13
sense that while, as you very promptly said, that time is slipping
from our hands, while time is not in our hands, still we have a win-
dow of opportunity that's still closing but there is a slight ajar.
I think that, as my colleague Dr. Feldman, whom I had the privi-
lege of being together with in Baghdad, I stayed behind him, but
I had to resign after noting that there was no role for Iraqis to play
under the Coalition Provisional Authority, and I kept in touch with
the situation, in intensive touch with the situation in Baghdad, and
I feel that giving me the privilege of testifying before you May
allow me some opportunity to convey some of the stories that Iraqis
would like the world, and especially the U.S. Congress to hear
about them.
I feel that the basic issue about the presence of the coalition au-
thority and the future of Iraqi-American relations lies exactly in
the message that you and all of the free world would like to send
to the Iraqi people, and that is that we are changing from a system
of tyranny to a diametrically opposed system based on the rule of
law, on democracy, on putting the fate of Iraq into the hands of the
Iraqi people, to use President Bush's words.
Up until now, I’m sad to say that Iraqis do not feel that and to-
day's testimony by Ambassador Bremer was saying basically the
same, that a constitutional committee is being appointed by the Co-
alition Provisional Authority with the help of a Governing Council
that is appointed and not elected, that this committee, appointed
committee, with due respect to all and each of its members, has not
been elected by the people but they will have the right to draw a
constitution that will be thrown to the people at a yes or no ref--
erendum. And I think this is not the way to send a message that
the United States is building a fraternal, democratic nation in Iraq
and the Middle East and to send a message to the other Middle
Eastern countries.
The second one is the way that the social and economic issues
and decisions are being taken, and I’m very sad to say that I have
to disagree with what Ambassador Bremer said. I just returned
last night from the way to see many humiliating scenes in the
meetings between the IMF and the Iraqi newly appointed gov-
ernors and administrators, the way that our colleagues, the senior
advisers at the coalition interrupt publicly any statement given by
any Iraqi newly appointed minister. I’m sorry to say that, but the
facts must be known to all of you because you are the representa-
tives of the United States people.
To say that is not just to repent or to complain but to say that
still we can, the Coalition Provisional Authority can change track,
and the first step, I think, is as my esteemed colleague has said,
is to Iraqize the security situation, not in the sense that was said
by a high-level official 10 days ago, to let Iraqis give us the infor-
mation or inform about the remnants of Saddam's regime but by
allowing them to draw policies on security. That will save the
United States blood and much, much money, that by giving the
United States, the security officials the role of monitors, advisers,
educators in how the new security force can abide by the law, not
be over the law, but in the meantime can enforce security issues
in Iraq.


14
And this is quite a different thing from what we heard this
morning or we have been hearing all over in the past that Iraqis
must come and inform the coalition of the remnants of Saddam's
regime. This is a totally different issue by allowing Iraqis to draw
the security policy.
Second, we can move from that—and this is the main issue I
think—to creating a consensus that no social contract can be built
only upon diversity. Diversity should be unified, must be unified,
within some kind of a social contract, and that could only be done
through calling for a constituent assembly that will draw the con-
stitution, rather than appointing a committee, no matter how pres-
tigious, no matter how sound and solid the knowledge of these col-
leagues, I think that the legitimacy of that constitution and the
promulgator of that constitution will be in doubt among Iraqis. So
I think the step is toward a constituent assembly which still will
be a temporary, a transitional body whose sole mission would be
to draw the constitution, appoint a provisional government, and
work with the United States coalition authority gradually to hand
over power to the Iraqis.
Along like that, I think transitional justice is where our friends
in the United States can help us, by drawing a system of transi-
tional justice that we worked upon that many Iraqis, with the help
of our colleagues at the State Department, worked upon last year.
I would be very much willing to talk about it, but I can see that
my time is coming to a close.
The CHAIRMAN. Go ahead.
