So who should form the interim government?

America should pay a lot more attention two to three months before the war to working with the opposition to form what is going to become the nucleus of a provisional government inside Iraq. That's what's missing, because a large number of people want to keep their options open, and when you start working with a leadership, you're committed to whatever that leadership is about. I think it should be about democracy.

Make your choice of leadership over the lowest common denominator. I've not found the United States administration willing to do that. The primary driving force is this magic word "inclusiveness." In the name of "inclusiveness" you include Islamists from Tehran, Baathists, and every Tom, Dick and Harry. The goal is being pushed to the extreme at the expense of the emergence of true leadership.

Did the London conference bring you any closer to the goal of creating a democratic leadership?

It's an improvement over what existed before, but it falls short of what could have been. It was a good conference. There was a sense of unity in the opposition. It broke up some of the major groupings created by the CIA and State Department to block the emergence of a democratic leadership.

What groupings were those?

What used to be called the Group of Four -- four parties that were singled out of the Iraqi National Congress, who were bribed out by the CIA and the State Department in March and April.

So new alliances were created at the conference?

We're entering into a new phase. A leadership committee has emerged of some 65 people. Fifteen to 20 percent are from our group. Democrats and independents played a major role at this conference. Our document, "The Transition to Democracy in Iraq," was the major document. It's going to be adopted by some of the groups and its discourse will start to penetrate. We're making plans to distribute thousands of copies inside Iraq itself.

Your vision of an egalitarian, demilitarized Iraq is one that might appeal specifically to liberals, and you've said that liberals have an obligation to make democratic change happen in Iraq. But don't liberals also have an obligation to stand against this war if they fear it will unleash bloody chaos throughout the Middle East? Isn't that a threat?

I think that's wildly exaggerated. Of course if things go wrong there could be a mess, but Iraqis have to have a new beginning, and in order to have a new beginning in this part of the world, Iraq is going to have to go through something. There's a major totalitarian dictatorship that's been there for 30-odd years. Changes, let there be changes. The Middle East is a mess. Keeping that stable is not a desirable objective for any liberal or person interested in human welfare.

But since you say there's a possibility that a war could create a mess, isn't it rash to leap into it? Especially since there's no reason to trust this administration to follow through on its promises?

Things are already a mess. The country's already fragmented. Everything about Iraq today is unstable. If in a year or two the regime crumbles, true chaos will descend. We have a chance to do it right.

We have an obligation to make democratic change happen in Iraq. There's going to be regime change. If these people are involved, the chances of it being done right would be infinitely greater.

The thing I fear most of all would be an 11th-hour coup which the United States opts to support. If there were a strong liberal agenda of support for democratic change in Iraq, the chance of that happening would be infinitely smaller. But where are the liberals? They're denying that democratic change is likely to happen in the first place.

So you believe we should take Bush at his word when he talks about democracy in the Middle East?

Exactly. In politics, that's always the best thing to do. Take the values upon which they stand and press them. Assume those values are as valid for other people as for yourselves and push George Bush to the wall, make him hold up to his promises. We would all be infinitely better off if that's what liberals were doing instead of opposing the war.

It's as though liberals can't see what's clearly about to unfold in front of their eyes. They're blind because of past prejudices about individuals in power in the United States, and they're letting those block their perception of the values upon which they stand.

You're a champion of the human-rights case for regime change in Iraq. The obvious rejoinder to that is that there are many countries in the world with brutal, repressive dictators, and the United States can't go after them all. What makes Iraq different?

First, Max van der Stoel, the U.N.'s special rapporteur for human rights, issued a definitive report saying that Iraq is the worst violator of human rights since World War II. Iraq's government is not ordinarily nasty -- it's extraordinarily nasty and dangerous, especially to its own population.

Second, Saddam has a deep-seated obsession with developing weapons. It's sort of like Hitler in the Final Solution -- there's an irrational streak to the whole thing. Here's a regime on the verge of having a major war launched for its demise, and its still busy concealing these weapons of mass destruction. You can take this argument as far back as you like in the last 10 years. After the Gulf War, Saddam could have truly allowed U.N. inspectors to do their work, then waited five years and climbed back into international respectability and started all over again. He didn't do that, and that tells you a lot.

What would you say to liberals who oppose the war?

Think this question through from the point of view of what people in Iraq have been through, not from the point of view of your agendas at home.

You do not want to be where you're putting yourself today. In your deepest heart of hearts, you don't want to be there. If you are there, it's because you're ignorant of what's going on inside Iraq. But the very people who stand to suffer the most are asking you to do this, and you of all people should be behind it.

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