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RUMSFELD: U.S. Goal to Overthrow Hussein
Friday, September 27, 2002
The Associated Press

Image Credit: KATU TV Stock Photo.

He insisted that he hadn't come with "any particular message," saying he just wanted to take the debate on Iraq outside of Washington. Aides said the interviews and speeches in Atlanta represented the first of a series of trips Rumsfeld would be making to do that.

ATLANTA -- AP
The United States' goal in any war against Iraq would be to overthrow Saddam Hussein, not necessarily to kill him, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday.

Launching a series of speeches across America to spread the Bush administration's anti-Iraq message, Rumsfeld called Saddam a brutal dictator and said Iraq would be better off without him.

"He is a butcher, he tortures people, kills them personally," Rumsfeld said. "He has kept billions and billions and billions of dollars from going to the people of that country because he is determined to have weapons of mass destruction."

But any U.S. invasion of Iraq would be focused on toppling Saddam's government, not killing him, Rumsfeld said.
(More: KATU.com News Source)
2002 © The Associated Press.

Dan