Dr. AL-KHAFAJI. The last thing then and then I will close is the
economic affairs of Iraq, the running of the economic affairs of Iraq.
Today I have nothing to add to your sharp remarks today in the
morning. I can not agree more with what has been said, not in the
sense that there are bad intentions behind the way the bidding and
contracting is being taken or the decisions have been taken, but I
think that if once again, if we are talking about steering Iraq to-
ward democracy first, only an elected government can say that we
have signed laws. Even in the 1920s, the British High Commis-
sioner used to sign decrees, and today we’ve heard several times
Ambassador Bremer signing laws, and these are not laws to direct
the day-to-day affairs of Iraq. These are laws that will have grave
consequences to the better or worse of Iraq and the Iraqis must
know who is taking these decisions and how.
And unfortunately I can say that the cabinet, the Iraqi cabinet,
all the Governing Council, have very little to say about how these
decisions are being made. There is some consultation, no formal
consultation, no sitting on committees by Iraqis, who just until a
few months ago the world, the media, and the U.S. administration
was talking about the educated, the talented, the nation that was
threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction. So this is
not a matter of nation-building.
We have experts, and it's here that I think that the allocation of
the budgets, and I totally agree with Ambassador Bremer that we
might be reticent in handing the monitoring of these $20 billion or
other allocations, but I would be very happy to see a standing com-
mittee, subcommittee, from the Congress sitting in the head-


15
quarters of the Coalition Authority in Baghdad monitoring and ap-
proving the contracts that are being given.
There are some details that show that the value of these con-
tracts that are being awarded and given, the value that's reaching
the Iraqi population is a trickle of what's being reached. I’m not al-
luding to the integrity of the appropriation of that, but simply be-
cause giving it in a time of war to an Iraqi is one thing, and giving
it to a foreign company, who would add so much premium on work-
ing in our zone with a different waste structure and salary struc-
ture would add so much to the tax bill on the American taxpayer
without in the meantime yielding even an equivalent amount of the
benefits to the Iraqi people.
I think that this, the appropriation and allocation of the U.S. tax-
payers' money and the coming international authority monitoring
board, this should be an issue that others would be, must be, in-
volved, and by others we shouldn’t have in mind only the U.S. or
the U.N. There are many others. The Iraqization, the involvement,
and empowerment of Iraqis, I think, is not only a cheaper way but
it's the way that will give the Iraqis a totally different message of
what the United States wants from Iraq and that will propagate
to the entire region and I think to the rest of the world. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. al-Khafaji follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. ISAM AL-KHAFAJI, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF
AMSTERDAM, AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
Mr. Chairman, Distinguished Members of the Committee:
CASE DESCRIPTION:
Skeptics of Iraq's ability to affect a transition to a stable and democratic country
have raised several arguments that most of you are familiar with by now: the coun-
try's lack of prior democratic institutions or experience, Muslim religion as an obsta-
cle to democratization, and Iraq's so-called “heterogeneity”, i.e. being a multi-ethnic
and multi-sectarian society.
While many of these arguments May seem to be empirically validated, it is the
conviction of the present speaker that none of them stands to rigorous test. Over
the past three decades, countries with no prior democratic experience, such as Rus-
sia, Spain, Portugal, and much of Eastern Europe, have shown that while having
past democratic principles should be very helpful, it is neither a necessary, nor a
sufficient condition: More recently, some skeptics about Iraq's ability at democra-
tization raised the interwar democratic experience of Germany, the Weimar Repub-
lic, as a legacy from which Post-WWII Germany could draw to establish its modem
democratic system. If this heritage is of any relevance in the context, then it May
be worthwhile mentioning that Iraq had a longer period of parliamentary under the
constitutional monarchy between 1921 and 1958.
