It's certainly a pleasure to be here tonight to speak with you. Unfortunately, the topic isn't necessarily the most uplifting of topics. You know, we live in troubled times. We're a nation on the verge of going to war, and I couldn't think of a more appropriate day than today to talk about this topic. Veteran's Day, the day on which our nation honors those who wore the uniform, who served their country.
I look out in the audience, and I see it's full of young people. I wish I was that young. I ask you to take a look to your left and right. Just see who's sitting next to you, and understand that, when you do that, keep in mind that the average age of a Marine Corps lance corporal who's getting ready to go to war is 20 years old. The average age of you college students is 20 years old. The people who are getting ready to go off and fight and die for their country are your same age. They're you. They're America - they're Americans. And they wear their uniform proudly. You know, it's not just their uniform, it's your uniform, it's our uniform. It's the uniform of the United States of America. And these are men and women, hell, boys and girls, who are just kids, who are prepared to die for you. To give their life for you, in defense of the United States of America. In defense of you.
I wore the uniform of a Marine Corps officer for 12 years. I'm proud of that uniform, and I was prepared to give my life for my country. I went to war for my country. I understand what it means to serve. 12 years. I took an oath when I joined the Marine Corps, to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It's the same oath those who serve today took. It's the same oath anyone who serves their country takes. It's an important oath, because what it's saying is that we're not swearing an oath to the President of the United States. We're not swearing an oath to Congress. We're not swearing an oath to a building, to a flag, to a symbol. We're swearing an oath to a piece of paper, a document that defines who we are as a nation. A nation of laws. A nation that respects individual civil liberties. A nation that gives me the right to stand here tonight to speak to you, no matter how unpopular my point of view might be. A nation that gives you the right, the freedom of assembly, to listen to me. A wonderful document.
And it's that document that those who serve our country are prepared to give their lives in defense of. It's a document that speaks of "We the People of the United States of America." It's a document that speaks of "government of the people, by the people, for the people." That's why I say, when you consider the uniform that those who are about to go off and wage war are wearing, it's not the uniform of the United States of America alone. It's not a Marine Corps uniform, it's not an Air Force uniform, an Army uniform, a Navy uniform. It's your uniform. They're wearing it for you.
You see, for a democracy to work - and we live in the greatest functioning democracy the world has ever seen - for a democracy to work, the people have to be involved. We the people. To function, the people have to be involved. To function effectively, the people who are involved have to be empowered with information and knowledge. How do we get this information and knowledge? You get it through debate, discussion, dialogue, discourse. Sadly, when it comes to the issue of Iraq, there's far too little of this.
I've been called many things in my time. Lately, because I've chosen to speak out against American policy in regards to Iraq, I've been called unpatriotic, treasonous. Somehow, to be out here standing before you and challenging our government on the issue of Iraq is seen as less than ideal. I reject that. I may not be right. I may be wrong, but you can never question any American's duty and responsibility to speak their mind when they feel that something is wrong. It is the most patriotic thing that you can do as an American. Government of the people, by the people, for the people means just that. The last time I checked, I was one of the people. I happen to believe that I am the government of the United States. You are the government of the United States. Now, we elect people to represent us in Washington, DC, but that's just what they do. They represent us. It's incumbent upon us to hold them accountable for what they do in our name.
Right now, we are talking about going to war, ladies and gentlemen. We are talking about going to war. I want everybody again to think about this: wake up tomorrow morning, after you've had a chance to chew over what you're hearing here tonight, and look in the mirror. Look in the mirror long and hard, and say, "Is what's going on in Iraq worthy of my life? Am I willing to die for Iraq? Am I willing to have my brother die, my sister die, my father die, my mother die, my cousin, my friend, anybody? Am I willing to have somebody close to me die for Iraq? Am I willing to give my life for Iraq?" If the answer's "No," then why in God's name would you sit back silently while you have others go off and die for you?
