Excerpts From Saddam's Speech 
Story Filed: Thursday, August 08, 2002 4:28 PM EDT 

Excerpts from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's speech on Thursday,
the anniversary of the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, as provided by the official 
Iraqi News Agency: 

One of the lessons of recent and distant history is that all empires and bearers of the 
coffin of evil, whenever they mobilized their evil against the Arab nation, or against 
the Muslim world, they were themselves buried in their own coffin, with their sick dreams 
and their arrogance and greed, under Arab and Islamic soil; or they returned to die on 
the land from which they had proceeded to perpetrate aggression. 

This has been the case with all empires preceding our present time. If this is what 
history tells us about its judgment on all times and eras of the past without exception, 
can we then describe those who are trying to ignore history now except in the words which 
no wise or prudent person would wish to be described with? This is the inevitable outcome 
awaiting all those who try to aggress against Arabs and Muslims. If anyone wants to learn 
from history, anyone with greed and arrogance combined in himself, he ought to remember 
this fact and think again. 

Otherwise, he will end up in the dustbin of history, as 20th century politicians say. We 
always stood, and continue to stand, to learn from all such lessons, whenever the horns 
of aggression loomed large against us. We never faced, nor will face, any aggression 
relying basically on our force of arms, or our muscles and the muscles of our people, but 
rather on the strength of our faith, in the belief that Allah always helps the faithful 
and their just cause to prevail over injustice. 

... Darkness shall be defeated, and every cloud that carries no useful rain shall be 
dispersed, giving way to the sun to usher in endless spring, blessed by Allah, fill with 
pride its people who themselves bring disgrace to the conduct of the aggressors. The 
forces of evil will carry their coffins on their backs, to die in disgraceful failure, 
taking their schemes back with them, or to dig their own graves, after they bring death 
to themselves on every Arab or Muslim soil against which they perpetrate aggression, 
including Iraq, the land of Jihad and the banner. 

We say this to refute the grumbling and sibiliation of those bragging their power, 
governed by the devil, their master in every evil act and crime which they perpetrate 
against the land of the Arabs and Muslims, while they wade in the rivers of innocent 
blood they shed in the world, believing that the people of the world should become slaves 
to tyranny and its threats, both declared and executed threats. But if they wanted peace 
and security for themselves and their people, then this is not the course to take. 

The right course is of respect to the security and rights of others, through dealing with 
others in peace and establishing the obligations required by way of equitable dialogue 
and on the basis of international law and international covenants. The right way is that 
the Security Council should reply to the questions raised by Iraq, and should honor its 
obligations under its own resolutions. There is no other choice for those who use threat 
and aggression but to be repelled even if they were to bring harm to their targets. 

Allah, the omni-powerful is above all power and shall repel the schemes of the unjust. I 
say this even though I had preferred to avoid referring to it, under a different 
circumstance, as I have generally done so far. But I say it in such clear terms so that 
no weakling will imagine that when we ignore responding to ill talk, then this means that 
we are frightened by the impudent threats which will make those who have lost all ties 
with God the compassionate, and all trust in their people, tremble and shiver; and so 
that no greedy tyrant will be misled into an action the consequences of which are beyond 
their calculations. Allah is Great. 

... These, our brethren the faithful and the Arabs, are the calls made by your sons and 
brothers in Iraq, the land of faith, as they confront the enemy who wants to harm Iraq, 
with total disregard for God and man, despite all the resilience and resolve with which 
the Iraqi people have faced this enemy who has refused to listen to any Islamic or Arab 
voice, and indeed rejected all the initiatives and calls for peace, which we had proposed 
more than once, in the name of the people of Iraq. 

... This is the call made by everyone confronting the enemies with a gun, a cannon, on a 
tank, in a plane, or on a naval boat, by millions of men among our troops, in 
conscription or reserve, our peoples' army and our special forces. 

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