Interesting - An Iraqi on Dean

[JayB]

" "You can say that it's great that Saddam is gone and I'm sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone. But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before."

 

What did Mr. Dean meant by this statement? I didn’t want to write about it from the beginning despite what I felt and the questions asked by some of the readers. I said, “this is an American affair and I might offend some of my American friends through expressing my opinion”. But the statement was too irritating and insulting and as I said before there’s no such thing as an internal affair anywhere in the world, not to mention the USA, the country in which the tiniest change in policy might well have a great impact elsewhere in the world. Anything that happens in America concerns everyone on this planet, and moreover as an Iraqi who his whole country’s future relies considerably on how the things go on in America I have additional reasons to care about such things.

 

To summarize my response I was not surprised, but it added to my confusion about the justification of the position of some Americans regarding this issue.

To have such approach from some Arabs and Muslims, it’s more than expected, still nauseating though. To have such an approach from some European countries is also (natural). But to come from Americans? Well, this is just more than I can understand.

I’d like to (debate with) Mr. Dean and his supporters on few points.

 

I’m not going to comment about the rightness of the statement with more than saying that only a (blind) man would believe it and only a man blinded by his ambitions would dare to say it, but when you say such words, don’t you mean in other words that the sacrifices made by the American soldiers are all in vain? And that these soldiers are not doing a service to the world, nor to Iraqis and not to America. In fact you are saying that since they didn’t do the world, America or us a favour then they’re only doing a favour to GWB and his administration.

 

Don’t you agree that by saying those words you accuse the American soldiers of one of two charges each of which is worse than the other;

You are saying that, either they are stupid enough to sacrifice their lives for the sake of GWB political future, or they are evil people who love fighting and killing and they are doing this only for money, in other words they’re no more than mercenaries. Saying that you only disagree with the way this issue is handled will also not change the fact that you are only harming your men and women on the battlefield.

 

By statements like these you deny any honourable motives for the great job your people are doing here. How in your opinion will this affect the morale of your soldiers? Feeling that their people back at home don’t support them and that they’re abandoned to fight alone in the battlefield.

 

And all of this for what? For staying in the white house for 4 or 8 years? Is it worth it?

And this is not directed only to Mr. Dean, it’s for all the Americans who support such allegations without being aware of their consequences. What’s it that you fight so hard for, showing your soldiers as s occupiers and murderers, the soldiers who I had the honour of meeting many, and when talking to some of them, I didn’t see anything other than gentleness, honesty and good will and faith in what they’re doing.

 

Your words and those of others were insults to the Americans, Iraqis and moreover to yourself, and I’m certain you don’t represent the number of Americans you fanaticise about. I’m sorry for being so rude, but I really tried hard to restrain myself from being more direct, and thus nearly as rude as you were. If I wanted to respond just as an Iraqi who is so offended by your words, my feelings wouldn’t have been expressed without using a language nastier than what I’ve committed myself to on writing on this blog.

 

 

Please consider this for a moment, does winning the elections and getting rid of GWB and the republicans worth the damage you’re inflicting on your men and women’s morale?

 

My heart goes with those brave people and the widows, orphans and mothers of the American soldiers who died while doing this great service for their country, ours and humanity.

I can’t imagine what their response would be to such thoughtless words motivated with nothing more than selfish ambitions.

 

 

-By Ali."

 

Source

[JayB]

Also interesting to note the number of people who have worked themselves into a lather about the supposed corruption of the Bush administration's distribution of contracts to Halliburton et al in the absence of any evidence whatsoever - yet have remained silent after a story identifying scores of individuals associated with nations/groups opposed to the war have been identified as direct recipients of bribes from the regime in documents seized after the war. Time will tell whether or not these documents are legitimate or forgeries, but the discrepancy in the responses has been telling.

 

 

"Wednesday January 28, 2004 12:01 AM

 

 

By JAMAL HALABY

 

Associated Press Write

 

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - Arabs and Westerners accused by Iraqis of receiving Iraqi oil proceeds in exchange for supporting Saddam Hussein denied Tuesday they had accepted bribes or participated in illicit deals.

 

The accusations surfaced this week in a report by one of the dozens of new newspapers that have begun publishing in Iraq since Saddam was ousted last March. Since, members of the new provisional Iraqi government and Saddam opponents have distributed a list of the accused, based on documents from the Iraqi Oil Ministry.

 

About 270 former Cabinet officials, legislators, political activists and journalists from 46 countries are on the list, suspected of profiting from Iraqi oil sales that Saddam had allegedly offered them in exchange for cultivating political and popular support in their countries.

 

In Jordan, former parliament member Toujan Faisal, who is on the list, said she never took Iraqi bribes, but had served as an intermediary between the Iraqi government and an Jordan-based oil dealer.

 

``I wanted to help this dealer who happened to be a good of friend of mine do business in Iraq,'' she told The Associated Press...."

 

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3676654,00.html

Edited January 31, 2004 by JayB

[slothrop]

So this guy thinks Dean is "selfish"? Ouch. A presidential candidate, selfish? We are truly in a sad state of affairs. Bush, on the other hand, is a real "caring and sharing" kind of guy and we should keep him in office just because he gives our troops such warm fuzzies.

