of incitement and threat, or said something irresponsible by broadening the base of charges to include states, circles and individuals.

American officials set about making charges or giving the guided media, the Zionist media and its symbols within the authority and outside it a free hand in order to prepare the public mind for the charge.. What does this mean?

In a nutshell, it means that the US gives no heed to the law or rely on it. It has no concern for the counter viewpoint in line with its dangerous policy towards this issue or others. That is why we find that it takes no pain to secure evidence. Therefore, it needs no evidence to pass its verdict. It is content with saying something, passing verdicts, whether people other than the American officials are convinced or not. This means, in keeping with the policy it has pursued since 1990, that it has no regard to the viewpoint of the peoples and governments in the world in it entirety. It gives it no weight or heed despite the fact that it claims to be the democratic state (number one) in the world. The basic meaning of democracy even by the standards of its initial emergence in the Western world, that facts should lay bare before the people so that the people would assume their responsibility with full awareness. Our description of the US attitude vis-à-vis this incidence is a practical description. It means that American officials do not respect even their own people’s viewpoint, let alone the world’s. In this conduct, the American officials behave as though they are deluding the peoples, beating up the misleading media drums to do the job of mobilizing them against enemy or enemies against whom no evidence about their accountability for the action they are accused of has been furnished. All the officials there seek to achieve is to foment the hostility of the peoples of the US against whoever they assumed to be an enemy before the incidence has occurred. The tax-payer would be in a position where he is prepared to accept the blackmail trap arms manufacturers have laid for him in addition to the wrangled interests on the level of senior military and civil officials in the US.

One might argue that political verdicts do not always emanate from the same bases, procedures or courses adopted by the judiciary or criminal courts. Rather, precedents and back- grounds could suffice to arrive at a conclusion which may prove right. Even if, for the sake of argument, we go along this notion, just to keep the debate uninterrupted, we say that this could be true about the media and statements which are of media and propaganda nature, even political statements. In this instance, the error could not be necessarily fatal.

But is this permissible in war?

Once more, we say that war is not an ordinary case. Neither is it procedural in the life of nations and peoples. It is a case of unavoidable exception. Evidence based on conclusion is not enough, even if it is solid to make a charge against a given party or several parties, a state or several states to the extent that the one who makes the charge declares war at the party or parties against which charges were made and bears the responsibility of whatever harm might be sustained by his own people and the others including death, the destruction of possessions and the ensuing serious repercussions. It was only the US administration that has made the charge against a certain religion, not just a given nationality.

Let us also accept the interventions of those who contend that the US has not said this, through its senior officials and within this limitation. In fact, some officials have denied that their policy is one of making the charge against a given religion. However, we believe that the lack of evidence to make a charge, the disrespect to the golden sound rule of proper accusation which leads to the declaration of war and restricts the charge to a certain nation, states, designations and individuals, can only be understood as a premeditated charge without evidence that the action was carried out by Moslems. This is complemented by free reins for the media to float it, to prepare the public opinion to accept it or to be tuned to it so that anything opposed to it would sound like a discord.

Below is the list:

Afghanistan.. Usama bin Laden… the Islamic Qa’ida (base) party or organization… Syria.. YemenAlgeria.. IraqLebanonPalestine. The list may be curtailed or enlarged according to the pretexts of the policy of power, which has found its opportunity or the power that is looking for its opportunity to declare war. Whether the items of the list are increased or cut down, would all this mean anything but the accusation of Moslems, including, or rather in the forefront of whom Arabs? Why should this cross the minds of US officials unless they have basically assumed themselves and their policy to be enemies of Arabs and Moslems?

Could this charge mean anything other than the desire to settle old scores, all based on the assumption that their foreign policies are incompatible with the American policy, or they do not give in to the US-Zionist policy vis-à-vis the world and Palestine?

Consider statements by the US officials who say the war would be long because it is aimed at several states. Notice the blackmail or better, the terrorism they mean and which was designed to include several states and parties on a list that could be longer or shorter in accordance with a policy of sheer terrorism and blackmail, first and foremost, the illusion that Arabs and Moslems and the people of Palestine would leave the arena for the aggression of the Zionist entity and its vile imperialism.

These charges which were made without consideration and in an instantaneous way mean that the mentality of the US administration has been pre-loaded, prior to the incidence, even if we apply the norms of today and not the norms of the law. It has made assumption tantamount to conclusive verdict, namely that Islam, with Arabs in the lead of Moslems are enemies of the US. More precisely, the US on the level of its rulers has taken it as a final verdict that it is the enemy of Arabs and Moslems. In so doing, they have stored the final verdict in their minds. On this basis, they built their preparation in advance. On this basis too, they prepared (the mind) of the computer, which was programmed on this assumption, which has taken the form of a conclusive verdict. This reminds us of the free reins given to political writers, the so-called thinkers, inclupast (sic) heads of state and ministers who the Zionist policy wanted, over the last ten or fifteen years to assume that faith based on the religion of Islam with the ensuing implication is the new enemy of the US and the West and it is the backdrop against which American rulers act, with the participation of some Western rulers who came under the pressure and interpretations of Zionist thought and scheming.

