Article written by Paolo Coelho, the well-known Brazilian author, for Le Monde, published on March 18, 2003.
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Thank you, great leader.
Thank you, George W Bush.
Thank you for showing us all the danger Saddam Hussein represents. Many of us perhaps forgot that he had used chemical weapons against its people, against the Kurds, the Iranians. Hussein is a sanguinary dictator, one of the most vivid expressions of the Evil today.
But I have other reasons to thank you. During the first two months of the year 2003, you knew how to show the world many significant things, and for this very reason you deserve my gratitude.
Thank you for showing all of us that the Turkish people and his Parliament are not for sale, even for $26 billion. Thank you for revealing to the world the gigantic abyss which exists between the decisions of the Governs and the will of the People; for revealing clearly that José Maria Aznar and Tony Blair do not have any respect for the voices who elected them and how they don't care at all about them. Aznar is able to ignore the fact that 90 % of the Spaniards are opposed to the war, and Blair couldn't care less about the greatest public demonstration in the last thirty years in England.
Thank you, for your perseverance made Tony Blair walk in the British Parliament with a faked file, written by a student ten years ago, and to present it like "irrefutable evidence collected by the British secret services".
Thank you to have covered Colin Powell with ridicule during the famous Security Council session, with him displaying photos that, one week later, were contested by Hans Blix, the inspector responsible of disarmament of Iraq.
Thank you, because your position brought to Dominique de Villepin - the French foreign affairs minister pronouncing his speech against the war - the honour to be applauded in UN plenary session - fact that, in my knowledge, happened only once in the history of United Nations, at the time of a speech of Nelson Mandela.
Thank you, because due to your efforts to wage war, for the first time, the Arab nations - in general divided - unanimously condemned the invasion, at the time of the Cairo meeting, during the last week of February.
Thank you, because due to your rhetoric affirming that "UN is likely to show its importance", even the most refractory countries ended up as oppsing any attack on Iraq.
Thank you, for your foreign policy led the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jack Straw, to declare in the 21st century that "a war can have moral reasons" - and to thus lose all his political credibility.
Thanks for trying to divide Europe who struggles for its unification; this warning will not be ignored.
Thank you to have made a success out of something that few people made a success of, in one century: gathering millions of humans, on all continents, and making them fight for the same idea - although this idea is opposed to yours.
Thanks again for making us feel that our words, even if not heard, are at least pronounced. That will give us more force in the future.
Thank you for ignoring us, for excluding all those who are against your decision, because the future of the Earth will belong to excluded. Thank you because, without you, we would not have known our capacity of mobilisation. Perhaps it's useless now, but it will be certainly useful later.
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