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To: kcvl
I know that the other thread has the speech also, but here is the remainder so that it is complete on this thread also:

A new Iraq will also need a humane, well-supervised prison system. Under the dictator, prisons like Abu Ghraib were symbols of death and torture. That same prison became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values.

America will fund the construction of a modern maximum security prison.

When that prison is completed, detainees at Abu Ghraib will be relocated. Then with the approval of the Iraqi government, we will demolish the Abu Ghraib Prison as a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning.

The fourth step in our plan is to enlist additional international support for Iraq's transition.

At every stage, the United States has gone to the United Nations to confront Saddam Hussein, to promise serious consequences for his actions and to begin Iraqi reconstruction.

Today the United States and Great Britain presented a new resolution in the Security Council to help move Iraq toward self-government.

I directed Secretary Powell to work with fellow members of the council to endorse the timetable the Iraqis have adopted, to express international support for Iraq's interim government, to reaffirm the world's security commitment to the Iraqi people and to encourage other U.N. members to join in the effort.

Despite past disagreements, most nations have indicated strong support for the success of a free Iraq, and I am confident they will share in the responsibility of assuring that success.

Next month at the NATO summit in Istanbul, I will thank our 15 NATO allies who together have more than 17,000 troops on the ground in Iraq.

Great Britain and Poland are each leading a multinational division that is securing important parts of the country. And NATO itself is giving helpful intelligence and communications and logistical support to the Polish-led division.

At the summit, we will discuss NATO's role in helping Iraq build and secure its democracy.

The fifth, and most important step is free national elections, to be held no later than next January.

A United Nations team headed by Carina Perelli is now in Iraq helping form an independent election commission that will oversee an orderly accurate national election. In that election, the Iraqi people will choose a transitional national assembly, the first freely elected, truly representative national governing body in Iraq's history.

This assembly will serve as Iraq's legislature and it will choose a transitional government with executive powers. The transitional national assembly will also draft a new constitution, which will be presented to the Iraqi people in a referendum scheduled for the fall of 2005.

Under this new constitution, Iraq will elect a permanent government by the end of next year.

In this time of war and liberation and rebuilding, American soldiers and civilians on the ground have come to know and respect the citizens of Iraq. They're a proud people who hold strong and diverse opinions.

Yet Iraqis are united in a broad and deep conviction. They're determined never again to live at the mercy of a dictator.

And they believe that a national election will put that dark time behind them.

A representative government that protects basic rights, elected by Iraqis, is the best defense against the return of tyranny. And that election is coming.

Completing the five steps to Iraqi elected self-government will not be easy. There's likely to be more violence before the transfer of sovereignty and after the transfer of sovereignty. The terrorists and Saddam loyalists would rather see many Iraqis die than have any live in freedom.

But terrorists will not determine the future of Iraq.

That nation is moving every week toward free elections and a permanent place among free nations. Like every nation that has made the journey to democracy, Iraqis will raise up a government that reflects their own culture and values.

I sent American troops to Iraq to defend our security, not to stay as an occupying power. I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American.

Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way.

As they do, Iraqis can be certain a free Iraq will always have a friend in the United States of America.

In the last 32 months, history has placed great demands on our country and events have come quickly.

Americans have seen the flames of September 11th, followed battles in the mountains of Afghanistan and learned new terms like orange alert and ricin and dirty bomb.

We've seen killers at work on trains in Madrid, in a bank in Istanbul, in a synagogue in Tunis and at a nightclub in Bali. And now the families of our soldiers and civilian workers pray for their sons and daughters in Mosul, in Karbala, in Baghdad.

We did not seek this war on terror, but this is the world as we find it. We must keep our focus. We must do our duty.

History is moving and it will tend toward hope or tend toward tragedy.

Our terrorist enemies have a vision that guides and explains all their varied acts of murder. They seek to impose Taliban-like rule country by country across the greater Middle East.

They seek the total control of every person in mind and soul; a harsh society in which women are voiceless and brutalized. They seek bases of operation to train more killers and export more violence. They commit dramatic acts of murder to shock, frighten and demoralize civilized nations, hoping we will retreat from the world and give them free rein.

They seek weapons of mass destruction to impose their will through blackmail and catastrophic attacks.

None of this is the expression of a religion. It is a totalitarian, political ideology pursued with consuming zeal and without conscious.

Our actions, too, are guided by a vision.

We believe that freedom can advance and change lives in the greater Middle East as it has advanced and changed lives in Asia, in Latin America, in Eastern Europe and Africa. We believe it is a tragedy of history that in the Middle East, which gave the world great gifts of law and science and faith, so many have been held back by lawless tyranny and fanaticism.

We believe that when all Middle Eastern peoples are finally allowed to live and think and work and worship as free men and women, they will reclaim the greatness of their own heritage. And when that day comes, the bitterness and burning hatreds that feed terrorism will fade and die away.

America and all the world will be safer when hope has returned to the Middle East. These two visions - one of tyranny and murder, the other of liberty and life - clashed in Afghanistan. And thanks to brave U.S. and coalition forces and to Afghan patriots, the nightmare of the Taliban is over and that nation is coming to life again.

These two visions have now met in Iraq and are contending for the future of that country.

The failure of freedom would only mark the beginning of peril and violence. But, my fellow Americans, we will not fail. We will persevere and defeat this enemy and hold this hard-won ground for the realm of liberty.

May God bless our country.


1,023 posted on 05/24/2004 6:45:04 PM PDT by CedarDave ("Top Secret": Classification used by the media to prevent delivery of positive news on Bush or Iraq)
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To: CedarDave

Bump!! God bless your summary and your caring!!


1,032 posted on 05/24/2004 6:47:01 PM PDT by BobFromNJ
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To: CedarDave

THANK YOU!


1,041 posted on 05/24/2004 6:48:26 PM PDT by kcvl
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