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HomeIran News NowCamp Ashraf / Liberty NewsMayor Rudi Giuliani - Time To Stand Up To Iran

Mayor Rudi Giuliani – Time To Stand Up To Iran

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26, 2012 – Former US Officials Urge Formation of Commission of Inquiry About Conditions at Camp Liberty, Iraq, Where Hundreds of Iranian Dissidents Have Relocated.

Mayor Rudi Giuliani: Thank you very much, Tom.  Thank you. As Alan Dershowitz said, I’m very honored to be here on behalf of this cause.  I can’t think of any better cause right now that someone can be espousing than trying to first of all protect these innocent people who already have had almost 40 of their members just last year killed and slaughtered by Maliki and the Iraqi government at the behest of Iran, had hundreds injured.   And the risk of that happening is not some fiction.  It’s something we have actually seen happen over the last year. So let me see if I can summarize why we’re here and make some practical suggestions about what we can do.

We’re for three reasons, at least that’s why I’m here: One is to make sure that my country, the United States of America, lives up to its promise. After all, a person’s word is their bond and the same thing is true of a nation.   If a nation makes promises and then reneges on those promises, what happens to the honor of the United States and the honor of my own country? Yes, I’m deeply concerned about the lives  and safety of the people of Ashraf as you are, but I’m also concerned about the honor and dignity of the United States of America.

We made a promise to these people when they gave up their arms that we would protect them and we are obligated.  We have no discretion here.  We’re obligated to fulfill that promise.  And I don’t want my nation disgraced by reneging on that promise.  So that is maybe the first and most important reason that I’m hear. And the United States of America has turned its back to the people of Ashraf.  There’s no other way to describe it, I wish I could say something different. I am very upset for that reason and I’m embarrassed and very sad because I hate to say that about my country. We promised these people protection and since that time almost 406 them have been slaughtered because we turned our back.

It’s time to say no more, not again, never again will we allow the people of Ashraf to be killed and to be tortured and to be abused by Maliki.  Never again. (Applause.) MR. Second, we’re here to urge the State Department to stop delaying and finally act on de-listing the MEK.  My goodness.  They’re supposed to act in 180 days.  It’s been a year and a half.  A year and a half since the court ordered the State Department to make a decision.  A year and a half for State Department to consider the facts.  Believe me, this is not a difficult situation.

The history of MEK is clear.  Hundreds, if not thousands of people have gone over it, come to the conclusion that the MEK is not a terrorist organization.  If it ever was one, it certainly is not one today.  The United Kingdom made that decision.  The European Union has made that decision.  Former heads of the FBI, the CIA, our military organizations and countless others.  Former Attorneys’ General of the United States have come forward and said that.

The former head of the FBI said, they shouldn’t have been listed in the first place.

What the heck is taking so long in deciding this?  This is an easy decision.  I am perplexed as to why it hasn’t been decided.  But I think I have, at least I have a suspicion as to why it hasn’t been decided and it’s really the third reason that I’m here.

It’s about time that my government stops

being a supplicant to the ayatollah and to the Mullahs. It’s about time we stop begging them to talk to us and to be nice to us.  This is absurd and it’s more than absurd, it’s dangerous.

I wrote a book with leadership and one of the chapters says, you have to stand up to bullies because if you don’t stand up to bullies you encourage them and they take advantage of you

Best example of that, of course, was the lead up to the II World War, Chamberlain and Hitler. We are reproducing history yet again.

So I’m here to say it’s time to stand up to Iran and it is time to stop begging them and act as a supplicant to Iran and it’s time to stand up for regime change in Iran. (Applause.)

Let’s look at all three briefly.

First of all, all the people in Ashraf have laid down their arms a long time ago.  They were given a promise that they would not be hurt.  They would not be harmed.  That promise did not come from some abstract entity.  It came from the United States of America.so-called Camp Liberty.  Now, we saw the pictures and, of course, we have seen the analysis.  Camp Liberty has no water, it has no electricity at night.  Camp Liberty is not designed to be a place where they should be staying for any more than a day or two, if at all.

What does Camp Liberty look like to me and to I think many of the people on this panel and people who have looked at this issue in the past.  For different reasons, Alan Dershowitz and I have been in many jails.  Right Alan? (Laughter.)

MR. GIULIANI:  Sometimes on different sides of why that person was in jail.

This is not a relocation camp.  I have seen relocation camps.  I know what relocation camps look like.  And I know what jails look like.  This isn’t a jail.  This is a concentration camp.  That’s what it is.  This is a concentration camp.  Let’s call it what it is.

This is worse than any facility I’ve ever seen having been at one time in charge of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and another time responsible for the New York City jail system, Rikers Island, materially better than this.  This is a concentration camp.

Why are we allowing people who are under our protection to go to a concentration camp and here’s the question that plagues me and really bothers me, why are we relocating them at all? (Applause.)

If the purpose is to send them to other countries that will accept them as refugees, then why can’t we do that from Camp Ashraf. It’s perfectly — has all the facilities.  UN is perfectly capable of having its people conduct the proceedings there.  All these people have made application already.  So this doesn’t have to be a time consuming process.