 

Ali must be a very special Iraqi to never have seen anything bad come from US troops in his country. Further, he must be that very special kind of Iraqi who has a deep knowledge of and daily experience with Bush's domestic policy. It's our election, dammit -- you'll get your own... if Bush ever allows it.

 

How hard is it to understand that you can appreciate the sacrifice and devotion of our troops without agreeing with their mission? It's like supporting your family members even if you don't understand their lives or their passions.

 

The quote is out of context anyway. Is Dean referring to Iraqis or Americans giving their lives?

[slothrop]

A lot of what those people are complaining about regarding Halliburton, et al., and the awarding of contracts is the lack of transparency involved. Huge contracts were awarded without a competitive bidding process. WTF?

 

Halliburton, meanwhile, did recently acknowledge and repay about $6 million in kickbacks that one of their employees received.

 

This is old news anyway, Jay. Plenty of people from all "sides" have been benefiting from business with Iraq during Saddam's regime. There's been plenty of uproar. Didn't Rumsfeld give Saddam a set of golden spurs of something back in the 80s? The French, the Russians, pretty much anyone, had business interests in Iraq.

[cracked]

[JayB]

That tidbit was just one guy's perspective, of which there are of course many in Iraq. It's roughly consisitent with opinion poll data coming out of Iraq concerning these issues, and if you take a look at the random feedback sites like the BBC most Iraqis post opinions about these issues that are in marked contrast to their Western counterparts. This is one such case.

 

One other reason I posted that guy's comments to make people aware of the fact that there are a few Iraqis out there posting info on the day-to-day realities on the ground in Iraq - something people pretended to care about before the war but have now largely been abandoned as a rallying cry for those opposed to it. Largely puts to rest the notion that the majority opposed to the war did so out of concern for the wellbeing of the Iraqi people.

 

As far as this proto-scandal is concerned, the individuals allegedly accepted direct bribes from the regime in return for the cultivation of international support for the regime, and they duly did everything in their power to thwart the US and Britain's efforts to remove the regime by force. The only way that these charges would have an equivalent in the US/Brittain was if documents surfaced that revealed that individuals or organizations that stood to profit from the invasion of Iraq payed officials in the administration bribes with the agreement that the recipients would do everything in their power to cultivate support for prosecuting a war. There is currently no evidence to support such allegations, and there are currently no serious people engaged in efforts to make the case that any such thing actually occured - which is certainly an oddity if there are actually grounds for such charges given that it's an election year and there's an off chance that exposing such things might tilt the odds in the Democrat's favor just a bit. And now we have an outcry over corruption on the part of those who prosecuted the war in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, and evidence of corruption in those who opposed the war with no outcry whatsoever. Interesting.

[chucK]

Jay, I think you are overlooking the fact that there are many people who feel it is a good idea to oppose war. I don't think there are as many that feel it is a good idea to oppose peace.

 

I hadn't heard anything about this, so I shouldn't really speak for the strawmen that you are attacking. But, if this stuff is true, I'll tell you that I would certainly hold someone being bribed to oppose a war in much less contempt than someone making war for profit.

 

Also, those others may not bother me as much as someone who might not only be making war for profit, but is also using my tax dollars to facilitate their deeds.

[JayB]

The only problem with this is that the these people who were opposing the war were allegedly accepting bribes to keep someone like Hussein in power - something that was completely at odds with the welfare of the Iraqi people. Not sure why this should be considered moral - unless you were consider any use of force under any circumstances to be immoral - which very few people do. Opposed to taking arms against Hitler? Moral. Opposed to the use of force to thwart the carnage in Bosnia and Kosovo? Moral again. The axiom that being opposed to any war at any time is the moral thing to do doesn't always jive very well with reality.

 

When I read things like your last sentence I can only conclude that you believe that there is a sinister cabal of people sitting at the boards of various companies who were able to get all of Congress, the British Parliament, Jose Aznar et al in Europe, everyone in the Pentagon, everyone in the British Armed Forces, etc, etc, etc - to wage a war for their sole benefit and pull off the said conspiracy in such a manner that none of the thousands of people involved in such an enterprise would ever talk to the press, never slip, never attract the attention of opposition parties or critics of the war, had confidence that they would be able to predict every move that the notoriously predictable Saddam Hussein would make at least a year in advance and know for certain that he'd play cat-and-mouse games with the inspectors rather than capitulate, etc, etc, etc -but feel free to correct me if I am off base here.

 

In any event, point me to some credible evidence that any of the companies involved in reconstruction bribed officials in return for initiating the drive to war or using their office to register support for the same and that last sentence will have some basis in fact. Until then it's Grassy Knoll stuff and nothing more.

[slothrop]

It doesn't have to be a cabal; power and money are strong influences that don't have to be embodied in a sinister organization or communicated through a secret network. Greed is inherent. There doesn't have to be a cover-up, just a willingness to sacrifice the truth for profit. The "secret plan" is the well-known goal of spreading "democracy" and opening "free" markets wherever there is an opportunity.