A very interesting analysis of what the average Iraqi thinks about Bushs occupation of Iraq.
To the Iraqis, our nation and our occupying army are Ali Baba’s, plunderers of resources and usurpers of foreign lands. George W. Bush is seen as the greatest Ali Baba of them all, a thief and a liar, enriching his friends, cronies and contributors through the privatization of most of Iraq’s economy
American Ali Baba: George W. Bush and the Stealing of America](http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_4820.shtml) Axis of Logic, 25 Jan 04
**Iraqis have a slang term for those whom they believe guilty of thievery and chicanery, those people who steal, lie, cheat and are endowed with low levels of scruples. This term, Ali Baba, in reference to the great fictional work Arabian Nights and its story, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, has, since the occupation began, spread throughout Iraq’s population when talking about American soldiers, and, to a more extreme personality, George W. Bush. **
To the Iraqis, our nation and our occupying army are Ali Baba’s, plunderers of resources and usurpers of foreign lands. George W. Bush is seen as the greatest Ali Baba of them all, a thief and a liar, enriching his friends, cronies and contributors through the privatization of most of Iraq’s economy, businesses and government institutions, laying waste to a proud nation and ruining the lives of millions of its citizens. Colonizing and occupying Iraq under the façade of bringing freedom and instilling democracy, Bush is fooling nobody in Iraq.
Everyone living in the cradle of civilization knows what America came for, everyone can see that without black gold and strategic base locations, Iraq would be allowed to decay into oblivion much like the many nations of Africa that are in need of greater intervention than Iraq. In the great geopolitical game of Empire building and world domination through economic and military prowess, fantasies and propaganda fool no one. Iraq is but the playing field; not the first nor the last.
And so Ali Baba has come to Iraq, returning in a rather mutated force, intent on stealing, plundering and oppressing, enriching and pilfering, destroying only to rebuild, installing crony capitalism and debauched democracy not for the benefit of Iraqis but for that of the oligarchy back in America. Ali Baba and his many thieves have been reborn, American style, a gross distortion of the noble tale told by generations of Arabs.
The term Ali Baba can also be borrowed by us to anoint onto our President, (with no insult intended towards the original Ali Baba) for he has wreaked havoc onto our nation, stealing, plundering and decimating so much of what we have in this rich and powerful nation. George W. Bush, Ali Baba. Ali Baba, George W. Bush. Thief, liar, debauched inheritor of dishonor and nefarious consciousness. Creator of an unbalanced world, yielding arrogance, ignorance and apathy, spawning unnecessary hardship at home and throughout the world, smirking and strutting from fund raiser to fund raiser, raping our lands, waters and air, leaving everyone behind, robbing our nation’s wallets of its treasure, its loved ones for his wars.
American Ali Baba has stolen America from each of us, 285 million Americans, of all creeds, colors and beliefs. He has stolen what we once were, our way of being, our high hopes and vision, the bright flame of idealism that once lit and inspired a world and the collective fraternity of a world sympathetic to the horrors of 9/11. What once enlivened the people of the world to make our shores their home has been trashed. What at one point was the country boasting the greatest liberties and freedoms now suppresses each more every day. The bastion of democracy, the espouser of human rights, the altruistic leader of nations has given way instead to a malignant cancer spawning deadly tumors throughout the planet. Full Article