Human Shield--I was wrong!

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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An article by a Christian minister and anti-war activist who tells of his encounters in Iraq. perhaps a message in here for some of our Guppy friends?

I Was Wrong!
By Ken Joseph, Jr.
Amman, Jordan

How do you admit you were wrong? What do you do when you realize those you were defending in fact did not want your defense and wanted something completely different from you and from the world?

This is my story. It will probably upset everybody - those with whom I have fought for peace all my life and those for whom the decision for war comes a bit too fast.

Following a beautiful Peace to welcome the Peace Activists in which even the children participated, we moved to the next room to have a simple meal.

What in the world do you mean? I asked.

How could you not want peace? We don't want peace. We want the war to come.

Sitting next to me was an older man who carefully began to sound me out. Apparently feeling the freedom to talk in the midst of the mingling crowd he suddenly turned to me and said There is something you should know. What I asked surprised at the sudden comment.

We didn't want to be here tonight. he continued. When the Priest asked us to gather for a Peace Service we said we didn't want to come. He said.

What do you mean I inquired, confused. We didn't want to come because we don't want peace he replied.

What in the world do you mean? I asked. How could you not want peace? We don't want peace. We want the war to come he continued.

What in the world are you talking about? I blurted back.

That was the beginning of a strange odyssey that deeply shattered my convictions and moral base but at the same time gave me hope for my people and, in fact, hope for the world.

THE STRANGE ODYSSEY BEGINS

Beginning that night and continuing on in the private homes of relatives with whom I stayed little by little the scales began to come off my eyes.

I had not realized it but began to realize that all foreigners in Iraq are subject to 24 hour surveillance by government minders who arrange all interviews, visits and contact with ordinary Iraqis. Through some fluke either by my invitation as a religious person and or my family connection I was not subject to any government minders at any time throughout my stay in Iraq.

As far as I can tell I was the only person including the media, Human Shields and others in Iraq without a Government minder there to guard.

What emerged was something so awful that it is difficult even now to write about it. Discussing with the head of our tribe what I should do as I wanted to stay in Baghdad with our people during their time of trial I was told that I could most help the Assyrian cause by going out and telling the story to the outside world.

Simply put, those living in Iraq, the common, regular people are in a living nightmare. From the terror that would come across the faces of my family at a unknown visitor, telephone call, knock at the door I began to realize the horror they lived with every day.

Over and over I questioned them Why could you want war? Why could any human being desire war? They’re answer was quiet and measured. Look at our lives!We are living like animals. No food, no car, no telephone, no job and most of all no hope.`

I would marvel as my family went around their daily routine as normal as could be. Baghdad was completely serene without even a hint of war. Father would get up, have his breakfast and go off to work. The children to school, the old people - ten in the household to their daily chores.

You can not imagine what it is to live with war for 20, 30 years. We have to keep up our routine or we would lose our minds

Then I began to see around me those seemingly in every household who had lost their minds. It seemed in every household there was one or more people who in any other society would be in a Mental Hospital and the ever present picture of a family member killed in one of the many wars.

Having been born and raised in Japan where in spite of 50 years of democracy still retains vestiges of the 400 year old police state I quickly began to catch the subtle nuances of a full blown, modern police state.

I wept with family members as I shared their pain and with great difficulty and deep soul searching began little by little to understand their desire for war to finally rid them of the nightmare they were living in.

The terrible price paid in simple, down to earth ways - the family member with a son who just screams all the time, the family member who lost his wife who left unable to cope anymore, the family member going to a daily job with nothing to do, the family member with a son lost to the war, a husband lost to alcoholism the daily, difficult to perceive slow death of people for whom all hope is lost.

The pictures of Sadaam Hussein whom people hailed in the beginning with great hope everywhere. Sadaam Hussein with his hand outstretched. Sadaam Hussein firing his rifle. Sadaam Hussein in his Arab Headdress. Sadaam Hussein in his classic 30 year old picture - one or more of these four pictures seemed to be everywhere on walls, in the middle of the road, in homes, as statues - he was everywhere!

All seeing, all knowing, all encompassing.

Life is hell. We have no hope. But everything will be ok once the war is over. The bizarre desire for a war that would rid them of the hopelessness was at best hard to understand.

