SADDAM'S NOT WORTH THE BONES OF A SINGLE REPUBLICAN GUARD:

Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation (The Cross Hall, 3/17/03)

Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them. If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you. As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free. In a free Iraq, there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.

It is too late for Saddam Hussein to remain in power. It is not too late for the Iraqi military to act with honor and protect your country by permitting the peaceful entry of coalition forces to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. Our forces will give Iraqi military units clear instructions on actions they can take to avoid being attacked and destroyed. I urge every member of the Iraqi military and intelligence services, if war comes, do not fight for a dying regime that is not worth your own life.

And all Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning. In any conflict, your fate will depend on your action. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people. Do not obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, including the Iraqi people. War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say, "I was just following orders."

Here is the tragedy of this whole mess, that if the French, Germans, Russians, Chinese, Arabs, Democrats and all the millions of "peace" protestors would come out tomorrow and demand that Saddam and the Ba'athists leave Iraq in order to spare the world a war, it might even work. Unfortunately, it is not war they oppose but the U.S. and thereby they feed Saddam's fantasy that he will survive one more time. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 17, 2003 9:06 PM