We're talking about war, ladies and gentlemen. War is not a game. It's real. When I was in the Marines, I took my Marines to the rifle range a couple times a year. We used to shoot at targets: 200, 300, 500 yards. Paper targets. Not because we had a grudge against National Paper. It was because I was teaching my Marines to put 5.56 millimeters of copper-jacketed steel into the body of a human being. Terminating their life. It's what war is about. There's no bugles blaring, banners flying, rock and roll music in the background. War's about killing, plain and simple. Death and destruction. Sometimes it's we who do the killing, sometimes it's we who get killed. But in the end, that's all it's about: death and destruction. I used to sit on a hillside in Twentynine Palms, California with a radio in my hand, bringing in artillery fire, bringing in air strikes on rubber tires, stacks of tires. Not because we had a grudge against Goodyear, but because I was learning how to take 155 millimeters of steel-encased high explosive and terminate human life. That's what war's about. We're gonna terminate a lot of life in the near future if we do go to war. And most of the lives we'll terminate will be civilians, innocent civilians caught in the middle.
[Due to technical difficulties with recording equipment, a few of Ritter's words are lost here]
...associated factories, biological weapons and their factories, nuclear weapon programs, massive industrial installations dedicated to nuclear research, ballistic missile factories - they had it all. And the Security Council found that Iraq's possession of this capability represented a clear and present risk to international peace and security. The Security Council passed a resolution, under Chapter Seven of the United Nations Charter, authorizing weapons inspectors like myself to go into Iraq and oversee their disarmament.
Iraq undertook, from the very beginning, to lie to the weapons inspectors, not to declare everything they had, to conceal, to obstruct, to interfere. They made our job tough, you know. The way inspections are supposed to work is like a little bit of a gentlemen's game. The Iraqis provide a declaration of the totality of what they have in regards to weapons of mass destruction, and we inspectors go in. We wear stylish blue baseball caps, we have a clipboard and pieces of paper, and we go in and go, "Ok, you declared 15 bombs," and we check off 15, blow 'em up, and move on to the next. That's the way it's supposed to work. The Iraqi information was the fuel that drove the inspection engine. But what happens if the Iraqi information is incomplete, incorrect? You've got no fuel. So where do you get your fuel? You've got to bring in people like me.
You know, I talk about chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons. If you want to go after chemical weapons, you need a chemist. If you want to go after biological weapons, you better have a biologist. Nuclear weapons, you need a nuclear physicist, and yes, if you want to go after ballistic missiles, you better have a rocket scientist. There is a use for rocket scientists. And if you check my resume, you will find that I am none of these. I'm an intelligence officer. My job is to go out and collect information, to collate it, assess it, determine what's relevant and what's not. So they had to bring in people like me to gather the data from Iraq that Iraq chose not to turn over.
Now, I think you heard in the introduction that I've been called a number of things. One of them is "spy," by the Iraqis. They said I was a spy. Well, maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. It depends on what your terminology is and how you define "spy." I define "spy" as being short for espionage. You know what espionage is? If I were back in the former Soviet Union as an intelligence officer, espionage would mean me climbing a wall in a Russian missile factory, sneaking inside, and taking pictures of something I'm not supposed to take a picture of. So I'm breaking Soviet law. Now, if I come out with that picture, and I turn it in to my respective chain of command, I'm a hero in America. I'm a spy and a criminal in the Soviet Union. Now, to be a spy in Iraq, I'd have to be going after information I had no right to have. But as long as what I'm doing deals with weapons of mass destruction - Iraq's not allowed to have these weapons. The international community has outlawed these weapons. Iraq has undertook to hold on to the capability, to lie, to conceal. They're not allowed to have anything related to this stuff. So if they're holding on to it, and they're not telling us where it is, as an inspector, I'm authorized to do whatever necessary to go in and get this material. So we did. And we used methodologies and techniques that normally would only be associated with the kind of work you think of when you think of espionage, of spying. But as long as it was focused on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, it's a legitimate program. It's inspections by another means, as long as we're focused on disarming Iraq.
But you know, let's get back to American policy here, because I have to tell you, from the very beginning, the United States has not been very straightforward on Iraq. The international community found that Iraq had to be disarmed, and created weapons inspectors to go into Iraq and oversee this disarmament. One of the key elements of this whole process of disarmament was a means of compelling Iraq to cooperate. Economic sanctions that were originally levied on Iraq in August 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, sanctions which should have been lifted when Kuwait was liberated, these sanctions were continued in 1991, this time linked to Iraq's disarmament obligation. The deal was if Iraq cooperated with the weapons inspectors and did everything they were supposed to do, sanctions would be lifted.
