Question: Hi, Lyn. I'm Muslim, and I follow my religion very closely, not as closely as the FBI follows it.

I wanted your intake on the fact that, after the regime change in Iraq, the Iraqi people are demanding the system of God, and not any man-made system. They want to establish caliphate, or falafeh, and not any man-made system like capitalism, socialism, democracy, or communism.

LaRouche: I don't think that that's clear. What you have is several things going on.

What you have is a situation of chaos, which was produced by this intervention, and by other factors. Iraq has been divided, essentially, into three principal states, or maybe more, but essentially it's Kurdish, it's Shi'ite, and it's Central Iraq, which is identified by the Ba'ath.

Now the Shi'ites are not so simple, because there are two major groups of Shi'ites, that is, in terms of nationality. You have Arab Shi'ites, and you have Iranian Shi'ites. And not all -- and some of the Shi'ites in Iran are Arab Shi'ites, because the southern part of Iran contains an Arab population as part of Iran, even though they speak Iranian. And so forth. There's still that culture left in the Bakhtiar part.

All right, so, now what's happened is, that with the disintegration of Iraq, what has happened is, you have different factions in Iran, Shi'ite factions in Iran, and different Shi'ite factions in Iraq, are all contending for power. There's a state of chaos, which threatens to involve the neighboring countries, in chaos spilling over from there.

At the same time, you have the Kurdish section, with two major Kurdish sections, among which many are essentially warlords. The characteristic of the mountain areas of many of the Kurds, are, they tend to be warlord families. And the quarrels among them are traditional. Now the Kurdish population intersects not only Northern Iraq, it also includes part of Iran, it also includes extensive parts of Turkey, and goes into the Transcaucasus area generally, which is part of the same mountain system. There's an impulse among the Kurds to set up Kurdistan: the idea of taking all the areas which are Kurdish in ethnic background, and in the majority of the population, from Iran, from Iraq, from Transcaucasia, and from Turkey, and establishing Kurdistan.

Now, there's not agreement among the forces, among the Kurds, on what kind of a government they'd form. Because they have traditional conflicts. And various agencies, including U.S. agencies, have been playing games out there.

The Iranians, apart from having their own internal differences on these things, and the Arab Shi'ites, who include things like the biggest turnout there was essentially the flagellant Shi'ites, who were one of the biggest contingents that turned out at Kerbala. So, there is no clear understanding of what kind of a state to create, in former Iraq. There's a conflict, among Shi'ites, and with other groups, on what to do.

What's required is simply this: the United States has made a mess of the situation. The Israelis now want the United States to get out quickly, because the Israelis see that what was happening in terms of the religious conflicts which have been engendered, and set into motion, and including religious warfare, among various religious factions, this becomes an impossible situation, and becomes a source of threat to Israel itself. Therefore, the Israelis are pushing their stooges in Cheney's part of the U.S. government, to pull the U.S. forces out of there quickly, by forming a quick government and leaving. Which would be an absolute disaster.

The condition of Iraq now is in a state of disaster. U.S. forces are in there, the country doesn't function, disease is spreading, life in general is endangered, therefore the United States has responsibility, in a sense, to stay there, but with the approval of the United Nations, to at least build up the infrastructure of the country, so that, in a quiet and peaceful way, some kind of unified government can emerge from among the Iraqi people in general. And therefore, the religious conflicts have to be kept quiet now. And let them settle down. And let people peacefully resolve on what they want to do with their own future. Not be stampeded into struggles among different factions, including struggles among different Shi'ite factions, some of whom have been killing each other, already.

So, this is not a unified Shi'ite movement, which is trying to take over Iraq. No. It's a movement already... grand ayatollahs have been slaughtered, as part of the religious warfare which has broken out among different factions in that areas.

So, what's needed now is a process of pacification, in the sense of positive construction effort, to bring stability to that part of the world, and the United States has the leading responsibility.

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