Obviously, this assumption is no longer a pure assumption for the purpose of scrutiny testing and examination. It has become part and parcel of conclusive verdicts. That is why the verdict was instantaneous, without consideration or waiting for the evidence to have a basis, evidence on which the pre-supposition is based in order to be a conclusive one. The charge has not only been made against all governments in Islamic or Arab states but also against all Islamic peoples, including the Arab nation and to all designations, parties, states and governments whose policies do not please the US, whose policies and positions are not palatable to the US in particular or because they call for the liberation of Palestine and a halt to the US aggression on Iraq, and adherence to their independence and their nations’ heritage.

Any one who is surprised by this practical conclusion, allowing courteous words to be said on the margin of verdicts to replace it, has to contemplate our verdict:

The US has declared it is at war. It is gearing up for war since the early moments in the wake of the incidence, as though it were the opportunity those concerned have been waiting for. It has allocated the necessary funds for the war, or part of them. Have you ever heard or read in the near on far history, of a state declaring war before even defining who its enemy is? The opportunity to declare the state of war came with the incidence that befell it. It is not yet known whether it was carried out by a foreign enemy or from inside. Thus, the war declared by America would cease to be a reason for the incidence. Rather, it is the incidence that has availed the opportunity to launch the war, which has not been a result of the incidence under any circumstances!

One might contend it is the nature of the incidence, the scale of pain the American officials felt as a result of what their peoples suffered, the embarrassment they felt due to the sufferings that hit the people there, that prompted American rulers to rush to declare war. The suffering of the people is not caused by the incidence alone, but by the failure of the authorities concerned which have been preoccupied by hatching conspiracies abroad, assassination and sabotage operations against world states and freedom-loving people. They rushed to declare war and name the parties so that they would leave no option but to launch the war. Once again, we say, could this be a reason and ground to facilitate the charge and the subsequent resolutions, why should not it be a ground for others as well?

If the fall in the whirlwind of rage, not the pre-meditated planning, results into war resolutions on their senior level inside the US, why should not you expect someone to direct his fire to it under the pressure of similar considerations or danger?

Once again we say that the US administration and those in the West who allied themselves with it against Arabs and Moslems, now and in the past, or rather against the world, in all the arenas that witnessed the scourges of the alliance, are in need to take recourse to wisdom after they have had power at their disposal and deployed it to such an extent that it ceased to frighten those who experienced it. Dignity, the sovereignty of the homeland and the freedom of the sincere man is a sacred case, along with other sacred things which real Moslems uphold, including , Arabs who are in the lead.

If this is the practical description of the pre-mediated intentions that decided war against Arabs and Moslems, while the party that took the decision waits for a cover to declare a war, and may launch it against those whom it has been biding time, could there be anyone who could avert it other than God, the Almighty? Anyone other than the will of the peoples, when they become fully aware, after they know and fear God, after they have believed in Him.

“For us Allah sufficeth, and He is the best disposer of affairs”. ( Holly Quran)

Once again we say that the peoples do not believe any more the slogans of the United States, accept those whom it intends evil against. Even when it says it is against terrorism, the United States doesn’t apply this to the World, and according to the International Law. But according to its will to impose what it wants on the World and refuse what it thinks might be harmful to it only, and export the other kinds of it to the World. To certify this, could the United States tell its peoples how many organizations working against their own countries are existing in the United States? And how many of those, the term terrorism could be applied to if one standard is used and not the double standards? And how many are those it finances overtly and covertly? How many are those accused with killing and theft in other countries are now in the United States? If the United States presents such inventory to its peoples and to the World, and initiated implementing one standard and one norm on its agents and those it calls friends. And if it starts the same storm against the killers in the Zionist entity responsible of killing Palestinians in occupied Palestine and in Tunis and Lebanon. And if it charges its own secret services with what they committed of special actions and assassinations they brag to publish in the form of stories. Only then one can believe the new American slogans that America is trying to make them believe. Only then it becomes legitimate to ask the World to do what it believes is useful for its security and the security of the World.

It is a chance to air an opinion whose time has come. It is also addressed to the peoples of the US and the Western people in general. Zionism has been planning for the domination of the world since its well-known conference it convened in Basle in 1897. Ever since, it has been working in this direction. It has scored successes you can feel by controlling finance, media and commerce centres in your countries and whoever rules in your name, here and there, in decision-making centres. But its domination is not yet fulfilled to have its will absolute and final. This could only be feasible when two heavenly faiths upheld by the biggest bloc in the world are thrown into conflict. Otherwise, Zionism would be denied the accomplishment of all its ambitions. The masterminds of Zionism are, therefore, working for a clash between Christianity and Islam on the assumption that this, and only this, could secure the chance to dominate the world, when new opportunities open up for their domination. Could there be any better situation than that when the stealing dog finds his household pre-occupied by a grief so that it could win the thing it has set its eye on, the thing that whetted its mouth? Would the sensible men in the West be aware of that? Or would Zionism outsmart them to attain its aims?


There is also a prior statement called Open letter from Saddam Hussein to the American peoples and the western peoples and their gov'ts which was read on Iraqi TV on September 15, 2001.

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