I've talked about war as not being an academic exercise, that war is reality, an awful reality, and I've asked you to consider that. I also ask you to consider something about sanctions. You know, you use the term "sanctions," and people have this copasetic vision. Sanctions - it sounds pretty academic to me. You know, "we're gonna sanction somebody." Let's talk about what sanctions really are, especially in regards to Iraq. Sanctions deny a nation the ability to feed itself. Deny a nation the ability to give itself adequate medical care. Sanctions deny a nation the ability to exist as a modern state. Sanctions represent a total economic embargo of Iraq.
Again, this all sounds pretty academic, but imagine the following: in 1990, if you went to Baghdad, turned on a tap of water, stuck a glass underneath it, and held it up, it's pure water. You can drink it; you're not gonna get sick. In 1991, after Desert Storm, the bombs we dropped on Iraq didn't just drop on top of Iraqi soldiers. We dropped bombs on water purification facilities. We dropped bombs on power plants. We dropped bombs on pretty much the totality of Iraq's civil infrastructure, especially in and around Baghdad. So that when you turned on that water tap and put that glass underneath it, the water you now held up was tainted with raw sewage. If you drank it, you're gonna get sick. If you're a strapping young man like I was back then, your immune system could handle it. Yeah, you'll get sick; you'll go to the bathroom a lot, but you'll get over it. If you're a child under the age of five, especially a child that might be suffering from a little bit of malnutrition because of economic sanctions, your immune system isn't fully developed, your body can't handle it, you get sick and you need treatment. Let's say your mom picks you up and takes you to the hospital, goes to the doctor, and normally, the doctor would be able to pull out some antibiotics or some other form of treatment and take care of this problem pretty quickly. But now, because of sanctions, there are no medicines. Because the power plant was blown up, there is no refrigeration. You need refrigeration to keep certain medicines in storage. All the medicines have expired. So the mother brings her child in, holds it up to the doctor, and says, "Doc, here's the baby." And the doctor says, "There's nothing I can do for the child." And the child dies. But the child doesn't just die, the child wastes away. Imagine the pain that the mother feels as she watches her child die day by day by day. Then she has to bury the child. This doesn't happen one time, or five times, or ten times, or a hundred times. It happens thousands of times. By some estimates, 3,000-5,000 children under the age of five perished every month during the sustained period of three to four years in the mid-1990s, as a direct result of economic sanctions. So when we talk about sanctions, and sanctioning Iraq, keep that in the back of your head.
We say we're doing it because we want to compel Saddam Hussein to cooperate. Well, that's pretty neat. Gosh, that's the equivalent of me saying, "Ok, we gonna go into an Iraqi village, and we're gonna round up 3,000-5,000 children under the age of five, and we're gonna hold them hostage." I'm gonna send a message to Saddam that says, "Saddam, cooperate. If you don't cooperate, we're gonna gun these kids down." And at the end of the month, when Saddam doesn't cooperate, I turn to my Marines and I say, "Load the machine guns! Ready, aim, FIRE!" And as soon as I say "fire," nothing happens. Why? Because Marines don't kill kids. That just ain't what we do.
[particularly long round of applause]
Oh, but don't be patting yourself on the back too much, ladies and gentlemen, because guess what? We do kill kids. We just don't shoot them. We starve them to death. Make them die of treatable diseases. We let them waste away. Silently, over there, beyond the range of the TV camera. Beyond the range of American heartstrings. How many people here were aware of the fact that that many kids are dying every month? How many people were aware of the fact that it's our fault that that many kids are dying every month? How many people are ashamed of that? We have collective guilt here, ladies and gentlemen. When I talk of government of the people, by the people, for the people, I mean it. What happens in your name, happens in your name. You're responsible. Don't blame the Bush administration. Don't blame the Clinton administration. Don't blame the government. You're the government! You're responsible. The deaths of these Iraqi kids are on your hands. It's on my hands, it's on all of our hands. The same way that the deaths of these Americans we'll be seeing from the war in the next couple months is on our hands. Collective responsibility. We are the government; what are we doing to hold our elected representatives accountable?
