By Merle D. Kellerhals, Jr.
Washington File staff writer

Washington -- Military hostilities in Iraq are not about conquering the Iraqi people, but about putting down the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein that for all these years has been developing and using weapons of mass destruction against its neighbors and its own people, says Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"It's about using the wealth of Iraq -- its oil -- to benefit its people," Powell said March 26 during a U.S. House Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the State Department's fiscal year (FY) 2004 $28.5 billion budget. "It's about freeing people from a dictator who has massacred them, who has kept them under the worst kind of subjugation, who has tortured them, who has been guilty of the worst sorts of crimes, who has invaded his neighbors."

Once this regime is removed, Powell said, it will be finally possible to totally remove Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program from its infrastructure.

"We can put in place a government that will be responsive to its people, that will represent its people, and we can use the wealth of Iraq -- channeled through their new government with their new government having the responsibility for the use of that wealth," he said.

Powell appeared before the House Appropriations subcommittee responsible for the department's annual budget. He told the subcommittee that a portion of President Bush's $74.7 billion fiscal 2003 supplemental budget request to help pay the cost of military operations in Iraq will also go to the State Department to help pay for commitments to coalition partners, Iraqi relief and reconstruction, the global war on terrorism, and for unanticipated emergencies. The State Department would receive approximately $7.8 billion, he said.

The vast oil resources of Iraq, which has the second largest known oil reserves in the world, will be used to help pay for the construction of schools and vital country infrastructure, and to fund the operations of the country, he said.

"The oil of Iraq belongs to the people of Iraq," Powell testified. Plans are being developed to determine how best to protect that asset so it can be used to the best advantage of the Iraqi people, he said.

"It's the source of revenue to run the country," he said. "It would be inappropriate to start using it, say, to pay for the weapons or to pay for the cost of the war itself."