What Iraqis Really Think 5 Years On

On the 5th anniversary of Iraq's destruction, The Australian's editorialist, from the air-conditioned comfort of his perch at News Ltd, shamelessly stands by his obscene 5 year campaign of whitewashing that appalling, ongoing crime against humanity:-

"Five years after Iraq was liberated [& occupied] from the despotic rule of Saddam Hussein, the justification for the US intervention [invasion] remains as strong as it ever was...There is little doubt that the world [Iraq?] is a better place without Saddam in power...But after 5 years, the situation looks much better [really?] than it did after 3...The Iraqi people have paid [& are still paying] a heavy price to reach this point...Had Saddam remained in power...the long-term suffering [leave us with that & you take the short-term thanks] of the Iraqi people could have been much greater...etc, etc." (22/3/08)

I can do no better than counterpoint this loathsome platitudinising with the following searing lament from Iraqi blogger Layla Anwar (http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/) It is taken from her post of March 20, Under the Former 'Dictatorship':-

"Under the former dictatorship, we were alive, now we are all corpses. Under the former dictatorship and during and in spite of 13 years of the most inhumane sanctions we had no ghettoes, we did not know each other's sect, we had mixed neighborhoods, we could go out without being riddled with bullets from an Iranian militia or from one of your army patrols, we had no checkpoints, we had no car bombs, we had no al-Qa'ida psychopaths, we had no sectarian Shia sadists in turbans and black uniforms, we did not have to dress like a ninja, we were not raped, we did not have acid thrown in our faces, we were free to worship in a church or a mosque, we had jobs, we had homes, our children were fed, our hospitals functioned despite your tyrannical sanctions (today 90% of Iraqi hospitals are in dire need of qualified staff), our roads were not destroyed, our bridges assured safe passage, we did not have women and children begging and sleeping in the streets, we did not have refugees (4.5 million) stranded at borders or rotting in tents, we had electricity and water and we did not find worms floating in it either...

"Our rivers were not dumping grounds for cadavers and our parks were not turned into cemetaries. Our children were not sold or trafficked. Our academics (over 450 killed), doctors (500 murdered) and professionals (in the 100s) did not flee or get killed. Our universities still managed to produce graduates and our schools were not attacked by mortars. Our women could drive, work, marry and divorce as they pleased...

"Under the former dictatorship our trees were still producing fruit, not razed to the ground. Under the former dictatorship music was still allowed, so were films. Under the former dictatorship we had no drugs, no poppy fields, no drug addicts and no drug peddlers and traffickers. Under the former dictatorship we had no pedophile rings, no professional killers, no professional drillers and no professional rapists...

"Under the former dictatorship we had no over 100,000 detainees with no trial, no children sodomized in prisons and no women gang-raped in exchange for freeing their loved ones...

"Under the former dictatorship our artists, poets, writers, singers, journalists (223 killed since 2003) were not abducted, kidnapped or assassinated...

"Under the former dictatorship we were not rejects. We still earned the respect of others. Under the former dictatorship we had no mass corruption, no public thieves, no fraud...

"Under the former dictatorship we had no Israelis, no Iranians and no Americans...And sell-out, treacherous Iraqis with foreign political agendas were silenced for the greater good.

"Under the former dictatorship we had no 2 million widows, 5 million orphans, 4 million wounded, an X number of disappeared. We had no mass graves of a million plus murdered by Democracy.

"Under the former dictatorship we were not considered the second most corrupt country in the world and the FIRST most dangerous country on earth...

"Under the former dictatorship we had a country called Iraq. Under the former dictatorship we had a Life. Under the former dictatorship we were Free."