Some people say it's bad form to be up here talking about this, in this fashion. You know, I've got a couple things to say about that. Where I come from, in Albany, New York, we talk about certain things like the dredging of the Hudson River. Big issue. General Electric dumps some PCBs in there, now there's a big debate: do we dredge, don't we dredge? It's an amazing thing that happens - the citizens come together in groups, and they have debates, discussions, dialogue. They bring their elected representatives in for town hall meetings, and they hold them accountable for what they say. They ask questions, probing questions, about dredging. How will it affect the economy? How will it affect the ecology? Is this the right thing to be doing? At the end of the day, they have a vote, and one side wins. And when that side wins, do they stand up to the other side and say, "Traitor! Treasonous! How dare you speak out against the policy!" No! It's democracy in action. It's what makes this country great. The power of the people. We get involved. But how come we do that at a local level, but we have a different standard at the national level?
If the mayor of my town came up one day and said, "Ladies and gentlemen of Albany, New York, I'm raising taxes. You're gonna accept it. You're either with me or against me." Would we accept that? Not on your life! That person would be taking a hike the next day; they'd be voted out of office. Why, then, do we allow the President of the United States to stand before us and say, "We're going to war. You're either with me or against me. It's a black and white issue, ladies and gentlemen. No room for neutrality here. So if you're neutral, sitting on the fence, and you haven't made your mind up, you're not with me. Therefore, you're against me." Life isn't that easy. Life is not black and white, and that's one of the problems we face in regards to Iraq and any of the other issues that we're confronting today. Black and white - since when has it been that easy? The way I view life is actually a whole bunch of different shades of gray. That's called reality. All those different shades of gray are reality, and when you define something in terms of black and white, you have just preferred an unrealistic definition. Therefore, if your solution to that problem is likewise black and white, what does that mean about your solution? It's an unrealistic solution.
Well, when it comes to Iraq, we pretty much have a black and white situation. It dates back to 1990, when Iraq put its tanks into Kuwait. Then President of the United States George Herbert Walker Bush compared Saddam Hussein to the Middle East equivalent of Adolf Hitler. He said Saddam Hussein is the personification of evil. Now, what happens when you define somebody as the personification of evil? When you define somebody as Adolf Hitler? It means you cannot negotiate with this person. You've eliminated an entire range of options. When you define a problem as a nail, the hammer is the only solution. We've defined Saddam Hussein as a nail, thereby limiting ourselves to how we can deal with him. We talk about wanting a diplomatic solution with Iraq, but we haven't sent a single diplomat to Baghdad in the past decade. We don't want a diplomatic solution; you cannot negotiate with the devil. We want Saddam Hussein gone.
You remember I talked about this economic sanctions thing; you know, the law was pretty clear. Iraq, cooperate with the weapons inspection program, and sanctions will be lifted. And yet, in the summer of 1991, then Secretary of State James Baker said the following, "It doesn't matter if Iraq cooperates with its obligation to disarm. Economic sanctions will be maintained until which time Saddam Hussein is removed from power." That's the United States' policy, ladies and gentlemen: regime removal, and it's been in place for over a decade now. Everything about weapons inspections has been just a farce. We have no intention of allowing weapons inspectors to work in Iraq; never have, never will. Why? Because our policy (and I say "our" because again, we're the government, it's the policy being done in our name), our policy is regime removal. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein.
Weapons inspections are only useful to us so far as they facilitate regime removal. Now how do weapons inspections facilitate regime removal? They provide justification for the continuation of economic sanctions. So long as Iraq is found to be in noncompliance, sanctions will be maintained against Iraq, containing Saddam Hussein, preventing him from expanding, breaking out. And also, by the way, killing between 250,000 and 1.5 million innocent Iraqis, but let's not worry about that little inconvenient fact called "dead people." Dead brown people. I mean, that's why we don't pay too much attention to it. You ever reflect on that? Why we don't really give a damn about dead Iraqis? I can guarantee if we had a policy in the United States that killed 250,000 white babies, that policy wouldn't last very long. No, those are brown babies. They don't respect life as much as the white people do, you know? Death doesn't hurt a brown mother as much as it hurts a white mother. It seems pretty callous but, my God, that's what we're talking about here. We're talking about that kind of callous disregard for human life that has defined American policy in regards to Iraq for over a decade now. For over a decade.
