2004-11-07 Iraq

There’s a huge list of newly translated entries dating as far back as 10th, 2003 on Faiza’s blog. Many of the entries are very short and just show what it feels like to live under occupation, even if nobody dies. Relive the the war in Iraq in little bits and pieces of people’s lives.

Faiza

Friday, July 25 th, 2003 Azzam came from Amman, by land… his face was pale… he said their car was stopped by an armed group, and they robbed his wallet, watch, and wedding ring. We remained in amazement…what is happening to us?? No one has an explanation…. The occupation forces are filling the streets…but they are useless… why are they here?? What are they doing??? ¹

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One of her sons, RaedJarrar, writes about the “rebuilding of Iraq”:

RaedJarrar

The 18 billion dollars that the U.S. administration wanted to send to Iraq last year are still waiting, less than 600 Million dollars were spent and most of them were on US companies. Iraq, at the same time, spent more than 2.5 billion dollars from its own oil exports on US reconstruction companies and as compensation to other US companies. The reconstruction is a big lie by itself; the minimal infrastructure reconstruction didn’t start yet, and the size of destruction in the public sector caused by the unjustified US war is enormous. There isn’t any kind of vision or strategy about what happened in Iraq after the war. The war was the only planned thing concerning Iraq. It is a perfect “hit and run” operation. ²

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Oh, and something related to Michael Moore (and one of the few English articles on TelePolis) by Craig Morris:

TelePolis

The fact that Americans are not well-informed was recently demonstrated by Michael Moore’s documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11”, which was not largely considered to be rehashing well-known facts, but to be bringing them to light. A slew of little-known facts that we all could and should have known long ago - no one was more perplexed by this reception than Moore himself. ³

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Reminds me of the Nazi excuse after the war, “uh, but, we... we didn’t *know!!”*

Right.

All guilty, I say.

Hey, there’s more English on Telepolis! John Horvath writes:

It couldn’t have been easier and should have been no contest. In a true democracy, if there was an incumbent who had undoubtedly lied about taking his country to war, bankrupted the economy, has a poor grasp of international affairs and is not well-educated (no matter what his diploma says), has isolated the country diplomatically from most major powers and international institutions, and implemented draconian domestic laws which trample on civil rights thus in effect establishing a de facto police state, such a person would have lost by a landslide. However, in just over a year the Democratic challenger, John Kerry, was somehow able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. ⁴

​#Iraq