To the argument that Islam is an obstacle to democratization, I would only re-
mind the esteemed audience that five decades ago, standard political theory texts
used to ascribe Latin America's (as well as Portugal's and Spain's) resistance to de-
mocratization to Catholicism. Orthodox Christianity and Confucianism were viewed
similarly in the cases of Eastern Europe and East Asia respectively. The fact is that
religious authority everywhere seems fiercely resistant to relinquishing power to
secular power. Viewed as sets of powerful philosophical teachings, most world reli-
gions contain elements that can be used or manipulated to legitimate tolerance or
tyranny, and peace or war.
The US’ experience can provide the Iraqi people, and many other societies, with
invaluable lessons on how to build a tolerant and democratic system that firmly sep-
arates state from Church without in the meantime rejecting the latter as the French
model does or treating the system of belief of the majority as a “state religion”.
Finally, Iraq's multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian composition can play a powerful
role in laying the foundations of a democratic system, rather than being an obstacle
to it. For unlike any other country in the Middle East (with the exception of Leb-
anon), Iraq has no single ethnicity-sect can claim a dominating majority over all oth-


18
tºpions the cause of involving Iraqis as full and observer members of this
oard.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, doctor. Let me mention
that all of the four statements of the witnesses will be made a part
of the record. Therefore you May either deliver the statements oral-
ly in full or you May summarize them in your own words as you
hear each other testify. But we want the prepared statements that
you have given to us, and which are very important, to be printed
in full in the permanent record. I'd like to call now Dr. Khouri.
STATEMENT OF MR. RAMI G. KHOURI, EXECUTIVE EDITOR,
THE DAILY STAR NEWSPAPER, BEIRUT, LEBANON
Mr. KHOURI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Senators, la-
dies and gentlemen. I also am deeply honored to be part of this
process and I’m awed by the power of the American democratic
ideal, and to watch it in practice this morning was quite an impres-
sive experience for me. I’ve never attended a congressional hearing
before. I’ve only watched them on TV and they're much more inter-
esting in person.
But I would make a point which would summarize maybe every-
thing I want to say. I’ve spent my whole life between the United
States and the Arab world. I'm a Christian Palestinian Jordanian.
I’m about as Christian as you can get. I’m a Greek Orthodox from
Nazareth and you don't get more Christian than that. That's where
it all started and our family has lived in Nazareth for 400 or 500
years. I’m a Jordanian national, I'm an American citizen by being
born here, and my whole life has been between the United States
and the Middle East and I can tell you that as impressive as this
hearing is and the democratic ideal that it represents where you
hold accountable and question your own public officials and at the
same time bring in independent experts from other countries, from
the United States, to gain the best knowledge and viewpoints that
you can get, this is a highly institutionalized formal and public
process.
In the Arab countries exactly the same thing happens, but it's
not institutionalized and it's not formal and it's never public. But
I would make the point to you that if you are trying to spread de-
mocracy in the Middle East, as I have been and my colleagues and
millions of us in the Arab world have been trying to do for my life-
time and for many lifetimes before mine the key issue to keep in
mind is the difference in the cultural traditions and values between
American society and Arab and Middle Eastern society as a whole.
I’m going to speak mainly about the Arab world because that's
the area I know best, but what I’m saying also applies to Turkey
and Iran and parts of Israel and other non-Arab Middle Eastern
countries, but this difference between the manner in which people
manifest democratic ideals is, I think, the linchpin to a successful
promotion of democracy in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.
I think the objective is noble and it is appropriate and it is
achievable. The demand among the people of our region in the Mid-
dle East for democratic institutions is tremendous and it has been
going on for years and years and years, though it has not been
widely reported in the American media particularly.


19
The men and women in the Middle East and the United States
who seek to achieve this worthy goal of a democratic Middle East
face a landscape that is littered with obstacles, and these obstacles
can be traced to two primary sources. The main source is the polit-
ical regimes and dynamics within the Middle East, but the other
source is the external support for these autocratic, non-democratic,
non-accountable, non-participatory political regimes, and that in-
cludes the long-term support from the United States but also from
the Soviet Union and from other countries.