Well, we have no intention of allowing sanctions to be lifted. The United States has, from the very beginning, tainted the process of international law in regards to Iraq. The international community has spoken with a single voice saying that Iraq has an obligation to be disarmed, but if Iraq complies, sanctions will be lifted. It's the United States and the United States alone that has said from the very beginning that we don't give a damn for international law. We want Saddam gone, and we're going to contain him through the vehicle of economic sanctions until which time he is removed from power. Now how are we gonna remove him from power? Well, originally the concept was that Saddam wasn't going to last longer than six months. Go back and listen to what James Baker said. What Richard Haass, who worked for the National Security Council at the time said. What George Herbert Walker Bush says in his memoirs. Everybody expected that Saddam Hussein, at the end of Desert Storm, would last no more than six months. So all we had to do is contain him, contain the problem with sanctions, and then he'd go away.
But Saddam Hussein chose not to go gently into that good night. He survived. He continued to survive. And now the United States is stuck with a problem - what to do about Saddam. So our policy became actually a non-policy. See, a policy implies that you've got a solution. It implies you're going somewhere. But the policy of containment means that we don't have a policy; we're going to contain until we can figure this thing out. So we contain through economic sanctions. While the Bush administration was trying to figure things out, an unfortunate thing happened called the elections. And President George Herbert Walker Bush was former president. Now we had a new president named Bill Clinton on the scene. Bill Clinton inherited this mess, this Iraq quagmire. Bill Clinton took one look at that thing and said, "You know, I'm a Southern Baptist. I believe in deathbed conversions. I think we can get Saddam Hussein to change his colors here. We can do something with this guy." And he was slapped down immediately. Why? Because you don't do business with the devil. When you call somebody the Middle East equivalent of Adolf Hitler, that means you cannot negotiate with this person.
The only policy acceptable to the American people, to Congress, was regime removal. I've been to Congress many times, spoken to these representatives and these senators from both parties, and behind closed doors, they're all very concerned. They're all very concerned about what's happening in regards to Iraq. They recognize the failure of American policy. But when you ask them what they're gonna do about it, they say, "Nothing." Nothing, why? Because they're afraid that they'd have to explain their shift in position to their constituents. And they're convinced that their constituents feel that Saddam Hussein is an evil that needs to be eradicated from the face of the earth, and they don't want any American policy that accepts the continued existence of Saddam Hussein. So we've trapped ourselves. We've trapped ourselves, and it's a ludicrous, horrific situation where you have your elected representative recognizing that there is a policy failure that results not only in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis but the potential deaths of thousands of Americans, and they don't have the courage to do anything about it because they're afraid they're not gonna get re-elected. Shame on them, ladies and gentlemen, and shame on you, because you keep putting them back in office.
Now we call ourselves a democracy. How many people here have reflected on what happened a couple months ago in Congress when it gave away its constitutional responsibility to the President of the United States? You know, we have the Constitution, and it's a tricameral system. We've got the executive, we've got the legislative, and we've got the judicial. When it comes to war, while the President is the Commander in Chief, only Congress has the ability to declare war. It's an awful responsibility. I believe our founding fathers gave it to Congress because they wanted the people's representatives to think long and hard about war, and about going to war. Because war is so horrible. There we were, weeks before a national election, and what did Congress do? They took the defining issue of this time and ensured that in this thing called American democracy, there will be no accountability for their decisions. They voted to give the President of the United States war powers capability, war powers authority. And we don't have a damn thing we can do about it. You think you could have done something about it in this election? It's too late. They already gave it to the President. We're not a democracy anymore when it comes to war with Iraq, ladies and gentlemen. We'd better wake up to this fact. We are not a democracy. We are a dictatorship of one, George W. Bush; we might as well call him "King George," because that's what he is. This is a terrible, tragic thing indeed, because we're going to war. We are going to war.
Now what can we do? What can we do as a people? It's a little late in the game to be doing much. I mean, we already gave up our ability to function as a democracy. We can seize power, but that's going to have to wait until the next round of elections. We're gonna have to do something between now and then. We've got hundreds of thousands of American troops getting ready to go to war. Now, if you look at the public opinion polls, some 59% of Americans claim that they support a war on Iraq. But that figure drops below 30% when people realize that we may have to be going to war alone, unilaterally. So I'd like you to reflect on the reality of what's happening here.
