FROM: Randy Scheunemann
President, Committee for the Liberation of Iraq
SUBJECT:
As the liberation of
THE
Chalabi’s
Wisdom
Editorial&Opinon
Ahmed Chalabi,
president of the Executive Council of the Iraqi National Congress, June 2, 1997,
in a speech to the board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs:
As the 1st Marine
division, the Army’s 7th Cavalry, and the 3rd Infantry rolled into
Opposition to Saddam has increased…The army will not
fight for him and the people remain desperate for an alternative.…Our experience has shown that the principal
difficulty we will face is the care and feeding of the deserting Iraqi Army.
We
wouldn’t want to carry this too far; it is, after all, only the earliest hours
of the ground assault by coalition forces, and Saddam’s few loyalists could yet
unleash the chemical and biological weapons they have been hiding. Even combat
without a fighting enemy can be risky, as the deaths of 16 American and British
Marines in a helicopter accident last night sadly reminded us. Still, the
reports from reporters traveling with the troops yesterday made it clear that
the American and other coalition forces were facing only scattered armed
resistance. "No fire was being returned," is the way an A.P. dispatch from
southern
As Mr. Chalabi underscored almost six years ago, this is
a consequence of the brutal nature of Saddam’s regime and the Iraqi people’s
desperation for an alternative. People will fight to the death for freedom; they
will fight a good deal less enthusiastically, or not at all, for a brutal tyrant like Saddam.
The Iraqi mood was
illuminated, as well, by the comments of a foreign correspondent of the New York
Times, John F. Burns, who was in the enemy capital and was interviewed on PBS
the first night of the war. Mr. Burns said, "Many, many Iraqis are telling us
now, not always in the whispers we have only heard in the
past but now in quite candid conversations, that they are waiting for
To Mr. Chalabi and to those who have followed his
struggle these past years, it’s not hard to understand. It’s easy to understand
how among those who view the American invasion as the moment of liberation would
be many Iraqis in that nation’s army. Secretary Rumsfeld was being quoted
repeatedly as saying that those who refuse to fight for the dying regime and lay
down their arms will be welcomed by the liberators. For those who surrender to
American forces, the 2 nd Brigade commander, Col.
David Perkins, told the Washington Post, "It will probably be the best treatment
they’ve had in months."
Indeed, there was a strange lull in the attack after the
first burst aimed at the Iraqi capital, as intelligence officers pored over the
film of Saddam (or his double) insisting that he was alive and well and
directing matters in the city in which his suspected hideout had just been
bombed. There could be terrible surprises, but it’s not too
soon to express the hope that we will see in the coming days Mr. Chalabi’s
predictions borne out.
Yesterday, Mr. Chalabi himself spoke to the Iraqi people
on the American-funded Arabic station Radio Sawa,
saying: "The hour of liberation has come. Your dark night is coming to an end."
He also told the Iraqi military to disobey Saddam’s orders and to defect and
join in the liberation efforts. It must have been for Mr. Chalabi a moment
extraordinarily exhilarating.
Committee for the
Liberation of Iraq
918 Pennsylvania
Avenue, SE
Washington,
DC 20003
(202)
543-1037
(202) 543-1038
fax
