The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan I respectfully say to the American people, if you remain silent in an hour like this, then you will deserve the consequences of what President Bush is about to do. Because when you take part in that which is evil, then the consequence of that evil, you share in that.

In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.

Last night, the President of the United States came before the American people to make the case against Saddam Hussein and Iraq, and to set forth the predicate for war. It was a brilliant speech—sober, brilliant, appealing to the grieving American people. The question that I ask, and that the American people should and must ask, is ‘what is the basis of the speech that the President made last night?’

Is it based on truth and in actual fact? We must plum that speech, because we are not permitted to make judgment on assumptions, to make judgment on "maybe," "ifs" and "what I believe to be the case." Once we assume something to be true, we must not make the judgment on the assumption, but the assumption should lead us to find the actual fact. And based on the actual fact or truth, then we have the rationale to find the solution to the problem at hand, coming out of actual facts.

Our teacher, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, told us, as his students, that we could never arrive at a just conclusion without first seeking and knowing the actual facts. What the President laid out last night was a brilliant case, but a case not made on actual facts. And if the actual facts are not present, then to commit this nation to war on assumptions, on "ifs" and "maybes" and "if this" and "perhaps that," then American lives will be lost on the basis of bad judgment and the lives of Iraqis will be lost on the basis of bad judgment. In the Bible and in the Holy Qur’an, wicked rulers veiled the eyes of the people with falsehood, that they would take falsehood for truth and truth for falsehood.

If we listened to our President last night, we would be ready this morning to give him the vote that he asked for, and get ready for war. But if we are wise people to question the President and ask him, sir, what are the actual facts, then we might get answers that we would not be willing to rush to judgment on.

For instance, "Saddam Hussein is the greatest threat to world peace." Truth or falsehood? What is the actual fact? Here is a man whose country is 6,000 miles from here, or more. He has no rockets to reach these shores, no bombs to reach these shores, but the President says: "He has weapons of mass destruction." What is the proof of that?

Since 1998, when the inspectors left—he didn’t kick them out. They left because 95 percent of their work, according to the head, which was Mr. Butler, was done. Five percent needed to be done, but America did not want the sanctions on Iraq lifted. After America told them to come out, bombs fell on Iraq for four days. What was the result of that? There were spies inserted among the UNSCOM inspectors to find out where he was and where his cache of conventional weapons were, because they had already destroyed 95 percent of the weapons of mass destruction that they found.

They say that this man, Saddam Hussein, has gassed his own people, started a war with Iran. But who was at the base of it? If you want to be truthful, don’t say a half-truth, tell the whole truth. When Imam Khomeini came to power in Iran and threatened the Gulf area, Saudi Arabia sent $80 billion to Iraq, and with the backing of the United States of America, Iraq went to war with Iran. Fact. If they used weapons of mass destruction, they got the technology from whom? The United States of America. With the $80 billion that Saudi gave to Iraq, they spent much of it with France, to build the atomic reactor—for peaceful purposes—that Israel bombed as soon as it was built.

So, now, is this man the greatest threat to world peace, or is it the President of the United States? It seems like there are only three nations that want to attack Iraq; Israel, Britain and the United States. Where is the rest of the world? The rest of the world has said to President Bush, they do not advise this. Turkey said, we do not advise this. Kuwait said, we do not advise this. Saudi Arabia said, we do not advise this. These are the neighbors of President Saddam Hussein, so if they don’t feel threatened by him, why is America threatened?

Just ask questions, brothers and sisters, because peace and war is serious today. Because if the nation goes to war, we, as Black people, have over 400,000 young Black men and women in the armed services of the United States, along with Hispanics and Arabs and Asians and poor Whites.

The rich are not there. The Cheneys of the world, the Bushes of the world, the Rumsfelds of the world, the Perles and the Wolfowitzs of the world, they are not there; but our sons and daughters, our cousins, our aunts, our uncles are there. And they are patriotic, but their patriotism should not be manipulated by the President with lies and half-truths and assumptions and maybes. Let’s look at some more of these so-called truths.

