Almost one year ago today ...
Richard Perle speaking at a luncheon for The American Enterprise Institute on September 22, 2003:
Richard Perle speaking at a luncheon for The American Enterprise Institute on September 22, 2003:
It's a pity that Turkey wasn't alongside us going into Iraq, not least of all because there are such important Turkish interests next door. I think it might have been different if it had been understood in Turkey that this was a war that would be over in three weeks with hardly any casualties, hardly any Iraqi casualties.
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The problems in Iraq are ahead of us, but we're doing better than people think. And a year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush.
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But let me just say that the Iraqi people must choose their next government, their leaders. If they choose Ahmed Chelabi, I think they will have a very bright future.
I've known Ahmed Chelabi for more than a dozen years. He is a man, in my experience, of absolute integrity and courage, and he would be a great Iraqi leader.
I read stories all the time about how he has the backing of the Pentagon. Some of us who are connected one way or another to the Pentagon who know him have a high regard for him. But he doesn't have the backing of the Pentagon. Whatever he is able to accomplish in Iraq will be on the strength of his own abilities, his character, his intelligence, and his commitment to the freedom of the people of Iraq.
I can't imagine a leader who more fully embodies the values that caused the Americans to believe we should liberate Iraq. He believes in democracy. He believes in individual freedom. He's a Shia who does not want a theocracy in Iraq. And it pains me to see some officials of this government make disparaging remarks about him. For the most part, the disparagement comes from people who don't know him, who have never met him, and it's based on jealousies and in some cases embarrassment. Chelabi was right over many years when they were wrong.
So it's been troubling to see the disparagement of this great man. But I have complete confidence that his qualities will lead him into a position of leadership in Iraq.
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But I find it very hard to believe that had we abandoned the sanctions and allowed Saddam to go back to business as usual that we would not have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq's future. And I believe that when David Kay finishes his work that we will know a lot more about those programs, and we will be able to document the fact that he had weapons of mass destruction and may even now have some.
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Now, how do we encourage democracy? There are a lot of ways to encourage it. The least preferred method is by toppling a dictatorship that stands in the way of democracy. Iraq was a unique situation, and I don't know anyone who's proposing that we launch wars to achieve democratic reform.
If Iraq is the success that I'm confident it will be--and we've got to give it a little while. It's absurd, the idea that you can judge an upheaval of the magnitude of Iraq in a hundred days. If Iraq turns out to be the success I'm confident it will be, I think others in the region will look at Iraq and say, Why can't we rid ourselves of a regime that's rather similar in some ways to the Iraqi regime? So the precedential effect of liberating Iraq may assist in bringing about democratic reform elsewhere.