Most of the constraints of democracy in the Middle East are
man-made and they can be removed if we forge appropriate policies
and we work diligently and consistently. None of the constraints
are due to our genes, to our religion, to our water, or to our envi-
ronment. All of the constraints are man-made. They are a product
of modern history and I would add to the history lesson that Am-
bassador Bremer gave you this morning by going much further
back to remind you in a rather cruel irony—cruel irony in the
sense that the operation of the war in Iraq to liberate Iraq was
called Operation Iraqi Freedom—I would remind you that the first
documented use of the word freedom, according to scholars, is from
the Mesopotamian city-State of Lagash in southern Iraq today,
around 1250 B.C. It's the first time in recorded human history that
the word freedom was ever used, and this was in Lagash.
Most of the values that underpin Western republicanism, wheth-
er you're talking about representative assemblies such as yours,
contractual obligations under the rule of law, naming the rights of
individuals and the rights of sovereigns and the rights of monarchs
and the relationships between them, judicial systems to adjudicate
disputes between people, most of these values can be traced histori-
cally back to the ancient Orient, to the Hammourabi code, to Meso-
potamia, to Assyria, to Babylon, to the Biblical kingdoms.
Now I say this only to show that there has been a tremendous
history of exchange between our region in the Middle East and the
United States and the Western world, in Europe initially and then
in the United States and North America. This long tradition is one
that allows us to identify certain values and certain principles that
underlie the formal processes of sovereignty and statehood and the
institutions of democracy, such as Parliaments and elections and
political parties and judicial systems.
I would say that if the United States really wants to promote de-
mocracy in the Middle East, and I’m not certain that this is a clear
national objective, this is something that history will show most of
the people in our region are skeptical, but if the United States real-
ly is serious about promoting democracy as a long-term goal, I
would suggest that it would do well to start by correctly analyzing
three critical factors: Why has democracy not spread throughout
the Middle East? What has been the United States’ role in this lack
of spread of democracy in the Middle East in the modern history?
And what do the people of the region themselves feel about democ-
racy and what are they doing to achieve it?
There are tens of millions of people in the Middle East who have
been working for democracy in civil society and human rights and
equality and other values that we all cherish, but these people
have been mostly silenced by their own governments and they have


20
been mostly ignored by the American Government and other gov-
ernments around the world. The struggle for democracy in the Mid-
dle East in the last half a century has been almost totally ne-
glected, if not implicitly subdued, by the foreign policies of Western
powers and Eastern powers, when those Eastern powers existed.
I would say there are five main reasons why we haven’t had very
democratic institutions in the Middle East. The first one is the leg-
acy of autocratic, sometimes authoritarian rule, in our region, and
these governments have been sustained, as I said, by foreign aid
and foreign governments. Arab democrats have never had a chance,
they never had a chance, and they are understandably skeptical
today when they hear the United States saying that it wants to
promote democracy. Washington's credibility on the promotion of
democracy in the Middle East, like its track record, is very thin.
Despite this, there are tens of millions of people in the Middle East
who want you to succeed and who are keen and anxious to work
with you to achieve this goal.
Second reason is the long years of the cold war reinforced the
status quo and the frozen political system in the Middle East. The
Arab-Israeli conflict is a third reason. It gave many countries the
excuse to focus on militarism security rather than on promoting do-
mestic democracy.
The fourth reason is the post-World War I colonial legacy which
created most of these countries, installed leaderships that were
hand-picked by the Europeans, and basically put all the resources,
military, economic, political, in the hands of small elites who were
hand-picked by the Europeans in a process that is frighteningly
similar to what many people see happening in Iraq today, Western
powers coming in on the back of their armies, choosing local people,
and having them set up institutions and then giving them money
and letting them run the show. This is frighteningly similar to
what the British and the French did in the eyes of many people
in the region and that is why people are raising these issues of con-
Cer"Il.
