"If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America."
"What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight and who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.
Why does the US behave so arrogantly? Their friend Israel has got weapons of mass destruction. But because it's their ally they won't ask the UN to get rid of them."
"It is a tragedy what Bush is doing in Iraq. All he wants is Iraqi oil. We must expose this as much as possible. He is making the greatest mistake of his life by trying to cause carnage." Nelson Mandela - January 2003
May 10, 2004 - Mandela, in Farewell Speech, Slams Iraq War
Former President Nelson Mandela on Monday hailed South Africa's 10 years of peaceful multi-racial democracy as an inspiration for a world he said was saddened and horrified by the US-led war in Iraq.
The 85-year-old anti-apartheid icon, in a farewell address to Parliament on the 10th anniversary of his inauguration as the country's first black president, urged South Africans to come together to meet their new challenges: poverty, unemployment and HIV/AIDS.
"We live in a world where there is enough reason for cynicism and despair," said Mr Mandela, a fierce critic of the US-led war on Iraq.
"We watch as two of the leading democracies, two leading nations of the free world, get involved in a war that the United Nations did not sanction," he said, adding that the world had been horrified by reports of torture of Iraqi prisoners by US and British forces.
"We look on with horror as reports surface of terrible abuses against the dignity of human beings held captive by invading forces in their own country."
"We see how the powerful countries, all of them so-called democracies, manipulate multilateral bodies to the great disadvantage and suffering of the poorer developing nations."
