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AT LAST IRAQI VOICE ALLOWED TO EXPRESS

RANIA KASHI | 17.02.2003 13:24

RANIA KASHI

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We know

17.02.2003 13:49

We know that Saddam Hussein is evil and brutal. But do we really want his former allies, Rumsfeld and Cheney, to carpet bomb Baghdad and allow Turkish forces to occupy Iraqi Kurdistan, then install another military government?

Just because we oppose indiscriminate carpet bombing and military dictatorships, it doesn't mean that we like Saddam Hussein.

And for the record, there were loads of Iraqis on the Glasgow demo on Saturday.

Barney


Iraq

17.02.2003 13:56

The speaker is quite wrong when she says the anti-war movement is not aware of the brutality of Hussein's regime.

Many of us were trying to alert our governments to this fact when they were supplying Hussein with weapons.

However increasing the bombing, instability, poverty and misery of the Iraqi people will not solve anything. On top of everything it will boost support for fundamentalism and terrorism throughout the world.

The amount of aid set aside for rebuilding post-war Iraq amounts to about 60p per person, which is a complete insult and shows that Bush and Blair don't give a damn about the Iraqi people.

Only the united, revolutionary action of Iraqi workers can bring down Saddam. This is how the most brutal regimes in the world have fallen, and we will support you all the way.

 http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/

Marxist_Mike


500,000 dead

17.02.2003 14:15

The UN says 500,000 people could die in a war. I wanna know how many dead people it would take for the war not to be moral according to the humanitarian bombers?

....


What next out of Blairs battered magic hat?

17.02.2003 14:36

Its just another cynical, patronising Blair trick. Bring onto the mainstream media, Iraqis who, for understandable reasons, want America to use its huge firepower to depose Saddam. But, looking at America's history in 'humanitarian' intervention, it wears a little thin, to say the least. More like use them and leave them. Pictures of freezing, starving Kurds after Gulf War one spring to mind immediately. What the US wants is another puppet. No serious regime change in Iraq. Just to pose a question. What would the US do if a group of, lets say, Middle Eastern countries (excluding Israel because it goes without saying) wanted to implement regime change in Iraq through war?
Why isn't the US acting on the human rights abuses including murder, of Palestinians?
Saddam is an utter bastard. And he is also what 'we' made him. We do have a responsibility which is not to let this charade of pretended humanitarian assistance go on any longer. The US/Uk have no mandate to police the world. Iraqis are being conned into rising up against Saddam (again)and the US will leave them when it has achieved its own aims. And the government that is achieved will be yet another US plant with the basic corrupt power structure left intact, and thousands of innocent people dead to achieve it. These are not my words. They are the words of an Iraqi woman, here as a refugee, who I spoke to on the coach on the 15th. The difference is Iraqis in the peace movement have less access to the media than Iraqis who are speaking for US action in Iraq.

PS. Sanctions imposed by the West have strengthed Saddam. And despite the gassing of the Kurds, diplomatic relations and the lucrative arms contracts continued. I noticed no break for humanitarian reasons, did you?

heather


One does not Beat Two Million

17.02.2003 15:09

Sorry, sorry, sorry, but a lone confused Iraqi student does not trump the TWO MILLION who marched for peace on Saturday or the FIVE MILLION who marched worldwide.

How anyone who uses this website can so easily swallow the New Labour propaganda machine is quite beyond me.

Blair and co would like people to think that just 'cos they've dredged up this ONE Iraqi who is pro-war, she somehow speaks for all 'decent' Iraqis everywhere - she doesn't.

Just one lone (minority) opinion, especially among Iraqis.

As previous people have said, there were lots of Iraqis on Saturday's demo, there are far more Iraqis opposed to war than this useful idiot unearthed by the pro-war lot.

Everyone with half a brain in the peace movement is aware of Saddam's foulness. Perhaps wossername Ms Iraqi student trousers should have listened to the Iraqi CP speaker at Hyde Park on Saturday who spoke passionately against war.

Iraqi commies have more reason than most to hate Saddam - after all he had most of 'em shot when he assumed power!

Mad Monk


She is not even Iraqi

17.02.2003 15:41

It shows how weak Blair and co's position is when the only "Iraqi" they can find to speak out for the war was born in Kuwait and moved to the UK when she was THREE MONTHS OLD!

I bet she has never even been to Iraq! How the hell can this be seen as representative of the Iraqi people's opinion? I too saw many Iraqi people out on the march at the weekend - why don't they get their opinion aired on the BBC?

Auntie is the propaganda arm of the Blair junta!

Dan


not even iraqi?

17.02.2003 20:00

she is not even iraqi....? well, by that same logic most 'palestinians' are not even palestinian - so in effect that defeats one of the prime causes that a lot of left wingers seem to champion... good one.

her mother and her father are iraqi, but she was born in kuwait (for good reason since her family seems to have been chased out of the country by the regime). so, she IS iraqi but has kuwait nationality because she was a refugee. it is basic norms we are talking about... nothing complicated.

shlomi


She is of Iraqi descent but...

17.02.2003 22:30

She grew up in Britain and as such must have less emotional links to Iraq as a culture and a people than someone who has lived there for the majority of their life.

She is entitled to her opinion but I would also like to see the views of more recent Iraqi exiles, for who the emotions and memories of that country are more fresh and immediate.

I would wager that you would be hard pressed to find more than a handful of such people. It would be interesting and informative to do a referendum of Iraqi people living in Britain to see how many of them actually support this war.

Of course this will never happen because, as we all know, the results will be overwhelmingly against the war.

No-one in their right mind would call down a maelstrom of death and destruction on their own country.

Dan