The President of the United States says Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq represents a threat to international peace and security. And yet, if you go back to the weapons inspection records themselves, what you'll find is as of 1998, Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed. Iraq's weapons programs, as massive and considerable as they once were, had been largely eradicated. 90-95% of Iraq's programs had been accounted for by the weapons inspectors by 1996, and this includes 100% of the factories used by Iraq to produce weapons of mass destruction, together with their associated production equipment. The vast majority of the product produced by these factories has likewise been accounted for. Now, there are things that are unaccounted for, and it is of great concern. But notice when I say, "unaccounted for," that's what I'm saying. I'm not saying that we have evidence that Iraq retains this; we simply can't account for it. We don't know what the final disposition of this material is. This is why it's imperative that we get weapons inspectors back to Iraq to complete the task of disarming Iraq, and once that's done, to lift the economic sanctions against the Iraqi people and allow Iraq to come back into the fold of the international community. Even if that means that Saddam Hussein is still at the helm. Of course, when our policy is regime removal, this makes it virtually impossible to do.
I just came back from Europe, and I have to tell you, one of the most disturbing aspects of my trip was the amount of anti-American sentiment that I experienced. I think we should wake up collectively as a people and understand that they don't like us out there. They think that we're a bunch of obnoxious, ignorant bullies. You know, they're right. Because there's no other way that I can explain what we're doing as a people. Do you know that the President has a policy, called the National Security Strategy Policy? It's a Bush document that was published in the end of September. Have you read this document? It's a stunning piece of literature. It speaks of the United States using its overwhelming military and economic superiority to impose a unilateral American solution on problems that have been defined unilateral by the United States. It says that we will not accept any nation developing economic or military parity with the United States. We insist that the United States alone maintains its superiority over the globe. We speak of rejecting international law and multilateral solutions. We speak of the United States defining the world as we see the world, in terms of failed nations, failed regions, failed non-nation entities. And once we identify something as a failure, we empower ourselves to preemptively strike. American unilateralism. There's another term for it - it's called imperialism. We fought a revolution 220-odd years ago to free ourselves from an imperial power, and yet we are becoming one today. Ladies and gentlemen, is that the form of democracy that you embrace as Americans?
Read the Constitution of the United States of America and understand the nation that our founding fathers framed. Now, it wasn't perfect; it wasn't perfect at all. We had to fight a revolution. We had to fight a civil war. We had to fight a couple world wars. We had to emancipate the slaves. We had to give women the right to vote. We had a horrific human rights issue. We had Vietnam. And we're still struggling as a people. We're not perfect; we have a lot of flaws, but we do have an idea. We do have a vision that is America, that makes us the greatest country - excuse me, that has the potential to be the greatest country on the face of the earth, if we can live to that ideal. But we're not. We're failing, collectively. We have forgotten what it means to be Americans. We have forgotten what it means to be America.
A lot of people talk about this thing, "America." The President of the United States speaks about it on a daily basis. We're at war, we're told. And we have to defend America. And he's going to send Americans out there to defend America. Ok. We're at war on terror, we've been told. Well, we all know what happened on September 11th. We were attacked, viciously. We were attacked. 19 criminals hijacked four airplanes and flew them into buildings, terminating the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans in a span of around 100 minutes. But as horrible as that was, that's all that happened. We were attacked. Where's the al-Qaeda fleet off the coast of San Francisco, sending bombers after our cities? Where's the al-Qaeda Panzer divisions punching up through Texas into Oklahoma, into Nebraska, and threatening the heartland of America? It isn't there.
Now, al-Qaeda's out there, and we need to go out and do something about them. We have brave men and women in uniform who are defending us as we speak. But, you know, the solution to terror isn't simply kicking down a door and pumping four rounds center mass into a terrorist and killing them. You play that game, and you're going to be doing it day after day after day. It will be a never-ending cycle of violence. Yes, sometimes you do have to terminate the lives of those who threaten our country. But the best way to win the war on terror is to ask the basic questions - how they became terrorists, why they became terrorists, what is the root cause of terrorism? The only way you're going to win the war on terror is to prevent people from becoming terrorists. In order to do that, we're going to have take a long, hard look at who we are as the United States of America, who we are as a people, what is done in our name, why they hate us. And I guarantee that it's not what the President says. It's not because they're jealous. It's not because they're envious of this life that we live. They don't want this life.