Look at it this way. No matter how bad it is we will not all die. We have hoped for some other way but nothing has worked. 12 years ago it went almost all the way but failed. We cannot wait anymore. We want the war and we want it now

Coming back to family members and telling them of progress in the talks at the United Nations on working some sort of compromise with Iraq I was welcomed not with joy but anger. No, there is no other way! We want the war! It is the only way he will get out of our lives
…

Then I began to feel so terrible. Here I had been demonstrating against the war thinking I had been doing it for the very people I was here now with and yet I had not ever bothered to ask them what they wanted. What they wanted me to do.

It was clear now what I should do. I began to talk to the so called human shields. Have you asked the people here what they want? Have you talked to regular people, away from your minder and asked them what they want?

I was shocked at the response. We don't need to do that. We know what they want. was the usual reply before a minder stepped up to check who I was.

With tears streaming down my face in my bed in a tiny house in Baghdad crowded in with 10 other of my own flesh and blood, all exhausted after another day of not living but existing without hope, exhausted in daily struggle simply to not die I had to say to myself I was wrong.

How dare I claim to speak for those for whom I had never asked what they wanted!

Then I began a strange journey to do all I could while I could still remain to as asked by our tribe let the world know of the true situation in Iraq.

Carefully and with great risk, not just for me but most of all for those who told their story and opened up their homes for the camera I did my best to tape their plight as honestly and simply as I could. Whether I could get that precious tape out of the country was a different story.

What I was not prepared for was the sheer terror they felt at speaking out.
Wanting to make sure I was not simply getting the feelings of a long oppressed minority - the Assyrians - I spoke to dozens of people. What I was not prepared for was the sheer terror they felt at speaking out.

Over and over again I would be told We would be killed for speaking like this and finding out that they would only speak in a private home or where they were absolutely sure through the introduction of another Iraqi that I was not being attended by a minder.

From a former member of the Army to a person working with the police to taxi drivers to store owners to mothers to government officials without exception when allowed to speak freely the message was the same - `Please bring on the war. We are ready. We have suffered long enough. We may lose our lives but some of us will survive and for our children’s sake please, please end our misery.

On the final day for the first time I saw the signs of war. For the first time sandbags began appearing at various government buildings but the solders putting them up and then later standing within the small circle they created gave a clear message they could not dare speak.

They hated it. They despised it. It was their job and they made clear in the way they worked to the common people watching that they were on their side and would not fight.

Near the end of my time a family member brought the word that guns had just been provided to the members of the Baath Party and for the first time we saw the small but growing signs of war.

But what of their feelings towards the United States and Britain? Those feelings are clearly mixed. They have no love for the British or the Americans but they trust them.

We are not afraid of the American bombing. They will bomb carefully and not purposely target the people. What we are afraid of is Saddam Hussein and what he and the Baath Party will do when the war begins. But even then we want the war. It is the only way to escape our hell. Please tell them to hurry. We have been through war so many times,but this time it will give us hope.

http://assyrianchristians.com/i_was_wrong_mar_26_03.htm

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Or perhaps this account:

I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam
(March 26, 2003)

DAILY TELEGRAPH (London)
By Daniel Pepper
March 24, 2003

I wanted to join the human shields in Baghdad because was direct action which had a chance of bringing the anti-war movement to the forefront of world attention. It was inspiring: the human shield volunteers were making a sacrifice for their political views - much more of a personal investment than going to a demonstration in Washington or London. It was simple - you get on the bus and you represent yourself.

So that is exactly what I did on the morning of Saturday, January 25. I am a 23-year-old Jewish-American photographer living in Islington, north London. I had travelled in the Middle East before: as a student, I went to the Palestinian West Bank during the intifada. I also went to Afghanistan as a photographer for Newsweek.

The human shields appealed to my anti-war stance, but by the time I had left Baghdad five weeks later my views had changed drastically. I wouldn’t say that I was exactly pro-war - no, I am ambivalent - but I have a strong desire to see Saddam removed.

We on the bus felt that we were sympathetic to the views of the Iraqi civilians, even though we didn’t actually know any. The group was less interested in standing up for their rights than protesting against the US and UK governments.

I was shocked when I first met a pro-war Iraqi in Baghdad - a taxi driver taking me back to my hotel late at night. I explained that I was American and said, as we shields always did, “Bush bad, war bad, Iraq good”. He looked at me with an expression of incredulity.

As he realised I was serious, he slowed down and started to speak in broken English about the evils of Saddam’s regime. Until then I had only heard the President spoken of with respect, but now this guy was telling me how all of Iraq’s oil money went into Saddam’s pocket and that if you opposed him politically he would kill your whole family.