And the fifth reason that we haven’t had democracy is that most
governments and people in the region have said, well, given these
other four obstacles, let's just get on with our lives, feed our chil-
dren, educate our kids, build a house, get a job, and let's get on
with the daily business of taking care of our families or the govern-
ment saying security issues are paramount and then we'll deal
with democracy later.
The net result of these and other trends has been that security-
minded governments have completely dominated the Middle East-
ern societies and most aspects of life. Middle Eastern democrats
have struggled unsuccessfully against these odds for many decades,
just as their counterparts had done for many years in the Soviet
Union. But some improvements have occurred since the mid-1980s.
Economic pressures have forced many Arab and Middle Eastern
governments to loosen their grips on society just as in fact hap-
pened in the Soviet Union. Fiscal pressures were the key to open-
ing up the political systems.
The result has been since the late 1980s an appreciable liberal-
ization of political life in many countries, including legalization of
new political parties, holding parliamentary elections, providing


23
individual is subsumed under the group, the family, the tribe, the
religion, the ethnic group, whatever it May be. Individual rights in
the Middle East are not as important as they are in the West.
The United States is a secular society. Religion deeply permeates
all aspects of life in the Middle East and this is something that you
need to come to grips with. And the United States is predominantly
an immigrant society with a very short collective history, while
most countries in the Middle East are not immigrant societies,
they’re people who have lived there for hundreds or even thousands
of years and they have strong historical memories.
These four points I think are crucial to formulating any kind of
effective democratic program in the Middle East, and I would urge
that there be a serious effort to study these issues much more care-
fully to find those commonalities between the people of the United
States and the people of the Middle East where we do agree. And
I'm making these differences but also pointing out that there is a
massive underlayer of agreement on the principles, the consent of
the governed, the rule of law, equal justice for all, accountability
of public officials.
These are issues, values that are deeply ingrained in our reli-
gions and in our culture, and I would finish by saying again that
the dynamic that we witnessed here in this committee is a dynamic
that we witness all the time in the Middle East, but it's not done
like this, it's not on television, it's not in the paper, it's not open
to the public. It's done quietly, it's done in people's rooms, it's done
in people's homes, offices, government officials. I’ve been in situa-
tions with kings and the people sitting down together and having
a chat, people holding the leaderships accountable, but it's done in
a different way.
If you try to impose a Western American tradition of doing
things in a democratic way on a culture that is completely different
in the way it manifests its ideals, you are going to have the same
failures that the British and the French did 80 years ago. And I
would urge you as somebody who is deeply rooted in both American
and Arab culture and who loves them both and appreciates their
values both to make a much more rigorous and strenuous effort
than the executive branch of your government has done to under-
stand these differences but also understand the commonalities,
identify those forces in the Middle East who are working for ex-
actly what you're working for, and to push that process forward
with much more coherence than we have seen today.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Khouri follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF MR. RAMI G. KHOURI, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE DAILY
STAR NEWSPAPER, BEIRUT, LEBANON
Mr. Chairman, Committee Members, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for this opportunity to share some thoughts with you on an issue of
immense and urgent importance to Americans and Middle Easterners alike—pro-
moting democracy throughout the Middle East. I have spent all my adult life in the
region working towards this goal, and am personally delighted that democratization
in the Middle East should now be raised as a potential American foreign policy ob-
jective. The objective is noble, appropriate, and achievable. The demand among the
people of our region is great. Yet men and women in the Middle East and the
United States who seek to achieve this worthy goal face a landscape littered with
obstacles that can be traced back to indigenous Arab and Middle Eastern causes but


27
yond the constitutional system and address some of the problems
I see the Iraqis facing today, but I would also like to touch on the
constitutional process as well.
