By Carsten Kofoed, Committee member of the Danish Committee for a Free Iraq, December 2, 2005. Foreword to a partly Danish translation of the interview, which the President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, gave to Dan Rather from the US television station CBS in Baghdad on February 24, 2003.

In the period following the fall of the Berlin Wall, no leader of state in the world has been the object of a so extensive smear campaign and demonization as Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. “Madcap”, “dictator” and a “bloodthirsty mass murderer” have been the stereotypes, which “Saddam” – this deliberate personification of “the evil” made by the imperialist propaganda – like other leaders, who oppose US interests, have been called by the Western so-called free media.

Such a tendentious description of Saddam Hussein is neither true nor gives any understanding of the thoughts inside the head of a man, who not only was and legally still is the President of Iraq, but also that Iraqi leader, who has been the head of modern Iraq for the longest continuous period, from July 1979 until today, where he has been taken prisoner by the US aggressors, who have invaded Iraq in a illegal war. As an example of one of the sides of Saddam Hussein, which never appears in the Western mass media, can be mentioned that he, in the 1970s, lead a giant campaign of literacy in Iraq. In 1982, this work earned Iraq a prize from UNESCO for having eliminated illiteracy in Iraq.

In the West, Iraq became one with “Saddam” because of the imperialist propaganda. A whole people of 25 million was dehumanized and with that made of no value. The abuses, torture, killings and use of chemical weapons in all of Iraq committed by the US-led occupation force were actually just the logical consequence of this deliberate dehumanization of the Iraqi people.

Today, all honest people know that the Western “Democrats” like Bush, Blair and Fogh Rasmussen (Prime Minister of Denmark, CK) deliberately lied about the basis for sending their respective countries and populations to war against Iraq. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the country had no relations with the apparently omnipresent Al-Qaeda. These were just the cynical war lies that were meant to make the peoples of the West watch passively as the oil robbers committed their war crime against Iraq. Enthusiastically and completely uncritically, the “free” media sold all the lies and continues today with new lies, distortions and suppressions of the truth about the occupation and the resistance struggle.

But there was a person, who told the truth: Saddam Hussein. He, this “Hitler of the Middle East”, which he was called by the mendacious US-Zionist propaganda, said before the illegal and bloody war, which has increased war and unrest in the world, to the peoples of the world:

Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has no connections with Al-Qaeda. Iraq wants peace. And he was right in everything.

Standing in front of the biggest military power of the world and a horde of vassal states, including Denmark, which were going to attack Iraq in order to steal its oil and other wealth and draw the map of the Middle East according to the interests of US imperialism and Zionism, Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government stood firm.

Neither he nor the Baath Party betrayed the Iraqi people or all the people, who in the whole world protested the war, which violated the UN Charter. They organized the defence of the Iraqi fatherland against the criminal aggressors. Today, they are heading the resistance, and even with the help of nearly 200,000 occupation troops, headed by the US superpower, the traitors, who called themselves “opposition” to the now toppled Iraqi government, cannot control the resistance, which is swimming like a fish in the sea of the people. This illustrates who represents the Iraqi people and its interests.

The Iraqi resistance has concretely hindered US aggressions against other “rogue states” because the Americans have now sunk into the sand of the Iraqi desert. With his actions, President Saddam Hussein has contributed to save numerous countries from US attacks. He has saved thousands of human lives. All people, who fight the US Empire, US imperialism and Zionism, owe a great debt of gratitude to him and the other provident Iraqi political and military leaders in independent Iraq.

Today, Saddam Hussein is continuing his heroic and admirable struggle for the freedom and independence of Iraq in the illegitimate show trial of the war criminals and traitors. He is an example of courage and patriotism, of a genuine holy warrior, who did not desert in the final hour, but who continues to live up to his name “Saddam”, he who confronts. The President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, is alive and fighting.

---

Artiklerne på www.fritirak.dk er ikke nødvendigvis udtryk for Komiteen for et Frit Iraks holdning.

Copyright 2003-2005 www.fritirak.dk