It scared the hell out of me. First I was thinking that maybe it was the secret police trying to trick me but later I got the impression that he wanted me to help him escape. I felt so bad. I told him: “Listen, I am just a schmuck from the United States, I am not with the UN, I’m not with the CIA - I just can’t help you.”

Of course I had read reports that Iraqis hated Saddam Hussein, but this was the real thing. Someone had explained it to me face to face. I told a few journalists who I knew. They said that this sort of thing often happened - spontaneous, emotional, and secretive outbursts imploring visitors to free them from Saddam’s tyrannical Iraq.

I became increasingly concerned about the way the Iraqi regime was restricting the movement of the shields, so a few days later I left Baghdad for Jordan by taxi with five others. Once over the border we felt comfortable enough to ask our driver what he felt about the regime and the threat of an aerial bombardment.

“Don’t you listen to Powell on Voice of America radio?” he said. “Of course the Americans don’t want to bomb civilians. They want to bomb government and Saddam’s palaces. We want America to bomb Saddam.”

We just sat, listening, our mouths open wide. Jake, one of the others, just kept saying, “Oh my God” as the driver described the horrors of the regime. Jake was so shocked at how naive he had been. We all were. It hadn’t occurred to anyone that the Iraqis might actually be pro-war.

The driver’s most emphatic statement was: “All Iraqi people want this war.” He seemed convinced that civilian casualties would be small; he had such enormous faith in the American war machine to follow through on its promises. Certainly more faith than any of us had.

Perhaps the most crushing thing we learned was that most ordinary Iraqis thought Saddam Hussein had paid us to come to protest in Iraq. Although we explained that this was categorically not the case, I don’t think he believed us. Later he asked me: “Really, how much did Saddam pay you to come?”

It hit me on visceral and emotional levels: this was a real portrayal of Iraq life. After the first conversation, I completely rethought my view of the Iraqi situation. My understanding changed on intellectual, emotional, psychological levels. I remembered the experience of seeing Saddam’s egomaniacal portraits everywhere for the past two weeks and tried to place myself in the shoes of someone who had been subjected to seeing them every day for the last 20 or so years.

Last Thursday night I went to photograph the anti-war rally in Parliament Square. Thousands of people were shouting “No war” but without thinking about the implications for Iraqis. Some of them were drinking, dancing to Samba music and sparring with the police. It was as if the protesters were talking about a different country where the ruling government is perfectly acceptable. It really upset me.

Anyone with half a brain must see that Saddam has to be taken out. It is extraordinarily ironic that the anti-war protesters are marching to defend a government which stops its people exercising that freedom.
http://216.219.216.117/news/2003/cmar/26_human.html

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nothing new, more propoganda. very credible sites by the way.:rotfl:
Just like US used unscom inspectors to spy for pentagon. Iraqis have the right to be suspicious of all foreigners.
before you ask me for proof, go dig up documentation that has been declassified or get a book on UN inspections in Iraq.

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The truth comes out slowly.

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A small handful of human shields have indeed returned from Iraq. What does this, genuinely, signify?

Ken Nichols O’Keefe is the organizer of the human shield delegations, a former Gulf War veteran. If anyone is interested, they should read for themselves O’Keefe’s official statement regarding “Misreporting in the Media regarding Human Shields in Iraq”.

O’Keefe’s original stance vis-a-vis the war - i.e., that it is illegal, unjust, and immoral - remains unaltered. His website (link above) provides all the necessary statements and links to verify this.

A few disillusioned individuals who returned from Iraq are just that - a few disillusioned individuals who returned from Iraq. Are they representative of all human shield volunteers ? Not at all, in my opinion.

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i am not certain what the author of this piece meant when he stated this. Why do so many individuals apparently have a problem with anti-war protestors who are simply exercising their right to freedom of speech? Why have i heard so many complaints from pro-war individuals who behave as though they bear some sort of grudge that someone is excercising their right to freedom of expression. Surely that is my right - :confused: why does it bother others.

The point that this individual seems to forget, is that - ‘taking out’ dictators is not sanctioned by any international law whatsoever. For democractic movements to be truly sustainable, they have to be indigenous; it has to be at the grassroots level otherwise it will not be sustainable IMO.

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Ohioguy..

Where is the head and where is the tail except the same old rhetoric 'saddam mad man' ?? oh yeah your 'sources' are worthy of anybodys confidence..

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Then why are so many Human Shields leaving? How did these "true believers" become so disillusioned so quickly? How do we know there are any still sitting there?

