Excerpts from ‘Saddam’ tape

Following are exceprts from an audiotape, broadcast on Sunday, purported to be from ousted Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein.

O great nation, under God’s grace, O brave mujahidiin (holy fighters) and the nation of martyrdom beloved by God….

May every year find you in good health and blessed be Ramadan and the Eid which follows it and may your fast be accepted, God willing.

May God make this month of Ramadan the beginning of victory and its foundation as it has been in the past….

O brothers and sons, we said before the US-Zionist-British aggression and by those who supported them against Iraq, that the evil alliance can harm Iraq – kill, destroy, rob – and at the same time reveal the truth of America and Zionism.

For (regardless) of their slogans, through which they duped whomsoever was duped… we said that the evildoers would not be able to occupy Iraq and colonise it.

They said then and imagined and made others imagine, that they were going on a picnic to occupy Iraq and destroy what they called weapons of mass destruction which was the initial justification for their great crime after the crime of planting Zionists in the Arab world.

What are they saying now and what is the truth? They are saying, as are others around the world, the same thing that we have told them before the aggression: that Iraq has no weapons and Iraq will resist their evil intentions to occupy it and maintain their forces and influence in it.

God willing, the evildoers put themselves in a crisis God meant for them, for reasons only He sees and which we cannot.

The liars of the United States and Britain are touring the world to beg money, troops and positions. Some responded out of embarrassment, fear or greed with hundreds of troops or some hundreds of millions of dollars and may they be cursed by God and human kind. Some refused to give anything and they have our appreciation and that of our people.

The thwarted ones know that the fires of great Iraq –  which God blessed with jihad (holy war) and resistance after faith – will swallow hundreds of troops and they will not find what they planned or hoped for.

Those that serve Zionism, the liars of the black house (White House) admit this reality and the truth that the agents they brought with them after their tanks and armies entered Iraq – like dogs accompanying convoys – have not the least bit of weight or influence with the faithful Iraqi people.

They cannot even walk in the streets of Baghdad or any Iraqi city. They are considering their failure and their envoys are going to Arab states for what they call advice regarding Iraq.

We tell them and others that though Iraq is part of the (Arab) nation and can, under the right circumstances, play a leading role, it has a chemical mix unique to it which can only be understood by its sons or the faithful sons of its nation….

Iraq’s faithful children (will) return, based on the free decision of the Iraqi people to once again run its affairs. The Iaqi people have tried and known them for tens of years and know that they love (Iraq) and work for it and are serious in all they say and do, and that they do not work for themselves.

They know they are faithful, even if they make mistakes. Let this all happen with the soldiers of the aggression and occupation outside of Iraq and let there be an end to any illegal foreign influence in Iraq as it was before this. This is the only solution….

Let them try other months and other times to harvest other lives, destroy and rob but they will only find disappointment and more American, British and other deaths….

Fighting them… is a legitimate, patriotic and humanitarian duty and the occupiers have no choice but to leave our country Iraq, the country of Arabs and Islam, as cursed losers….

The path of jihad and resistance is the best path under God, human kind and history, and is the only path which will guarantee the expulsion of the tyrannical foreign forces from our country and grant total freedom and sovereignty to our people in their land.

God is greatest, God is greatest and long live Iraq, long live Iraq. Long live our great nation and long live Palestine, free and Arab from the sea to the river.

Source: Reuters