Memorial service for Ayatollah Muhammed Baqir Al-Hakim - Speeches - Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz - Transcript

US Department of Defense Speeches, Sept 27, 2003

Recently, an American couple received a letter from their son, 1st Lieutenant John G. Gibson, who is stationed in Baghdad with the 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. It was Lt. Gibson's birthday, and he wrote:

   "[T]he hardship endured by myself, my men, my battalion, and this
   Army are not in vain.... Our work is not done.... I see things here,
   on a daily basis that hurt the human heart.... However, I see the
   hope in the eyes of many Iraqis, a new hope for a chance to govern
   themselves in a new way of life. I think that they are on the cusp
   of a new adventure."

I cannot say enough about the thousands of young American and British and Polish and Spanish and Danish and Italian and many other men and women who, like this writer, have dutifully gone off to war in a foreign country. They are best that the United States has to offer and the best that our Coalition partners have to offer. And they are joined by wonderful, brave, young Iraqis.

Some of them will not be coming home again. But the sentiments this young man expressed are shared by most of his fellow soldiers and by millions of people who will never set foot in Iraq. They know what is at stake.

One of those who fell in battle--a young soldier named James Kiehl--was buried recently in his hometown of Comfort, Texas. He was 22 years old. He left behind a wife and a little child. But when he was called to duty, he told his father, "I've got a job to do, and I'm going to do it. I'm not going to raise my son in fear of terrorism. And this," he said, "is the first step in eliminating it."

James Kiehl gave everything he had to that cause. On the day of his funeral, a thousand people in that small town turned up at church. Later, his aunt wrote a letter that described the scene as they left the service to go to the cemetery. She never intended that letter to be seen by anyone but a few friends. But one of those friends posted it on the Internet, and a copy found its way to the Pentagon. And I asked her permission if I could read a few lines from that letter today.

"When we turn off the highway," she wrote, "suddenly there were teenage boys along both sides of the street about every 20 feet or so, all holding large American flags on long flag poles, and with their hands on their hearts.... It continued ... for two-and-a-half miles.... Some held signs of love and support.... [T]he love and pride from this community who had lost one of their own was the most amazing thing I've ever been privileged to witness."

So as we leave here today, I pray that we will remember the sacrifices of all those--Iraqis, Americans, Coalition troops, and U.N. personnel, and this great leader Ayatollah Muhammed Baqir Al-Hakim--who gave their lives for a free Iraq. And the best way to honor their memory is to finish their work. It is a great and noble cause.

And let there be no mistake. The killing of Said Baqir Al-Hakim--and of Akila Al-Hashimi and Sergio de-Mello and Michael Andrade and Sgt. Robert Rooney--was the work of committed terrorists, who seek to create havoc in Iraq, to destroy every movement forward, who oppose freedom and liberty and would take Iraq back to the torture and killing of Saddam Hussein or some other tyranny.