Returning Journalists report being imprisoned and having prisoners beaten and tortured a few feet away from them......Do we doubt their stories?

Why did even Al-Jazeera get booted?

The only one left is Fisk who gets missle part presents with nice bows on them. How convenient!

I don't think they are disillusioned at all. I think they got an eyeful of a terrible world that they never dreamed of... their stories are very consistant with those of exiles.

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How do we know there are any still sitting there?
From the Human Shields official website, the following: "There are Human Shields currently based at seven sites in Baghdad. It is a war crime to harm or destroy facilities that provide essential services to the civilian population. These sites were targeted by the U.S. in the 1991 Gulf War. If these sites are hit once again it will be the economic and environmental destruction, spreading of disease and lack of water that will so shamefully hit the children and poor yet again."

Here are the facilities that they are located at (at least up until the date that this website was updated): Al Daurra Electrical Plant; Al Daurra Oil Refinery; Al Daura Water Treatment Plant; Water Treatment Plant; Tejio Food Silo; Baghdad South Electrical Plant; Al Mamun Telecommunications Facilty.

**I don't think they are disillusioned at all. I think they got an eyeful of a terrible world that they never dreamed of... their stories are very consistant with those of exiles. **
Human shields volunteers are human beings. Whatever misconceptions they may have carried in their baggage, they paid the price for those misconceptions. A handful of human shields returning from Iraq does not signify anything more, to myself, than the fact that a handful of disillusioned individuals decided to return to Iraq. Fair enough - that was their choice.

Point being at the end of the day - their misconceptions and return to their homes does not signify that, somehow, this war is legal all of a sudden.

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The real problem is what witnesses to Iraq should we believe?

How about this story from the recently released Newsday reporters? Please read this and let me know if you really think that there is freedom of expression in Iraq, and a seething hatred for Saddam and his henchmen! You may not realize it, but your “peace protests” have helped this regime survive.

Now please tell me that this is not a credible witness to the horrors of Iraq.

The Witness

By Matthew McAllester
STAFF CORRESPONDENT

April 3, 2003

Newsday staffers Moises Saman and Matthew McAllester were recently held in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison for eight days with two other Western journalists and an American peace activist.

Amman, Jordan

At first it sounded as if the guards who played pool throughout the night in a room at the end of the cell block were having a play fight or at worst an argument about what the local rules might be at Abu Ghraib.

The clicking of the pool balls had stopped. Shoes that usually padded or snapped down the concrete hallway running between the two rows of cells were rushing this time. Several pairs of shoes, or boots. There was shouting, too.

A body fell to the ground, and now, amid the shouting, emerged a single voice coming from the level where I lay, on the cold floor of my cell. That voice was different from the others. It wasn’t that it was quieter, because the man was calling out almost as loudly as the others in this group. But it came from a throat contracted by fear. It seemed about two or three yards from me.

I recognized one of the other voices, I am sure. It belonged to a guard who had broad shoulders and wore wire-rim glasses and who walked in smallish steps, with his feet pointing out slightly, because of his large girth. He had been there when we checked in to the prison a couple of days earlier, and he had searched the pockets of my black fleece, pulling a drawstring tight around my waist for no apparent reason. He had stood beside me as I stripped to my boxer shorts and put on my blue-and-white striped prison pajamas. Somehow in our new universe full of dark stars, I picked him out as perhaps one of the blackest. Ever since, I had avoided eye contact with him whenever he walked past my cell door.

He had a loud voice, normally, barking commands angrily to the Iraqi prisoners who occupied the cells opposite ours. His was a nonchalant aggression. Now his voice was unrestrained, furious. And it came in a new rhythm, alternating with another sound.

In the early 1990s, I once saw two men rush out of a warehouse building on a quiet street in SoHo with baseball bats to beat up a man who looked like a drug addict. The man had been clumsily, hazily trying to break into a car. The sound of the bats against his gangly body has always stayed with me. That was the sort of sound I was hearing now, alternating with the shouts of the heavy-set guard.

The prisoner was on the ground, and he was being beaten with something that wasn’t a fist or a boot. A shout and then that slightly resonant sound of flesh and bone giving way to something very hard that was moving fast. And then another shout from the guard, another blow. It went on.

Voices mingled, and though I couldn’t understand them, it sounded as if the other guards were perhaps trying to persuade the big guard to ease up on the prisoner a little. But maybe they were egging him on, because the beating did not stop, nor did the yelps coming from the tightened throat of the man on the ground.

