For Immediate Release
October 18, 2004

Global Message

From Secretary of State Powell in an interview on Your World with Neil Cavuto, 10/14/04

The Iraqi people are free. They know that they are better off without Saddam Hussein.

The important thing is to get this insurgency under control by the use of our troops, but more importantly to build up the Iraqi troops, their police forces, their military units, their national guard, their border patrol, and let them take on the larger burden.

The Iraqis see that 140,000 American troops are there working alongside them, and that $18 billion is being spent for reconstruction in Iraq, and part of that money is being used to build up their security forces to take responsibility for the security of the Iraqi people.

We're going to make sure that the Iraqi people get this insurgency under control and that we have elections in January of 2005. And hopefully, they will be elections of the kind that we saw in Afghanistan this past weekend, where people were also telling us elections aren't going to work.

Tens of thousands of Afghans came to the polling places to make their wishes known, and to put in place a government that is of their choice. We want to see that same thing happen in Iraq, and it can happen, as long as we stay the course.