"He disobeyed 18 resolutions of the UN." True. How many did Israel disobey? Why don’t you bring that up? There have been over 91 UN resolutions not followed, most of them by Israel. There would have been more, but the U.S. has used their veto over 50 times on resolutions condemning Israel for this or that. So, if now the United Nations is going to be made irrelevant if it doesn’t do what America wants, is it also irrelevant because it has not done for Israel or Morocco or Turkey or others?

The President, brilliant as his speech was, sober as it was, he did not tell the absolute truth. He says, we do not want war; war is not inevitable. And he sets the bar so high on Saddam: "if he does not disarm É if he does not disarm É" Then his surrogates that are out speaking are saying, "We don’t know where the weapons of mass destruction are. After all, the country is as big as France, so he could hide weapons of mass destruction anywhere. So the only way we can be sure that he has given up weapons of mass destruction, we must have a regime change."

Now, is that in harmony with international law? No, it is not. No government, no matter what you think of that ruler, has the right to go into another man’s house and change that leadership under the pretext that he is addicted to weapons of mass destruction—that he does not have, but America has, England has, France has, Israel has. And these three great nations have been the tyrants that have subjugated Africa, Asia and the nations of the world. Yet they have it, but no other nation should have it. And America has said any nation that will threaten American military superiority, she feels she has the right for a preemptive strike.

This is the Bush doctrine—preemptive strike—from the greatest military power on the earth, that a perceived threat is a justification to unleash the terrible power of America’s military might.

I thank God for those Congresspersons, White and Black, who are standing up to say let us not be like sheep herded into this vote. But I think the President will get the vote that he seeks. Senator Byrd is correct; it is only the U.S. Congress that has the right to make war. To send the militia of the United States to quell insurrection and to ward off threats from outside, that’s the priority of the Congress. This resolution, if it will pass in the form that it was given, would give the President the power to make war, as an individual.

He said, "I have a personal reason here. This man tried to kill my dad." Truth or falsehood? Seymour Hirsch wrote in the New Yorker Magazine in 1993 that this was false. Why would Saddam want to kill the ex-president? No matter how he felt about President Bush, that would bring on him the swift retaliation of the greatest nation on earth. It is said, by those who are wise, and Seymour Hirsch examined that carefully, that this was concocted because President Clinton wanted to find some way of rapprochement with Iraq, and the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington did not want that. So, the CIA concocted this kind of story, and now evidence has been sent to the President that this is not so, but he keeps saying it.

"He gassed his own people." U.S. Army War College has scholars and scientists that would say, yeah, he did use gas. He did, against the Iranians, and they used it too and America looked the other way, hoping that Iraq would win, but not come out strong. So when the war was over, the power of Iran was weakened, but Iraq still had military strength that had to be destabilized, in order to protect Israel.

Now the truth of the matter is the UN resolution 687, article 14 says the whole Middle East should be clean of weapons of mass destruction—not just Iraq, but Israel as well. Nobody has said anything to Israel, but Israel has atomic weapons, all of the weapons of mass destruction. Israel has the rockets to deliver them anywhere in the Arab world, and what America and her allies do not want is any Arab nation to have that kind of power to bring about dŽtente, or balance, so that negotiations could come and a peace agreement that is just be settled between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

In my conclusion, this is supposed to be a government of, by, and for the American people. Over the years, democracy is being eroded because of corporate dollars spent on Congress and powerful lobbies that manipulate those whom we send to Congress, that their vote may be in favor of these lobbies rather than speak the will of the American people.

Three weeks ago, in the halls of the Senate, the former prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu urged American senators to go to war with Iraq. Imagine the arrogance of a foreign national to come to the Congress of the United States and urge the senators to send our children to war. It is the tail wagging the dog.

I respectfully say to the American people, if you remain silent in an hour like this, then you will deserve the consequences of what President Bush is about to do. Because when you take part in that which is evil, then the consequence of that evil, you share in that.

I say to the pastors and the preachers and the teachers, we are to be the ambassadors of Christ and Muhammad for peace. If we see our president in error, it is our duty to speak truth to power. Otherwise, we are unfit to stand before the people as servants of God.

I thank God that I live in the United States of America, where the framers of the Constitution give me the right of dissent and the right of free speech, which I hope to exercise responsibly. I am not crying fire where there is no fire in a theater. I am crying out to the American people to rise up, because your president is the world threat to peace.