The fluorescent strip above my head filled my cell with light, as it did 24 hours a day. I was plainly visible to the men in the corridor, and I did not want to be seen watching. As soon as I had sensed the violence beginning I turned onto my left side and lay motionless, staring at the marine-blue strip painted around the base of the cinder-block walls of my cell.

Journalists are meant to bear witness. That’s rather the point of our job. We watch and record and tell other people what we have seen, perhaps in the hope that an account, a witnessing, could eke away at badness. But I turned away and chose not to see a thing.

Eventually the beating stopped, and the man was dumped into his cell. The big guard seemed to have exhausted his fury. The block echoed as it always did when the iron bars of the prisoner’s cell door was closed and the click of its padlock confirmed that he would not be leaving his 6- by 10-foot room that night.

With each breath he made a sort of crying sound. Sometimes he broke that rhythm to exhale his pain with more force, and the otherwise silent block filled up with what I wondered might be the man’s last gasps.

A guard ambled back and spoke to him, asking him a question. The man just continued to whine with his agony and the guard walked away.

After another while, two guards came back, and I wondered whether one of them was the man who had appeared once at my cell door to ask, in English, “Medicine?”

There were more questions, and this time the prisoner responded. The cell door opened and there was more talking and then the door was locked again and the two men walked away.

I don’t know how long the man’s noises filled the cells. Since they had taken away my watch when we arrived at Abu Ghraib, along with everything else I had, apart from some bottled water, time had lost its structure. But eventually silence came back to the block.

In the morning, the prisoner was alive. Moises Saman, two cells over from me, said yesterday that he had seen blood on the floor.

Sometime during the next two days I came to see the big guard as a source of some comfort.

During the previous month, the stresses of working in Iraq had turned me from the bummer of an occasional cigarette to a serious smoker. In Abu Ghraib, a cigarette was a companion, a comfort, a distraction, an unspeakable luxury. The big guard smoked, and one day I heard my next-door prisoner Molly Bingham, a freelance photographer, successfully plead for a cigarette from him.

“Beautiful?” he asked, out of my sight. I assumed he was asking Molly what she thought of his looks.

When he walked past, I asked for a cigarette also, and the man held out a pack of extra-long, super-thin Pine cigarettes that should really have been dangling from the fingers of a bejeweled beauty in an early Bond film. These were the “beautiful” things.

I thanked him with all the warmth I could generate.

“No problem,” the man said in a gentle voice, smiling kindly.

Abu Ghraib did things like that: making me turn away from a beating and then form a tiny alliance, or reliance, on the beater. In the second-by-second struggle to survive, I could unhesitatingly betray the very essence of human solidarity and a deposit of guilt could be made on my soul.

And so all I can do now is to bear witness to the sounds we all heard that night, and on other nights, and to say that Abu Ghraib, the largest and most feared prison in Iraq, is still home to hundreds of men who do not have the countless numbers of people working every waking minute to try to get them out, as we had.

Those men are still in there. And so are the guards.
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/nationworld/iraq/ny-wojour033204192apr03.story

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Please read this and let me know if you really think that there is freedom of expression in Iraq...
Sorry, but when have i ever stated that there is?

You may not realize it, but your "peace protests" have helped this regime survive.
My "peace protests" were not for Saddam Hussein. Iraq is made up of 24 million civilian individuals.

**Now please tell me that this is not a credible witness to the horrors of Iraq. **
Yes, he IS a credible witness.

The same occurs every hour, of every day, in Saudi Arabia, and i would venture to guess in the majority of Gulf states (UAE, Qatar, etc.). But what does this prove, OG? i still do not believe that regime change, despite how odious the dictators, is something that we can justify under international laws.

i am sorry, i just cannot make myself believe that.

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If you read the story carefully you will find that a "peace activist" was held in addition to the journalists. I wonder if his views have changed?

Oddly enough the prison discussed in this article is a very short way away from the "Baghdad" International Airport. I wonder how soon it will be before this prison is liberated and shown to the world!

If you do not believe in "regime change" to cure these types of abuses, then your commitment to improving these conditions is weak, or at best ineffective......

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I wonder if his views have changed?
Hey if they have - then i say good for him. We all should force ourselves to analyze our inner opinions. It's no skin off my back if he has changed his opinions - he is entitled to do that, i have nothing against it. He can change it a million times if that's what suits him. i am entitled to change my opinion if i believe the facts suit that, and he is entitled to change his.

I wonder how soon it will be before this prison is liberated and shown to the world!
hm.

