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Diana
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 494
Location: Guam, USA
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 Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2004 1:12 am Post subject: Iraqi Opinions. |
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Below is an opinion coming from an Iraqi named Omar Fahdil who lives in Bagdad. Now, that Saddam is gone, there are many Iraqis getting into the Internet and voicing their own opinions to the world. They are telling the world what their life was life and what their life is like in the current situation. There are about 30 Iraqi blogsites on the Internet where Iraqis from Bagdad are expressing their opinions. Their opinions are more important because it is their country and they are living in it. I also provided the weblink below.
If there are any Middle Eastern people here on this forum board who can read arabic, Omar provided the opinions of these Iraqis in the weblink. You can click on the weblink and read the rest of the Iraqi opinions posted on the arabic news. Omar listed some of those Iraqi viewpoints in his blogsite, which I copied and pasted below:
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http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
I don't like to repeat myself, but I wanted to share with you some of the opinions of Iraqis about their daily lives that I read on the bbc. arabic.com There were more than many comments and about 70% of them were positive. Here are some examples:
What happens these days in Iraq is a natural process as a result from the transfer from dictatorship to democracy.
Ali Ahmed-Baghdad.
I'm an Iraqi citizen and I want to thank president GWB from all my heart for the great service he's done to the Iraqi people by freeing us from one of the worst tyrants in history. This liberation didn't suit the enemies of humanity and freedom, thus we see them committing terrorist acts claiming to resist occupation by killing their own people, but that will not affect the Iraqis lust for freedom. Thanks again GWB.
Kamal-Adhamya-Baghdad.
I won't forget the day when I saw one of Saddam's tanks crushing the heads of 40 She'at Iraqis who were among others arrested for no obvious reason in 1991. Their hands were tied and put on the street for the tank to pass over their heads. The words" No She'at after today" where written on that tank.
I was one of those people. My hands were tied to the back and a grenade was put between them and the safety pin removed. It was positioned in a way that it should explode if I was to make any move, and I was left a lone in a deserted area that was at least 5 Km. from any life. If it wasn't for the kindness of one of the soldiers who came back and rescued me, I would've certainly died soon.
Ihsan Al-Shimmari-Sweeden.
We lived our worst years under Saddam regime, a regime that many Arabs still believe in!We don't know why don't they leave us in peace, especially the Arab media that turns liberation into occupation and criminals into resistant. We, Iraqis, know the truth very well. The situation is much better now for the vast majority of Iraqis. Most of the people are government employees who used to get paid 4 or 6 thousand Iraqi dinars. Now the lowest salary is 100 thousand Iraqi Dinar. We feel free and we don't fear prisons and torture. The Arab media, as expected, made a huge fuss about the prisoners abuse in Abu-Gharib. Shame on them. Where were they when Saddam put explosives around a bunch of young men and blasted their bodies and they all saw that on TV? Where were they?
Saman-Iraq.
I had to leave Iraq because I didn't want to be one of Saddam's slaves. After so many years, I'm back to my country and I saw that people are not as nervous as they used to be. I saw hope in their eyes despite the security problems. All I have to say to our Arab brothers is,"We are practicing democracy. You keep enjoying dictatorship"
Ilham Hussain-Baghdad.
I'm from an area not so far from Shat Al-Arab, still at Saddam's time we never had clean water supply. Now the situation is better and the British are very gentle and kind. I no longer fear for my life or my family's. The only problems we have are the thieves and some shortage in power supply.
Kadim Jabbar-Al-Zubair-Basra.
The daily life in Basra is not that different from other parts of Iraq; It's very hot, the water and power supply are not Continueous, still I prefer to live a year in these conditions than one hour like those we lived under Saddam.
Abbas Mahir Tahir-Basra.
- posted by Omar @ 22:20 |
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oinrocinu
Joined: 18 Dec 2003
Posts: 76
Location: Barcelona, Spain
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| Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2004 1:56 am Post subject: |
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A few things:
-Are you trying to convince us (or me) of Sadam was an evil dictator? mmm... it was known for everybody, as it's the case of all others dictators.
-Do you really think that the objective of that invasion was to make the irquies free and to give them the posibility of using internet?
-If you have aswered "yes" (!!), does this objective justify the way it has been done?
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Para sentir no bastan cinco sentidos... |
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Diana
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 494
Location: Guam, USA
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| Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2004 2:10 am Post subject: |
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I think the important thing is how the Iraqis feel - and NOT how the rest of the world feels. The Iraqi people's opinions are more important. Afterall, it is their country. The real objective of the US was to take out Saddam. And taking out Saddam was what freed the Iraqi people.