I told you, when you travel around the world, you understand where people hold America - the vision of America, the ideal and promise of America. That's why they want to come to America, to enjoy the same education that you have, to chase the American dream. But when they take a look at their home, they understand that the American dream sometimes involves the United States supporting governments that oppress the people. We have this tremendous lifestyle. I enjoy it; I'm sure you enjoy it, too. But do you realize that this lifestyle requires us to consume vast amounts of the world's resources? Right now, people speak of five acres of global resources per person in the world. Americans take 25 acres of global resources to support each American. Where's it coming from, ladies and gentlemen? Where's it coming from? It don't come from America. It comes from around the world. We view the world as our supermarket. Need oil? Hell, they got it in the Middle East. Why don't we go make friends with Saudi Arabia - not the Saudi Arabian people, just the government. And then we'll guarantee that we have access to this oil. You need copper? Well, they make a lot of it in Zaire. So why don't we go make friends with those dictators of Zaire - don't pay too much attention to what they're doing to the people and the standards of living that exist in the mines as they produce copper for our consumption. And you're wondering why they hate us.
I'll tell you this - if you think going to war against Iraq is going to teach the world to love us, think again. This is going to be a war the likes of which we haven't seen in some time. I ask everybody here to just go back to 1993, and a little place called Grozny, Chechnya. Take a look at what happened when 2,000 lightly-armed Chechen rebels tried to hold on to that city against the Russian army. The Russians had to go in street by street, block by block and basically destroy the city to take the city. Thousands of Russians were killed in that fighting; tens of thousands of Chechen civilians were killed. That's what's coming up against Iraq. Baghdad is a city of five million people, the size of Detroit. It's defended by 30,000-40,000 fanatics who are loyal to Saddam Hussein, who will not surrender. If we're going to take Baghdad, we're going to have to carve them out, block by block, street by street, building by building. And we're going to chew up a lot of Americans in doing this. Is this really the war we want? I think not.
Economics, you know. I talked about blood, let's talk about money. To go to war against Iraq, the conservative estimates are that 100 to 200 billion dollars of national treasure will be expended. To occupy Iraq for five years, which is the minimum amount probably needed to occupy Iraq (some people say up to 15 years), you're looking at 450 billion dollars. That's 550 to 650 billion dollars in national treasure. Where's that money coming from? What programs are we going to terminate here in the United States? Excuse me, aren't we getting a tax cut, too? I just don't understand how we think that this war on Iraq is gonna be good for the United States. The only reason to go to war against Iraq, ladies and gentlemen, is if Iraq presented a threat to the United States worthy of war. That's the only reason. I'm not gonna sit here and give Iraq a clean bill of health. I told you, they cheated against us too long. They hid too much. I don't know what they have. It's been four years since inspectors have been there. But the inspectors are getting ready to go back in. I think we should give those inspectors every last ounce of our support. We should support their work, and we should demand that our government supports their work.
Consider the following: think back on why inspectors aren't in Iraq today. A lot of people say it's because Saddam Hussein kicked them out. I beg to differ. Saddam Hussein did not kick them out. They were ordered out by the United States of America, after the United States prevailed on inspectors to deliberately provoke Iraq by going to a sensitive site, a Ba'ath Party headquarters. When the Iraqis said, "Come in and inspect. We'll let you inspect," the inspectors tore up the agreement that governed the inspection of sensitive sites, without going to the Security Council for permission. Then the Iraqis said, "Well, if you're going to rip up the agreement, then you can't come in and inspect." Now the inspectors reported back to the United States that the Iraqis were obstructing the work. The United States ordered the inspectors out, and then the United States bombed Iraq the next day using intelligence information gathered by the inspectors to target Saddam Hussein, in an attempt to eliminate him from power. They failed; they didn't get Saddam. But do you think that Iraqis were willing to let inspectors back in after that experience?
There was a lot of talk about presidential palaces, and the need to get into presidential palaces. I have to tell you, as a weapons inspector, we never had a desire to get into the presidential palaces. We never thought that there was anything in there worth inspecting. But we got in - April 1998. Didn't find anything, except where Saddam Hussein sleeps, where he eats, where he works, and where his senior leadership works. We found where the seat of government was. We found things that no one ever knew about Saddam Hussein and dutifully recorded it. That material found its way into the hands of the United States government. In December 1998, every single one of those targets was struck precisely by American munitions. You don't think the Iraqis are smart enough to put two and two together? They know where that information came from. That's why they're not too keen on having weapons inspectors go back in. This new resolution speaks of the need to go to presidential palaces, with "immediate, unrestricted access." And it says that once inspectors show up, all movement inside has to cease. What happens if you go to a palace while Saddam Hussein's still there? Are we saying that Saddam can't leave? He has to stay there while we inspect? Keep in mind that the United States has a presidential finding in place that authorizes the CIA to use direct action to eliminate Saddam Hussein. So basically, the Security Council's resolution says that we can pinpoint Saddam Hussein's location, freeze him in place, and maybe we'll put one of those Predator UAVs into place overhead with a Hellfire missile and solve the problem. Do you think Iraq's going to sit back and willingly subject themselves to this? If they don't, we're going to war.