*If you do not believe in "regime change" to cure these types of abuses, then your commitment to improving these conditions is weak, or at best ineffective...... *
OG, it is not as simple as that. There are a thousand and one other variables that i am uncomfortable with, in this overall issue of "regime change". Firstly, since we are on the topic of individuals and their "rights" - one important variable is the decades-long trade embargo (that further swept away civilians' rights). Had we cared for the issue of committing abuses, then i think our 'passive' approach towards that entire issue, needs to be taken into consideration.

There's a whole plethora of other issues that i won't bother you with because you have read them often enough on this Forum, you could probably list them all for me... how the UN was entirely bypassed in order to conduct this invasion, motivations behind this invasion, US plans for a post-Hussein Iraq, ethnic representation in a new interim govt. (will it be truly democratic?), etc. etc.

i think we both want the same 'thing' for Iraq - but we tend to prefer different ways of getting there.

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Let me tell you what the UN ignored and failed to deal with. Here is a further discussion of the prison where these journalists were held. In 1998, while the UN was still fooling around, there was a single day where 2000 executions were committed at the order of Saddam’s son.

Perhaps if the peace activists had been present for this massacre, they would have a change of heart. Perhaps the relatives of these 2000 people realize that nothing can remove Saddam but war. Do you think that a man who could order 2000 executions (muslims more than likely)in a day will change his ways because protestors in London insist on it?

Coalition soldiers are just miles away from this prison… We shall see…

Iraq: Former Officer Tells Of Summary Executions
By Ahmad Al-Rikaby and Charles Recknagel

The regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has frequently been accused by human rights groups of using terror and murder to enforce its rule. Much of the evidence comes from disaffected members of the regime who have been eyewitnesses to its methods. RFE/RL’s Iraq Service recently spoke to one former official, who told a chilling tale of how two years ago, at a prison not far from Baghdad, 2,000 men were executed on a single day.

Prague, 20 November 2000 (RFE/RL) – Captain Khalid Sachit Aziz Al-Janabi is a former Iraqi intelligence officer. He served nearly 20 years in the Mukhabarat intelligence service which, among its many functions, monitors government officials and citizens for any signs of opposition to the Saddam Hussein regime.

Al-Janabi defected after his brother, Staff Lieutenant-General Kamil Sachit, died in 1998 at the hands of the Iraqi president’s son, Qusay Saddam Hussein. Al-Janabi is now a member of the Iraqi opposition and lives in Amman.

The former captain told RFE/RL’s Iraq Service details of how 2,000 prisoners were executed on a single day in 1998 in one of Iraq’s most notorious prisons – the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

He said most of those executed were being held on vague charges of taking part in anti-government activities and many of their cases were pending appeal. But the appeal process suddenly ended when Saddam’s son Qusay arrived at the prison on March 15, 1998, and surrounded it with his Special Security Forces.

At the time, Captain Al-Janabi was visiting the prison as a member of a joint supervisory committee set up by the various Iraqi intelligence branches to follow up the cases of prisoners previously ordered released but still in jail.

Captain Al-Janabi picks up the story at the point where Qusay arrives.

“When he (Qusay) arrived, he greeted us and said he would like to tour the prison. There was a section housing 2,000 prisoners, some had been sentenced, others were awaiting appeal decisions. Qusay went straight to that section. In answer to Qusay’s question, the warden said that these prisoners had been sentenced and some were awaiting appeal decisions. He looked at the warden and ordered him to carry out their executions immediately.”

Al-Janabi says the warden, Colonel Al-Ameri, was a right-hand man of Saddam Hussein and he asked Qusay if such an order should not come from his father directly. Qusay told him the 2,000 were to be executed beginning at 6 am the next morning and that he would receive an order in due course. He also said he would leave behind a group of his Special Forces to supervise the executions.

Al-Janabi says that Qusay was, in fact, authorized to give the order and that the warden had no choice but to comply. Shortly before the incident, Saddam Hussein had told his commanders, ministers, and party members that executions were to be carried out in accordance with Qusay’s orders.

At dawn the next morning, the executions began. Some prisoners were hung and others were shot once in the head. Al-Janabi says most of the prisoners were ordinary citizens who did not constitute a threat to the regime.