Do you have a better solution to deal with Saddam? If so, please share it with me. |
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asterix
Joined: 26 Jan 2003
Posts: 1654
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| Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2004 4:16 am Post subject: |
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It certainly doesn't matter what anyone in Spain thinks about it. That's for sure.
According to one of the Spanish people on here, 90% of the Spanish people were not prepared to do anything to help Iraq and their 5 soldiers and a SEAT ran away as soon as they could. |
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oinrocinu
Joined: 18 Dec 2003
Posts: 76
Location: Barcelona, Spain
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| Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2004 6:55 am Post subject: |
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So, the real objective of the US was to take out Saddam...
Why? Because he was a villain? And what about the others dictatorships? Do we have to attack all these countries?
Don't you think that Bush wanted to be known? What about the weapons of mass destruction? Wasn't it a excuse?
Do you really think that the US government is the good Samaritan? I don't think so....
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Para sentir no bastan cinco sentidos... |
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Diana
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 494
Location: Guam, USA
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| Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2004 2:05 pm Post subject: |
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| oinrocinu wrote: |
So, the real objective of the US was to take out Saddam...
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That is what I said.
| oinrocinu wrote: |
Why? Because he was a villain? And what about the others dictatorships? Do we have to attack all these countries?
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Because Saddam violated UN resolutions and have interfered in UN inspections several times. No, we don't have to attack other countries. Other countries who saw what the US did to Saddam is now cooperating with the United Nations. Lybia have already agreed to open up to UN inspections because the ruler of Lybia said that after what he saw the US did to Iraq, he was scared. The people of Iran are now demanding more reforms in their government and have also started cooperating with UN inspections. North Korea who demanded unilateral talks with the US has decided to go for multilateral talks after he saw how quickly the US defeated Saddam. Somalia is even asking the US (instead of the UN) for help. When civil war broke out in Liberia, even the people of Liberia (as well as the international community) asked the US (instead of the UN) for help.
| oinrocinu wrote: |
Don't you think that Bush wanted to be known? What about the weapons of mass destruction? Wasn't it a excuse?
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Bush is already well-known just by being the President of the United States. The weapons of mass destruction is not an excuse because the United Nations was also demanding that Saddam get rid of it. Almost everyone in the entire world knew Saddam had those weapons because he used them on the Iraqi Kurds and the Iranians in the 1980s and because everyone knew that the US, France, Great Britain, Germany, and Russia provided him with those weapons. There is proof that these countries provided weapons to Saddam. The question you should be asking is what did Saddam do with those weapons that was given to him. Also, if Saddam didn't have these weapons of mass destruction, then another question you should ask yourself is "why then did Saddam violate and interfere with UN inspections for 12 years. if he really had no WMD." Saddam went through a lot of trouble interfereing with UN inspections. At one point in time, he even held UN inspectors hostage until they gave up documents they found in Iraq on how to build a nuclear bomb. So, why did he interfere and block UN inspections for 12 years if he didn't have any WMD? Today, thanks to the US and their coalition, we now know for certain that there is no WMD in Iraq because no stockpiles have been found.
| oinrocinu wrote: |
Do you really think that the US government is the good Samaritan? I don't think so.... |
The US have made some mistakes in the past. Taking out Saddam, however, was not a mistake. He should have been taken out a long time ago.
By the way, you still haven't answered my question. Do you have a better solution on how to deal with Saddam? If so, I would like to hear it. |
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oinrocinu
Joined: 18 Dec 2003
Posts: 76
Location: Barcelona, Spain
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| Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2004 10:55 pm Post subject: |
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-Iraq accepted to be inspectionated just a year before the attack, remember it.
-A "solution" for Sadamm was difficult but this one wasn't neccesary. At least, there are many others things that I consider more important (and even, cheaper for a country like US), like the fact that every day, 40.000 children die becuase of the famine. 40.000....
-I think that somebody should do something against Bush because of the prison of Guant�namo, I think that he should be in custody. The existence and treatment of this prision is a violation of UN resolutions, but you (US) are so strong that nobody can do nothing. This is a problem for the rest of the world and nobody can deal with it. So the solution is as difficult as the solution for Sadamm's problem but, in this case, nobody will invade US (and nobody wants it, of course). What I mean is that there will be these problems always but these shouldn't be the solutions...
-In my opinion, US lives a golden and pampared dictatorship...
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Para sentir no bastan cinco sentidos... |
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general_delta
Joined: 01 Jun 2004
Posts: 11
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| Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2004 11:09 pm Post subject: Iraq |
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All dis talk about americans being the saviours of the Iraqis and all that bit about Sadam violating UN resolutions and stuff blah blah balh. I think Americans are just as bad.
