Politicians From Iraq

"We will achieve our goals, one of which is the collective rule and the end of autocracy and dictatorship. The people are the ruler, the absolute master, and an individual has no right to direct the affairs of the people. The individual, how long he may live, will die but the people will remain. We are working for the future generations and for the welfare of the people. We fought in Palestine for the sake of the people and to regain their liberty. We are still fighting and will not spare any effort, nor would we fail in our work for the sake of God and nor would we fail to be selfless in the service of the people, our guide."

"We may have pledged to support the freedom of the people so that we ourselves may enjoy the results. We are working for the sake of God and for the sake of the people. We do not need to be known, nor do we need propaganda. We work for the sake of God and we know that how long we may live, we will ultimately die and the people will remain. The absolute rule is by the people and not by individuals."

"Iraq strives to safeguard the interests of her sons within the framework of true national unity and the general interests of its brothers within the Arab framework. I ask you, are there any frontiers of a foreign country between us and Syria? Is there any foreign country between us and Syria? Where is it? Are there any frontiers of a foreign country between Egypt and Sudan, or between Egypt and Libya? All are the frontiers of our brothers."

"[The newspapers] are talking of nationalism as if it were the property of an individual or as if it were confined to one group only. Nationalism is the property of all. Nobody can take possession of it just as a glittering word which attracts the hearts of stupid people."

"The Snake Charmer. The man who stands between Iraq and all-out Communism is a lean, hard-muscled and ascetic professional soldier with a fixed, snaggle-toothed smile. His name Abdul Karim Kassem. On the face of it, Karim Kassem, 44, seems a weak reed on which to rest the free world's hopes. Modest in deportment, moderate in conversation, Kassem is nonetheless inordinately and naively suspicious... Cursed by shyness and a weak, high-pitched voice, he is sadly lacking in the rabble-rousing skills on which most successful Arab politicians rely. Most serious of all, he is totally inexperienced in affairs of state."

"While there is much to admire about Qasim and the positive impact that he had on Iraqi society, he was, at the end of the day, a dictator, however benign."

"He was having his breakfast in an open restaurant together with the poor people, daily laborers and soldiers... He was visiting the bakeries and asking the owners to make the loaves of bread bigger."

"He was honorable, sincere, with high dignity and integrity. He was always, in his speeches, repeating that he was poor, living with the poor, living in a poor neighborhood, that he knew their sufferings."

"And so the unopinionated, unsassuming Qasim whom I knew in 1958 gradually got the taste of being the only man in the country. In other words, we built a dictator... Our people are in truth builders of dictators."

"Unlike other so-called Iraqi leaders he was not pretentious: he did not live in the Prime Minister's usual residence but in his modest house in the Al Batawein district. He did not amass wealth. He put his salary in his pocket so he could distribute it to the poor. When he was executed he only had a dinar and a quarter on him."

"He apparently believed he was destined by fate to fulfill a great mission assigned to him by Allah; his dedication finally reached the martyr-complex stage."

"The people related to Qasim on the basis that he alone personified the revolution. Qasim wanted it this way, and the people seemed comfortable with this setup. Qasim, however, in electing to rule as the sole leader, alienated many of the so-called Free Officers who made the revolution with him. This made him draw even closer to the people."

"His supporters view him as a defender of the poor who fought for the state’s rights against the interests of the West. His detractors view him as the first in a series of disastrous would-be strongmen who led Iraq on to the path to instability that culminated in dictator Saddam Hussein."

"We must consider him a good example for politicians and leaders in the government... Each official in the current state of Iraq should review what this man has done for Iraq."

"He himself was living in the depths of a barracks from which he would not emerge, and among squads of soldiers from which he himself did not know whether they were still loyal to him. His system was like a house made of boards, damaged from the inside by woodworms, and it itself was mined by the weight of worries. It was bareley impossible to have a consistent, sustained conversation with him. He was nervous like no other, and he moved from one topic to another every ten minutes. He would get up and wander aimlessly around the room, and would hardly sit back down before he would get up again. It was clear that this man's nerves were bad. Perhaps his mind was injured as well. He could no longer control himself. As for his political concepts, to the extent that I was able to understand them, they were amazing"

"People, I am the son of the people. I pledge before God that I will sacrifice myself for your sake. I shall offer my life in defence of the Iraqi people."

"I am with all the parties of all trends if their aims are to serve the homeland, freedom and peace. Nothing will keep me far from them, neither religion, political parties, language nor nationality; I am with them and we will always march forward hand in hand in the procession of freedom and peace."

"I had previously announced that I am above trends and leanings, above party politics and political parties. This is because I strive for the people as a whole to serve them."

"The freedom of an individual merges in the freedom of all and serves the freedom of all."

"Brothers! I have the honour and I am proud to be in your ranks, and I pledge the Almighty that I will always struggle for the sake of peace. As for the forces of the Army which we have prepared, we prepared them to face those who attacks [sic] peace. We are a peaceful and a neutral state. We attack no one, but anyone who attacks us and starts aggression, we will stop him."

"No doubt, I am proud of the people. I am from the people and I am the son of the people. I will work for the sake of the people. I will sacrifice my life for the liberty of this people and safeguarding, protecting and preserving it from all evils."

"Peace is victorious always and for ever. Do you remember that aggression gained success and was not crushed by the last blow? Aggression, whether collective or unilateral, is inevitably to be crushed. If you just glance at courts and judges you will see that these courts and judges were formed to crush aggression or anyone who things of aggression. These courts and judges are only working for the sake of peace and ending aggression. This noble idea should prevail all over the world."

