Rumsfield: Saddam is a 'Butcher'
By PAULINE JELINEK
.c The Associated Press
ATLANTA (Sept. 27) - Launching a series of speeches across America to spread the Bush administration's anti-Iraq message, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Friday called Saddam a brutal dictator and said Iraq would be better off without him.
''He is a butcher, he tortures people, kills them personally,'' Rumsfeld said. ''He has kept billions and billions and billions of dollars from going to the people of that country because he is determined to have weapons of mass destruction.''
Rumsfeld spoke in a series of media interviews and in a luncheon address to the Metropolitan Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.
He insisted that he hadn't come with ''any particular message,'' saying he just wanted to take the debate on Iraq outside of Washington. Aides said the interviews and speeches in Atlanta represented the first of a series of trips Rumsfeld would be making to do that.
''I am here because I think it's important that these issues be discussed and considered,'' Rumsfeld said.
Asked how the administration would assure that the next Iraqi government was not worse than Saddam, Rumsfeld said: ''In life, there are very few assurances.''
''It has to be the interest of the world to see that his sons ... don't succeed him,'' as well as anyone else from Saddam's ruling clique, he said.
Reporters asked how the United States could be sure of eliminating Saddam, given news reports that Saddam uses several doubles to throw off possible assassins. Rumsfeld said the goal was to make sure Saddam is no longer in power.
''If he's on the run, he is not governing Iraq,'' Rumsfeld said.
He compared that situation to Afghanistan, where overthrown Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar remains on the loose, but no longer able to make his country a haven for terrorists. Rumsfeld also said Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network is weakened and scattered, although U.S. officials don't know if bin Laden is alive or dead.
Rumsfeld emphasized that Bush has not made a decision to oust Saddam with military action and he declined to speculate on how long any such operation would take.
''The answer to that would depend on the extent to which the Iraqi people will learn that they have the opportunity to be liberated,'' Rumsfeld said.
AP-NY-09-27-02 1457EDT
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. |