But we've got something more disturbing, too. In December, Iraq has to submit a declaration. A declaration listing the totality of its holdings of weapons of mass destruction. Iraq says it doesn't have any. I don't know whether to believe them or not. I think the best thing to do is send the inspectors in and find out. But the United States, the Bush administration, and Tony Blair's government in England have both committed to the fact that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. They say Iraq has chemical weapons, biological weapons, they're working on nuclear weapons. Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that if Iraq fails to declare these programs in December, this will constitute an omission on the part of Iraq, an omission in their declaration. In accordance with this resolution, that means that Iraq is in material breech of its obligations, which means we're going to war. Ladies and gentlemen, the Bush administration has no intention of allowing the weapons inspectors to do their job in Iraq. The Bush administration has every intention of going to war. We have a massive military deployment taking place as we speak. By the middle of December, we'll have four carrier battle groups in position to bomb Iraq. By the middle of December, we'll have major command and control elements forward deployed into the theater. We'll have thousands upon thousands of American troops joining up with tanks that have already been pre-positioned. The momentum for war will be unstoppable. In fact, some say that the momentum for war is unstoppable.
We live in this very terrible time, ladies and gentlemen. It's a very frustrating experience to be an American today, especially an American who treasures democracy. We no longer are a democracy when it comes to war with Iraq. We have to ensure, as a collective, that we never again allow this situation to repeat itself. It's not unthinkable to imagine a situation where the President of the United States would lie to the American people, especially when it comes to issues of war. I ask you to think back to 1964, and the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, where President Lyndon Baines Johnson lied to the American people about a threat posed by North Vietnam to American military shipping, fabricating an incident, and then got the United States Congress to give him war powers capabilities. We embarked on a 10-year nightmare. And after 10 years and 58,000 dead Americans, after 2 million dead Vietnamese, after nearly a trillion dollars of squandered national treasure, we woke up and realized we made a mistake. My God, ladies and gentlemen, wouldn't we like the chance to have a debate in 1964? To sit there and put out all the facts, and demand facts from the President before we went to war? We should be having that same debate today.
When we talk about Iraq and the threat posed by Iraq, the President of the United States has likened the Iraqi threat to a cancerous growth. A tumor that needs to be excised. Ok, so you go to your doctor, and your doctor says, "Hey, you've got a brain tumor. Gotta do surgery. I want you to lie down right now. We're gonna lop off the top of your head and carve this baby right out." And you go, "Whoa, Doc. That's a pretty serious thing. Umm, can I see the x-ray, please?" And if the doc said, "No, trust me on this one," you'd be a damn fool to lay down and get your head cut off. So why in God's name do we allow the President of the United States to stand before us and tell us that Iraq poses a threat to international security, and yet we do not say a thing when he fails to provide the x-ray, the evidence? Where's the beef, Mr. President? Where's the beef?
Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to war. It's going to be a horrible war. Thousands of Americans are going to lose their lives. Tens of thousands of Iraqis are going to lose their lives. We're going to destabilize an entire region that's very critical to our economic security and the economic security of the world. We're going to teach entire generations of Arabs and Muslims to hate us even more than they hate us already. We're going to go to war against Iraq, ostensibly to protect the freedoms and liberties of the United States of America. In reality, if we go to war against Iraq, while we may succeed in removing Saddam...
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...the bus vaporizes in an explosion, as some terrorist targets my kids. When I take my family to a shopping mall to go to a restaurant or go shopping, we have to live in fear of a bomb going off, terminating our lives. That's losing the war on terror, ladies and gentlemen. And I guarantee you this - if we go to war against Iraq, that is the future of America's existence for 10 or 15 years to come. Is that the existence you want? It's not too late. It's not too late to send a signal to President Bush and to our elected representatives that this is a war we will not stand for. It's not too late. Thank you very much.