“Most of them were from the South, accused of joining parties and taking part in (anti-government) activities. There was, of course, no foundation for such accusations, but accusing people of such activity is standard procedure. Most seemed quite helpless to me and didn’t appear likely to threaten Saddam Hussein. They had just been dragged in from the [southern] marshes and thrown into Abu Ghraib. Two thousand of them died on that same day.”

http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2000/11/20112000173404.asp

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So many anti-war protesters cling to the misguided belief that regime change in Iraq is something that could be done by the Iraqi people through the exercise of their right of self-determination. This belief demonstrates a total ignorance of the brutal suppression of the 1991 uprising and the daily oppression, suppression, torture and murder practised by the Iraqi regime.

OG: the accounts you have given in this thread tell the story of imbedded fear and the strong desire for freedom of the Iraqi people in a clear and compelling way. Unfortunately, the tales of the anti-war protesters who changed their views AFTER learning the reality of life in Iraq will be dismissed without so much as giving them a second thought by most of those opposing Operation Iraqi Freedom. Those continuing protesters can sit back comfortably drinking their French wine and eating Brie blocking from their consciences any admission that they are the ones who may very well be prolonging the misery and despair of the Iraqi people and that they are, in fact, providing aid, comfort and support in favor of one of the most brutal and tyrannical regimes of modern times.

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Do you think that a man who could order 2000 executions (muslims more than likely)in a day will change his ways because protestors in London insist on it?
Firstly, it was not exclusively London. There were protests stretching from the Antarctic circle (a geographical team based there), to Durban in South Africa, from Argentina to Berlin. We were not protesting for Saddam Hussein to 'change his ways'. Good grief, we are not that naive. Does Saddam Hussein really care what millions of global protestors believe? No.
Our message was different and it was directed towards our own democratic govts. - we did not want our names as part of an invasion that we believe is unjustified.

OG, i fear that you are wasting your time with me, and i don't want you to waste your time typing up so many responses. Regardless of how many chilling prison descriptions i read (and the last one was gruesome), it has no bearing upon my belief that this invasion is illegal and that the outcome of it will be - i fear - a govt. that is less than democratic.

When i was about 5 i think, we lived in one of the smaller emirates of the UAE (Sharjah). The country, as you know, is ruled by a 'Sheikh', a president; it's a dictatorial monarchy. When i was about 5 (or less, perhaps?), i used to go out to play with my two older sisters (we lived in a very rural part of Sharjah); afraid that we would not come back early enough, my mother used to scare us with threats that the 'shurta will come and take you'. ('Shurta' signifying in emirati Arabic the 'police'). Although she did that to scare us, that was pretty much the way it worked in the country - anyone could be picked off the road and thrown into jail. You had to have contacts with Sheikh al Nahyan in order to, for eg., purchase more than 50% shares of an Arab company; even until recently, non-emiratis were not allowed to purchase property in the UAE (two years ago, a law was brought in to change that in Dubai) unless they had personal contacts with the Sheikh or one of his close family members.

Anyways my point is that - i know what it is like to live in a dictatorship. i was born in the UAE, spent 12 years of my life there. You don't have to spell it out for me. Despite it all, i still believe that - what is presently occurring - going around overthrowing regimes that we happen to disagree with (although we got along pretty well with them in the previous decade) - gives off no logic to me whatsoever. It's opened a pandora's box - after Iraq, who's next? Who gets to decide which govt. is worthy of being overthrown and which is not ?

Perhaps, most worrying of all - i think that we are completely ignoring the fact here that we are taking it upon ourselves to decide what's best for the people of Iraq. Why now? Why not in 1988? Why not just let the people live - lift the embargo that has intellectually suffocated the country (by denying items such as medical journals and books). We are simply alienating the Iraqi people from the thoughts and ideas of other systems and ideologies; flood them with the positive effects of globalization and they will work out a way, on their own, to change their political system IF they believe that is suitable for them. Who are we to judge what is, and is not, right for others?

(ps- i have to jet, so will check this thread after a while).

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The really interesting thing is that the Journalists that were just released detailed accounts of nightlybeatings and torture that dovetail very well with the experience of other Journalists.

But wait! This is a prison that Saddam was supposed to have emptied in a “good will amnesty” last fall. What Gives?

I guess there are some who believe that Saddam will really change. The re-filling of this prison as related by these journalists is simply the type of deception that good willed peaceniks constantly fall for.

