NCRI – A bi-partisan panel of members of U.S. Congress and senior former public officials and national security experts entitled “U.S. Policy, Iran and Camp Ashraf: The panel, held at the U.S. House of Representatives to make it the policy of the United States to “prevent the forcible relocation of Camp Ashraf residents inside Iraq and facilitate the robust presence of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq in Camp Ashraf.”
The House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL); Rep. Bob Filner, (D-CA), Co-Chair, Iran Human Rights and Democracy Caucus; Representatives “Judge” Ted Poe (R-TX); Judy Chu (D-CA); Dan Lungren (R-CA); Trent Franks (R-AZ); Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX); and Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) were joined by John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; Andrew Card, former White House Chief of Staff; Michael Mukasey, former Attorney General of the United States; John Sano, former Deputy Director of CIA for National Clandestine Service; Robert Torricelli, former United States Senator; and Professor Steven Schneebaum, Counsel for U.S. families of Camp Ashraf Residents.
Below is an excerpt of the speech by Hom. Bob Filner. Robert Earl Filner is the U.S. Representative for California’s 51st congressional district, and previously the 50th, serving since 1993, and Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs since 2007. Hon. Filner began his advocacy for civil rights at the age of 18 when he became one of the first people to set foot on a Greyhound bus that was headed into the deep south on what would become known as, the Freedom Rides.
Thank you. That you for being here. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you for our panelists. As I said, in Paris where several of us were Ambassador Bolton was not there, but any group that can bring together Bolton, Card, Torricelli and Filner, and now we’ve got Barlett and Poe, anybody that can bring those people together, they got to be doing something right, probably led by a cult leader I guess; but I think we should all hang around, Andy and others, I think we can solve the debt crisis easy enough. If we can do one we can do the debt crises.
I’m here like many of you because we are trying to make sure that this nation and this world does not forget about Camp Ashraf and does not forget about the brave people who are there standing up for democracy and human rights.
You know, I look at Camp Ashraf not only in and of itself, although in it and of itself it’s very important, but as a microcosm of things this nation and this world better do before the final pullout from Iraq takes place, because whether we agree or disagree with whether we should have gone in there — and I think probably Mr. Bolton and I disagree on this, but we’ve been there, we’ve produced an enormous sacrifice of American treasure and blood and we cannot leave there and have Iran take it over.
I mean, Ashraf is sort of the test case here. It was our responsibility as Americans to protect Ashraf. We took on that responsibility. I’m not sure we have somehow we cannot give it up, as easily as we think we have, and the Iranians are telling the Iraqis what to do there, eliminate them.
Well, what happens after we take the full military presence out, are they going to say, are the Iranians going to take over and tell the Iraqis what to do. This would be a tremendous, tremendous defeat for human rights and for world peace.
So Ashraf is sort of the microcosm or test case here. We cannot allow that Ashraf to be eliminated because that means everything we have tried to do in Iraq will be eliminated, in my opinion. I don’t know, Mr. Bolton, do we agree on this one?
JOHN BOLTON: Pretty close.
This could destroy my political career if we agree, and yours. Both of us.
So if we allow Ashraf to just be eliminated and the people there who have stood up for human rights, that have helped us with intelligence to be eliminated basically that foretells what occurs when the Americans fully pull out of Iraq. We cannot allow that to occur. We simply cannot allow that to occur, and whether it’s American troops or UN troops, or some agreement we have got protect Ashraf.
I see that many have said that if we can be relocated into another country safely and as much as possible together we will accept that, but that takes the delisting of MEK as a terrorist group that we must do as a pre-curser to that, but whatever we do there, Ashraf has become the symbol of our resistance to Iranian takeover of not just, of course, Iran but other parts of the Middle East.
We simply cannot allow that to happen. Our protection of Ashraf is a protection of Iraq and it is a symbol of resistance to Iran.
The MEK has, in my opinion, has the best policy for Americans. They say don’t invade Perisa — I’m a historian. I think about 5,000 years ago. I’m sorry.
We can’t invade Iran, but we should not appease those who are existence. Let’s just get out of the way and let the internal resistance do what it must do. There will be elections, hopefully free elections. We’ll see who the most important organization there is. That’s not our concern as Americans. Our concern is to get out of the way and let’s topple that regime or let the Iran people let you all topple that regime. The general is here too. So that message is fairly simple. I think the American people can accept that. The American people wherever we were on Iraq I think have to say we cannot allow Ashraf to fall and we cannot allow Iraq to fall to the Iranians. We must save both.
Thank you so much.
