The College Republicans capped off their Conservative Pride Week Thursday with a visit from a former Iraqi general to Saddam Hussein.
Gen. Georges Sada's speech to an audience of about 100 at the Agriculture Building was the capstone of a week that included numerous offbeat displays.
"We do things that are a little bit out there," said T.J. Shope, president of the College Republicans. "It went pretty well."
The week's activities included trying to stop global warming on Mars and throwing fake money down a phony toilet to show the ineffectiveness of the current tax system.
"This is the high point of the year for us," Shope said. "It's something people look forward to."
The group raised $8,000 to bring Sada to ASU as the week's finale, Shope said.
The 67-year-old Sada was born in northern Iraq and served as a general for Hussein until 1986, when he was forced to retire. He was called back to service before the invasion of Kuwait and would later side with the United States at the start of the Iraq War.
In his speech, Sada described his encounters with Hussein and told the audience that the Iraq War was the right move.
"Whatever will happen, I still believe the best way to fight someone who wants to kill you is not to wait until he comes to your home," he said. "I know [Hussein's] impatience."
A Christian, Sada said Hussein trusted him because of his faith, but the feeling wasn't mutual.
"Immunity and freedom governed by Saddam don't mean anything," he said.
But the trust was enough for Sada to get close enough to the former dictator and see that the U.S. invasion was well warranted.
"It was right to go there," he said. "It is not right to politicize the issue."
And the weapons of mass destruction that was a focal point of the reasoning behind the invasion do in fact exist, Sada said, but were finished being moved out of the country just days before the war started.
Sada also offered a few words in regards to the current status of the country.
"It is making progress," he said of the war. "But it needs Iraqis to be ready to live together.
"My heart bleeds when one American dies for the security of Iraq."
Rep. Jonathan Paton, R-Tucson, joined Sada to share his own experiences of Iraq.
Paton volunteered to be deployed to Iraq in July and returned in February after the start of the new legislature session.
In his speech, he described an encounter with an Iraqi insurgent who told him his mission was to kill as many Americans as needed to drive the U.S. out of the Middle East.
And when Paton asked what the insurgent's mission would be after that, he said to kill as many Americans as needed to drive them out of the United States.
"We are fighting an implacable enemy," Paton said.
With such an enemy, the U.S. can't give up on the war, he said.
"These men shall not have died in vain," he said, quoting Abraham Lincoln. "We need to honor these words."
Reach the reporter at: matthew.g.stone@asu.edu.