Many regimes around the world have brutalized their own citizens, but few have tortured and killed as many people as Hussein’s has. Eleven years ago a French photographer, Alain Buu, and myself, then a stringer for CBS News radio, spent two weeks in Abu Ghraib after we were captured traveling with Iraqi rebels during anti-Hussein uprisings following the Persian Gulf War. In prison, we saw Hussein’s guards select individual Iraqi captives, ranging from men to even one frail boy, to torture for fun at night, while intelligence operatives painfully interrogated the same prisoners during the day. Hussein’s amnesty seems to show that he is concerned about his political image as the Bush administration marches toward war. The Iraqi leader may be trying to avoid a military contest that even he, this time, knows he cannot win, and he is showing his alleged compassion to Iraqis and others whom he finally sees he could use on his side

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein released thousands of political and other prisoners from jails across his country last Sunday, including from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad. The broad amnesty was no doubt welcomed by many Iraqi families whose loved ones disappeared years, if not decades, ago because of their real or suspected opposition to his regime. Hussein’s spokesmen said he freed the prisoners in gratitude, after Iraqis allegedly voted unanimously to reaffirm their support for his rule. But the act of amnesty only angered some families, whose relatives remain missing.

Ironically, he now has something in common with President George W. Bush. Each leader has recently betrayed his own instincts to try to broaden his own respective political coalition: While Bush previously announced his goal to change the Iraqi regime unilaterally if necessary, lately the administration has been negotiating with France and Russia in the UN Security Council over the terms for UN arms inspectors to return to Iraq. Not unlike Hussein, the Bush administration seems to be learning the hard way that more allies are better than one or none.

There is no need for Bush to act alone. Hussein is more widely despised than almost any other world leader, with enemies spread not only around the globe but within Iraq as well. His Iraqi enemies go far beyond the relatively few Iraqis associated with the U.S.-backed opposition based in London. The U.S. Defense Department is training 500 Iraqis recommended by the Iraqi National Congress, led by ex-monarchists.

Hussein’s opponents cut across Iraqi politics, ethnicity and religion. Human rights abuses by Hussein’s regime against his people have been widely documented, and even the Iraqi Communist Party’s Web site includes many reports about torture and mass executions at Abu Ghraib. Emptying his largest gulags may only backfire; Shia women in particular have become emboldened to demand information about their disappeared sons.

http://www.franksmyth.com/clients/FrankSmyth/FrankS.nsf/d8561443268c395785256b6c00561189/b911902bc4b8a8e485256c5d006d9aa7?OpenDocument

18

Again, very credible source. :nook: What is this, you running a web server in your basement ohioguy.
I see you choose to ignore my earlier post. This is very typical of you guys (myvoice, utd, og). I will ask again, Why should Iraqis not be suspect of foreigners when US has used them as spies in the past. UNSCOm inspectors spied for pentagon throughout 90’s. Based on their information 3 different assasination attempts were made.

Just today, senior bush administration admitted that for every one embedded reporter in baghdad, there were 5 pentagon folks…hmmm I wonder why they were there?
All of you war mongers, now quit your bellyaching. Go take some tylonel watch your favorite reality show on TV tonight. Do not act as if you care about the iraqi people.

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Kaleem,

The ceasefire agreement signed by Saddam said that he would disarm within 120 days. There should have been NO UNSCOM inspectors. Do you really think that people that have been systematically tortured, gassed, emprisoned, and subjugated really stay up at night worrying about UNSCOM spies?

Most of the assasination attempts have been made by Iraqi's, and for damn fine reasons.

Nobody likes to be invaded, everybody would fight for their homeland.

But, the average Iraqi has now been born and lived his entire life under Saddam's rule. They know nothing else. His totalitarian regime has bombarded them with images of Saddam on every TV and every street corner. Most of the dissidents have been purged, jailed or exiled. Only those older than 30 would even remember the progressive and thriving society that used to be Iraq.

I am not a war monger. I do not believe that Saddam is a threat to the US, nor is he helping terrorists. He a genocidal dictator who has literally killed millions of Muslims. Other countries have blocked his indictment before any world court, for their own greedy purposes, and the only choice left is to forcible remove him.

Why have you allowed this man to stay in power who has killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims? If Saddam was a Jew, you guys would be screaming bloody murder.

You may not like my sources, but check others such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. They are all remarkably consistant. The only place we differ is should he be removed, or is it OK for him to continue to subjugate Muslims?

20

[quote]
Why have you allowed this man to stay in power who has killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims? If Saddam was a Jew, you guys would be screaming bloody murder.
[/quote]

since you brought it up.. why not first liberate the Palestinians from the Israeli government?? Hey they stand in violation of more UN resolutions than Iraq too if that helps in building a coalition of the willing?