There’s absolutely no reason, no good reason, no decent reason that they should be transported anywhere, much less to a concentration camp.  What have they done to deserve being put in a concentration camp; if anybody ever deserves to be put in a concentration camp.

So excuse me if I’m suspicious as to why Maliki is doing this.  And excuse me if I don’t think he’s doing it because he’s being told to do it by the

Mullahs, by the Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad and all those maniacs in Iran. (Applause.)

I’ve mentioned the de-listing, but just so it is clear, this organization has for a long time disavowed violence, supported religious freedom in Iran, supported a secular government in Iran, supported democracy in Iran, supported the rule of law in Iran and supports a non-nuclear Iran.

The only other thing they could possibly do that would make them more American than that is to root for the New York Yankees. (Laughter.)

Okay, or the Red Socks or the Phillies or the Chicago — White Socks.  I better get the right team.  If I said the Cubs I’d be in deep trouble. (Laughter.)

I mean, what else are they supposed to do?  They haven’t engaged in violence. There’s no record of that.  They support everything we support.  My goodness, they’re on our side against the regime that’s one of the worst in the world.  And they’ve paid for that belief with their blood.  So what else do we need?

And I really ask Secretary Clinton, for whom I have the greatest respect, and who I think is doing by and large a very good job as Secretary of State.  And I don’t say that often about democrats.  I wouldn’t say that about Mayor Daly, he knows. (Laugher.)

And I’m not sure I’d say the same thing about the president.  But I do say it about the Secretary of State.  And I wonder about this, I don’t understand it.  Secretary Clinton, my goodness, this is so obvious.  De-list them.

this is so obvious.  De-list them. isn’t about raising money in the United States.  It’s about the lives and death of these people in Ashraf as well.  Because the fact that they’re listed as a terrorist organization is one of the excuses that Maliki uses for slaughtering them.

So this has become a part and parcel of a whole process of murdering people.  So I don’t understand what they’re waiting for.  But I have a suspicion and it’s the third thing that I want to mention.

I’m afraid that this is part of this irrational thinking that we can negotiate with Iran. That we can talk to Iran.  That we can charm Iran.

After all, President Obama is writing letters to the Ayatollah.  I urge the president, don’t write him anymore letters. (Laughter.)

Haven’t you got it yet?  He doesn’t want your letters.  He’s basically told you to go to, you-know-where.  And when somebody tells me to go to — I know exactly what to do.

How about we stand up against him?  How about we stop this stupidity that Iran is a rational actor?  I have great respect for the man who said that, but I have to suspect they give him something in his drink in the morning that did something to his rationality. Iran is not a rational actor.  Iran has slaughtered hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, including your people whose pictures are in a book that Madam Rajavi has shown me, and I’ve looked through and seen their faces and their families and I’ve seen the people they’ve slaughtered.

This is a regime that held American hostages.  This is a regime that has killed Americans. This is a regime who is actively killing American soldiers whose families are now suffering from the loss of their loved ones.

This is a regime who just a few months ago got indicted by the Obama Administration for trying to assassinate the Saudi Arabian Ambassador right here in the nation’s capital.  That’s an act of war.  And we

call them a rational actor?

This is my great nightmare.  It used to be during the cold war nuclear weapons in the hands of insane people.  I’m sorry, the Ayatollah, Ahmadinejad has done everything to convince me that these people are not rational actors.  I’m sorry, they’re doing a good pretense of being insane.  They’re doing a good pretense of being maniacs.  Denying the Holocaust, wanting to slaughter the people of Israel, killing American soldiers, and wanting to kill the Saudi Arabian Ambassador here in this city.

Should these people be allowed to have nuclear weapons?  No way, no how, never, ever.

Instead of begging with them and pleading with them, instead of America being a supplicant, American should reinvent Ronald Reagan.  It’s time for Ronald Reagan, not Neville Chamberlain.

It’s time for President Obama to become Ronald Reagan, and to look him straight in the eye and call them what they are, an evil empire.  To do what Ronald Reagan did and point missiles at their city and to get the people of the Soviet leadership to believe that he wasn’t reluctant to attack them, he’s waiting for an opportunity to do it because that’s how you change, that’s how you change the calculus here. That’s how you change the leverage.

Instead of looking at a president who looks so reluctant, he will never act; they should be looking at a president that they afraid of, that they are frightened of, that they are worried will use the greatest military in the history of the world to stop them from becoming a nuclear power.  And believe me, if we do that, the chance of having to use that military power goes down dramatically because bullies can be frightened if you stand up to them and if you don’t let them take advantage of you.

And I fear the reason they will not change this designation is they retain this irrational thought that they can negotiate with Iran.  They cannot negotiate with Iran.

Iran will only understand the exercise of American power and the exercise of American firmness and the exercise of American resolve.  And if there was ever a time to do it, it’s now when we’re on the side of right and justice and trying to save the lives of people.

So thank you very much for your support and thank you for including me. (Applause.)