It seems to me that even before the occupation of Iraq there was
considerable debate in policy circles here on what regime change in
Iraq would mean. Without oversimplifying, some envisioned a mod-
est change, removal of the head, Saddam, and some of his support
system, but leaving much of the apparatus intact. In retrospect,
that would have made a smoother transition if it could have been
accomplished. It probably would have been less costly, but the dif--
ficulty with it, of course, is that you wouldn't have gotten much
change, and we all worried about the emergence a new authori-
tarian leader later on.
The second choice, the one that we've ultimately followed, was to
opt for more radical change, a rather thorough dismantling of the
system, the better to create something new in its place. This obvi-
ously has the virtue of clearing the field for new construction, but
it does come with a high price tag. This radical change has created
a political, military, and psychological vacuum, that now has to be
filled by us or by others that we can hastily assemble from abroad
or from inside Iraq.
I would like to focus on a couple of unintended consequences that
have resulted from this. I see two of these as the most important,
and would like to focus on them today. One is the destruction of
the central government in a country that was previously over-
whelmingly dependent on it. As a counterbalance, and this is a
very welcome one, there has been a very significant decentraliza-
tion of administration in Iraq; the establishment of municipal coun-
cils, provincial-level appointments, and so on.
But this cannot substitute for the role of a central government,
and if there is too much decentralization left unchecked, we could
get a lot more unintended consequences we don't want, such as re-
newed factionalism, the development of party militias, which we
see, and increased control by local potentates. I believe that a bal-
ance has to be re-established and soon for several reasons. I’ve
gone into in more detail on this in the paper than I will here.
First is demographics in Iraq. I don’t think this is widely appre-
ciated, but because of internal migration in Iraq over the past cou-
ple of decades, there has been a considerable shift in population
from the northern and southern provinces into the central prov-
inces and particularly Baghdad. One should always distrust statis-
tics in Iraq, but the trends I think are clear.
By my calculation today, about half of Iraq's population lives in
its five central provinces, and something like a third live in Bagh-
dad, the capital. Only about 13 percent live in the three northern
Kurdish provinces, and in all those southern provinces we lump to-
gether as Shi'ah, only about 32 percent live there. The north and
the south up to this point have been relatively quiet, but I would
point out that it's the center with the bulk of Iraq's population that
is giving us the most trouble, including a persistent guerrilla insur-
gency.
A second point, and you are probably familiar with this: Under
Saddam, a large percentage of the population, especially its edu-
cated Middle class, worked for the government directly or indi-


40
still want their money. In other words, the only protection Iraqis
have right now is us. We'll have to talk seriously about how we ap-
proach the Russians, French, Germans, Kuwaitis, a whole lot of
people, about forgiving a whole lot of debt.
Otherwise, whatever we're discussing here is overhung by a huge
amount of debt. Countries that want their hooks into the country
to get their money and are not going to be all that fastidious about
the rudiments of democracy that we're talking about right now,
might be willing to settle for a regime that fits their national inter-
ests, whatever they May be. So this, without putting too fine a
point on it, is sort of a one-time opportunity for Iraq. No country
has ever had such an opportunity before, in which literally a lot of
dead wood has been cleared away. The question is, in a short pe-
riod of time, while American money is coming in, in essence to pro-
vide lights that never were there, well beyond anything Saddam
had to light up the country, as well as sewers and water and roads
and all the rest of it, so that there will be some semblance of possi-
bility for economic improvement, and so that Iraqis can focus on a
constitution, on elections, and on something that is tangible.
I would just say finally that Senator Hagel, Senator Biden and
I participated in the world economic forum panels. We were all on
different panels. There were always members of the Arab League
on the panels aswell as other people who were very interesting. We
anticipated that a lot of these people at the forum might gang up
on us as the representatives of the United States. Europeans, U.N.
types, Arabs, all might be after us. Surprisingly, what we found
was that most Arabs came to the conclusion that there aren't Arab
democracies. Democracy just hasn’t made it in the Arab world.
They criticized themselves for their lack of any example of this
whatsoever.