The Iraq people may hate saddam but they also hate the americans i mean seriously. This is a principal AMERICAN invasion here what sort of people from whatever country would like foreigners dictating there own form of government. No country has ever compiled with foreigner invasions ever in world history for long. Just because the americans have came in and given some of them a couple of books and hospital levys doesn't mean the majority of iraqis welcome Americans troops
And what do u mean that saddam has violated UN resolution and inspections clearly before the invasion Saddam had compiled with all inspector demands i mean they let them in and nothing was found yet the americans still attacked. Where are the weapons of mass destruction now?
I've read from "the guardian" (UK news) about what the americans are doing in Iraq. This is real violation of human rights and what we would almost call "war crimes". The following is an extract from
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1223358,00.html
The title of the article is "i will always hate you people"
The first Mohammed Munim al-Izmerly's family knew of his death was when his battered corpse turned up at Baghdad's morgue. Attached to the zipped-up black US body bag was a laconic note.
The US military claimed in the note that Dr Izmerly, a distinguished chemistry professor arrested after US tanks encircled his villa, had died of "brainstem compression".
Dr Izmerly's sudden death after 10 months in American custody left his family stunned, not least because three weeks earlier they had visited him in the US prison at Baghdad airport. His 23-year-old daughter, Rana, recalled that he had seemed in "good health".
The family commissioned an independent Iraqi autopsy. Its conclusion was unambiguous: Dr Izmerly had died because of a "sudden hit to the back of his head", Faik Amin Baker, the director of Baghdad hospital's forensic department, certified.
The cause of death was blunt trauma. It was uncertain exactly how he died, but someone had hit him from behind, possibly with a bar or a pistol, Dr Baker confirmed yesterday.
"He died from a massive blow to the head. We don't disagree with the coalition's report, but it doesn't explain how he got his injuries in the first place," he told the Guardian.
The apparent murder of a "high-value" detainee, held as part of the search for weapons of mass destruction, is another blow for the Bush administration, still reeling from the Abu Ghraib jail abuse scandal
How is the treatment he was given better than living under the Sadam dictatorship? |
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Diana
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 494
Location: Guam, USA
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| Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2004 11:44 pm Post subject: Re: Iraq |
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| general_delta wrote: |
How is the treatment he was given better than living under the Sadam dictatorship? |
How is the treatment he was given better than living under the Saddam dictatorship???? My, how the outside world quickly forget what a monster Saddam really was. Have you already forgotten the mass graves and the torture chambers? Below is a post from one of the Iraqi blogsites, telling of those horrible days. The post was written by an Iraqi named Alaa, who also writes in the Iraqi blogsites.
By the way, there are about 30 Iraqi blogsites on the Internet, and the Iraqis are now getting into the Internet telling the world their story of their life and how life is like for them now.
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Hi Friends,
Regarding the horrible act of beheading the poor hostage Nicolas Berg, there is no use in expressions of horror and condemnation, but it is necessary to express sincere condolence and sympathy with the family of the victim.
But I would like to inform the American friends that beheading was known to be one of the techniques of the Fedayeen Saddam. The late Uday, the son of Saddam commanded that particular outfit. I think it was the summer of 1999 when we woke up some morning to be shocked by some horrible news. Before we tell you about that it is necessary to recount something that has some bearing on the subject. You might have heard that an assassination attempt against Uday had taken place in 1996, which left him with injuries that caused impotency. This made him even more cruel and sadistic than his usual self. It has been revealed after the fall of the regime that he shot the doctor who broke the news to him (c.f. interview with one of the close bodyguards of Uday at Al Arabia last year). This added one more complex to his extensive repertoire of psychological problems. He started to hate anything to do with other people having any kind of sexual pleasure.
Well, that horrible day we learnt that the night before the Fedayeen had attacked scores of houses and dragged women and young girls to streets and beheaded many with swords leaving the heads at the doorsteps of the victims houses. Some of these heads were left in place for more than twenty-four hours. The atrocities lasted for several weeks. The pretext for this behavior was a campaign against prostitution. The women who were beheaded were alleged to be prostitution madams and some of their young girls. I remember that my young boys came home suffering from shock as one of these houses was in our area and they knew the occupants quite well. The victims were taken by surprised and there was nothing to arouse their fears before that night. This was typical of the Baathists when they planned some atrocity to attack suddenly at some predetermined moment without any previous warning. Throughout the reign of the Baath party and particularly the Saddam era, it was customary to suffer periodic atrocities carefully planned and imaginatively variable to keep the people terrified all the time. It was considered necessary not to leave the people too long without some thing awful to keep them intimidated properly. The Baathists were masters of the �Terreur�, and it was the essential means of their hold on power. In fact what we see now is something rather similar. It is a similar technique; they are trying to intimidate both the Iraqi people first but mainly the western people. They will stop at nothing. You must understand that this is their only expertise; their sole training and method and way of thinking. They think they can inspire fear and terror into the Coalition forces and their people and leadership exactly in the same way that they did with the Iraqis. They think that they can intimidate the whole world exactly in the same way that they did with us.