"We, the people, were denied of the right even to mention the word peace or peace partisans and everyone related to them had to suffer from imprisonment as if it were an unpardonable crime. But now, after the people have been liberated from slavery, and after July 14 has dawned on us, this Republic and her sons have been liberated and have been marching on the path of freedom ever since."

"I do not wish parties or tendencies, whatever the color, to penetrate into the ranks of the armed forces under any circumstances."

"I don't want to be the joke of the world, and I don't want to be thought of as another Hitler swallowing up people."

"Death to the imperialist! Return Kuwait to its homeland!"

"The Iraqi people consist of brotherly nationalities which have amalgamated in order to defend the existence of the eternal Iraqi Republic. [This is] why we always declare 'long live true Iraqi unity, for in it lies our strength."

"We cooperate with our brotherly Arab states... on the basis of the individual interests of those Arab states."

"If any one owe a debt for a loan, and a storm prostrates the grain, or the harvest fail, or the grain does not grow for lack of water; in that year he need not give his creditor any grain, he washes his debt-tablet in water and pays no rent for this year."

"Hammurabi's Code cannot by any means be regarded as a faltering attempt to frame laws among a young and inexperienced people. Such a masterpiece of legislation could befit only a thriving and well-organized nation, given to agriculture and commerce, long since grown familiar with the security afforded by written deeds drawn up with all the niceties and solemnities which clever jurists could devise, and accustomed to transact no business otherwise. It is inspired throughout by an appreciation of the right and humane sentiments that make it surpass by far the stern old Roman law."

"This (Code of Hammurabi) was a collection of laws and judicial decisions whose aim was to present Hammurabi as a role model of a just king, serve as a basis for a more uniform legal system across the Babylonian Empire, and teach future generations what justice is and how a just king acts."

"Laws of justice which Hammurabi, the wise king, established."

"If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out."

"Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land."

"Do you expect me, after all my history as a militant and as one of the Iraqi leaders, to go to an American prison – to go to Guantanamo? I would rather die"

"These Americans are cowards, because if they were courageous, they would have confronted us face-to-face, rather than coming at us from behind"

"I'm a victim of a criminal act conducted by this party, which is in power right now. So put it on trial. Its leader was the prime minister and his deputy is the prime minister right now and they killed innocent Iraqis in 1980"

"The Dujail case is part of a chain of assassination operations against officials and I am one of the victims, the president of the state in any country, if faced with an assassination attempt, should take procedures to punish those who conduct and help this operation. According to the law, people who support this assassination can also be convicted."

"It is imperative that there is intervention into our dire situation and treatment ... We hope that you will help us. We have been in prison for a long time and we have been cut from our families. No contacts, no phones, no letters. Even the parcels sent to us by our families are not given to us. We need a fair treatment, a fair investigation and finally a fair trial. Please help us"

"He didn't move. He couldn't talk. He didn't say a word to her. He just looked at her. It is so sad that he had to go this way"

"I suppose I can just about bear to watch the “inspections” pantomime a second time. But what I cannot bear is the sight of French and Russian diplomats posing and smirking with Naji Sabry, Iraq’s foreign minister, or with Tariq Aziz. I used to know Naji and I know that two of his brothers, Mohammed and Shukri, were imprisoned and tortured by Saddam Hussein–in Mohammed’s case, tortured to death. The son of Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz was sentenced to twenty-two years of imprisonment last year; he has since been released and rearrested and released again, partly no doubt to show who is in charge. Another former friend of mine, Mazen Zahawi, was Saddam Hussein’s interpreter until shortly after the Gulf War, when he was foully murdered and then denounced as a homosexual. I have known many regimes where stories of murder and disappearance are the common talk among the opposition; the Iraqi despotism is salient in that such horrors are also routine among its functionaries. Saddam Hussein likes to use as envoys the men he has morally destroyed; men who are sick with fear and humiliation, and whose families are hostages."

"We need to stop the flow of suicide bombers, we need to stop the fatwas (religious edicts) coming from Saudis to justify the killings of innocent Iraqis."

"Al-Qaeda is a virus and it is spreading. If we fail to stop it, we will pay a very heavy price."

"Leave Saddam in power? So that he would be free to continue killing, free to invade his neighbors, so that he would be free to — I am sorry — develop nuclear weapons? No."

"Is the Iraqi state succeeding? I think there are some prospects for this country to be moving in the right direction. But the legacies of the past, the problems are really, really monumental... We need to deliver. Otherwise we will not be able to justify what we do in the eyes of our public. And public opinion does matter in Iraq. People speak their minds. People are engaged, are interested... Life is coming back... Every time I go out of the presidential palace in Baghdad — and I do try to go out as often as I can — I do see normalcy coming back, more and more. I do think there is a window of opportunity — it should be cherished. We’ve not had it like this for a long, long time... It’s precious, but precarious."

"Fixing Iraq would go a long way towards fixing much of the Middle East."

"I'm realistic, but at the same time, I'm optimistic. I believe we can overcome the problems. I do not shrink from the level of interest and political economy of the violence that has been caused by successive crises over the past ten years. These interests have prevented the progress of Iraq and the welfare of the citizens, but I am optimistic to the children of the country that they will understand the depth of the problems."

"I am against driving Israel into the sea. This policy is wrong, illogical, and unreasonable. Why annihilate a people?"

"I am not an enemy of Turkey; I am a friend of the Turkish people"

"Declaration of a state(Kurdistan) is the legitimate right of the Kurdish nation. This goal should be realized, but without resorting to violence."