I make that point because of the glib thought that somehow peo-
ple have been yearning for democracy all these years, it's just
under the covers and all you need to do is finally give it a chance.
That's the reason for this hearing. There is skepticism in the Sen-
ate as to whether democracy can occur at all in Iraq or if what
arises has any bearing on democracy. There would be some form
of governance, as there has been for 90 years. There have been
monarchs and then dictators. Maybe there will be theocracies next;
we don't know.
Is democracy possible? Is there at this point in the life blood of
the country a yearning for compromise, for listening to others, a
sense of individual rights and liberty or at least something pretty
close to that, as well as some reverence for the role of women in
all of this? Very tough questions, I think, given the 90 years that
we've been discussing it.
I want any of you to, give me an optimistic view. What is there
going to be at the end of the trail of this, after all the money is
spent and all the difficulty has been sustained? Probably through-
out all of this, despite our best hopes, insurgency will continue. We
don’t know from where. Iraqis killing Iraqis, quite apart from
Americans, totally irrational, except in the minds of the killers,
who presumably know what they are doing and who they want to
kill. Who can give a ray of optimism to this situation? Yes, Mr.
Khafaji.


42
bility that my esteemed colleague, Dr. Marr, with whom I have so
much agreements and also disagreements, with due respect, the
stability is the residue of the cold war era when the idea was to
reduce this region into a supplier of oil. Oil requires stability. Sta-
bility requires non-empowerment of the people because this might
fall into the hands of our arch enemy, the Soviet Union. Let's keep
tyrannies in place rather than open up the Pandora's box that
might bring us the enemies, and even and I am proud that I was
involved in the workshops of 2002 and in the IRDC, the Iraq Re-
construction and Development Council.
And we saw that with our own eyes, and you saw it in the front
page of the New York Times when a Ba'athist minister was im-
posed by the Coalition Authority to be the new Minister of Health
and Ambassador Bodine, who was the No. 2 under retired General
Garner, was telling me, well, the doctors have imposed their nomi-
nee, a non-Ba'athist, and my reply was simple, yes, they will im-
pose that, but do you want the Iraqis to come out and say, we im-
posed our nominee despite the United States or with the help of
our allies. They forced the Coalition Authority to take their
Ba'athist nominee.
The point is this, once you go into ideological debates, either from
a total blanket resolution to keep each and everybody in place, or
to remove each and every brick from the old regime out, then we
are the victims of it, because how can you steer a mid-way, you
steer it by empowering the people, by going into the ministries,
trusting the people, and asking them, who was corrupt or criminal
and who was not, and not by decreeing from the Presidential pal-
ace that any member belong to this or that rank or above will be
removed or anyone in that or this place would be removed. By
trusting the people we can go into that.
But I can tell you that Iraqis who in the first month produced
100, and now we have 120 dailies in Baghdad, despite the insecu-
rity, this is chaos but it's a beautiful chaos, it tells you how much
are Iraqis yearning for free expression. When people have no single
authority religious within the communities, when many people tell
you that, with due respect, I have nothing to do with them, when
the supreme and I’m not a strong believer when the supreme
musted of the Shi'i says that all we want is to say that the con-
stitution will respect the enlightened teachings of the religions of
God and according to Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are
the recognized religions of God.
I don’t think, sir—I know that I’ve taken much of your time—
but in my closing, I don’t think that democracy is democracy be-
cause and I wrote that several years ago that we do not expect Jef--
fersonian democracy to flourish in the day after, but even in Jeffer-
sonian democracy, the African-Americans did not get the vote in
the 1700s, the women did not get the right to vote at that time.
It's when tomorrow when a Christian, respectable Iraqi would run
for the Presidency, then we will go into the fight to amend a con-
stitution that might now have reference to Islam.
The point is this: Can we force the inviolable rights of the indi-
vidual in a new constitution? I think millions of Iraqis will fight
for that. Can we then move from that, use that as a basis in 3
years to fight for the right that, yes, you said we take the teachings