So I just wanted to say the above to help people understand why these horrible things are happening: You are just being treated to a small sample of what we suffered for more than three decades.
Salaam
# posted by Alaa : 12:39 PM
http://messopotamian.blogspot.com/ |
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oinrocinu
Joined: 18 Dec 2003
Posts: 76
Location: Barcelona, Spain
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| Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2004 12:01 am Post subject: Re: Iraq |
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| Diana wrote: |
Have you already forgotten the mass graves and the torture chambers? |
Unfortunately, we haven't fogotten it. Some soldiers have made the effort to remind us of it...
_________________
Para sentir no bastan cinco sentidos... |
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Diana
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 494
Location: Guam, USA
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| Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2004 2:22 am Post subject: Re: Iraq |
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| oinrocinu wrote: |
| Unfortunately, we haven't fogotten it. Some soldiers have made the effort to remind us of it... |
Reminded? You needed to be reminded????? I didn't need to be reminded because in the first place, I never forgot.
The US soldiers who abused and humiliated the Iraqi prisoners are now being punished by the Americans. When Saddam murdered and tortured the Iraqi people, who punished him? Why was he allowed to go unpunished. At least, the Americans punished their own soldiers for abusing and humiliating those Iraqi prisoners? Who punished Saddam when he tortured and murdered innocent Iraqis and even placed little children in mass graves? |
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oinrocinu
Joined: 18 Dec 2003
Posts: 76
Location: Barcelona, Spain
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| Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2004 2:40 am Post subject: |
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But do you really think that this was the objective of the war??? Really??? IT WAS (AND IS) A WAR!! And you should take it seriously. It's difficult to belive that this was just a good act. What is more.... do we have to thank you for having liberated the oppressed countries? Don't you think that there were more... motiviations?
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Diana
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 494
Location: Guam, USA
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| Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2004 2:46 am Post subject: |
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| oinrocinu wrote: |
| But do you really think that this was the objective of the war??? Really??? IT WAS (AND IS) A WAR!! And you should take it seriously. It's difficult to belive that this was just a good act. What is more.... do we have to thank you for having liberated the oppressed countries? Don't you think that there were more... motiviations? |
Oinrocinu, you don't need to thank the Americans at all. You've already had your freedom for a very long time.
It is the many Iraqi people who are now thanking the Americans because they now have their freedom and can express their own feelings to the world. And they can now practice their religion, which Saddam kept them from doing. |
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general_delta
Joined: 01 Jun 2004
Posts: 11
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| Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2004 11:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| It is the many Iraqi people who are now thanking the Americans because they now have their freedom and can express their own feelings to the world. And they can now practice their religion, which Saddam kept them from doing. |
[/quote]
Freedom? what is this feedom your talking about? The people that can now practice their religion are still against the americans take Falluja for example what happened to the feedom there? No one wanted the Americans to free them. Saddam is now been taken care of why are there still fighting if they really wanted Americans to get rid of him?
Also the feelings? What feelings? From whats going on in iraq I only see that they certainly are not gratefull
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Diana
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 494
Location: Guam, USA
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| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2004 12:30 am Post subject: |
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| general_delta wrote: |
Freedom? what is this feedom your talking about? The people that can now practice their religion are still against the americans take Falluja for example what happened to the feedom there? No one wanted the Americans to free them. Saddam is now been taken care of why are there still fighting if they really wanted Americans to get rid of him?
Also the feelings? What feelings? From whats going on in iraq I only see that they certainly are not gratefull
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As I've been saying before, a MAJORITY of the Iraqi people feel that their life is better today than it was under Saddam. Yes, many Iraqis in Falluja are still against the Americans, but Falluja doesn't constitute the entire country of Iraq. Have you seen a map of Iraq lately. It is a large country, perhaps larger than the state of California. Falluja is only one little city in Iraq just like San Diego is one little city in the entire country of the US. If there was an earthquake in San Diego, does this mean the entire country of the US is devastated? No, just the city in San Diego. Look at a map of Iraq. |
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