Brother Zaki,
Frankly speaking, I read the attached article and although my English is not that good, I understood it in a way different than your analysis or comments.
Here the article talks about "This is the worst thing to happen to Iraqis since 1258, when the Mongols invaded and took Baghdad", but it does not relate this to any Iranian link ...etc. despite the fact that the Iranians and the Americans are there and there and there.
Why we always try to avoid the fact that "someone" in Iraq, other than the Iranians and the main enemy for us, we the Arabs, has "hollowed out the soul of Iraq" or at least is the main "hand" in allowing the Iraq to be "hollowed out" !!!!
Why should not we be frank enough to accept the fact that what is so called "muqawama" - other than the muqawama that you and I understand, has contributed heavily to the worse situation that Iraq is in now?
Who is responsible for the main killings ? "the conservative official figures record that at least 3,000 civilians are murdered every month. It is a "society pulsating with fear the whole time". I am surely not excluding the Americans or even the Iranians but who is the main killer ??????
"Because there are no more open-air markets, since so many have been bombed, people have set up stalls in side streets or their back gardens instead. Before the war, there were 32,000 doctors in Iraq; now 2,000 are dead, 12,000 have left, and the remainder, who are seen as having money and are thus targets for kidnappers, must work from armed-guarded clinics" - NOW, who is killing the innocent people - the Doctors for example and the 95% Iraqis (70% of whom are of a single sect of Islam) in the "open markets" that have disappeared as per the article ?
Hussain
From: Awal_group@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Awal_group@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Zaki Mubarak
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 1:21 PM
To: Awal_group@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Awal Group] Iranians & Americans in Iraq
So by now you all know about the Iranian-American "discussion" about Iraq's future, right? It's on Satellite TVs and on the newspapers that you read. Definitely, you could not miss it. For some "weak-kneed" people in Iraq, it is now clear that the Iranian regime is their ultimate master, while for some others it is Uncle Sam. These slaves and their masters basically hollowed out the soul of Iraq.
Zaki Mubarak
"This is the worst thing to happen to Iraqis since 1258, when the Mongols invaded and took Baghdad"
Worse than the worst
Katharine Viner
May 28, 2007 4:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/katharine_viner/2007/05/worse_than_the_worst.html
Iraq: it's worse than you can possibly imagine, and worse than we can possibly know.
That was the message when the brilliant Middle East reporter, Patrick Cockburn, spoke on stage today at Hay, publicising his book about the British and American occupation of Iraq.
Iraq, he said, is a country that's been "hollowed out". Two million people have left. At least 3,000 civilians are murdered every month. The rest live in terror.
He told of details that give a real sense of what's going on. Because there are no more open-air markets, since so many have been bombed, people have set up stalls in side streets or their back gardens instead. Before the war, there were 32,000 doctors in Iraq; now 2,000 are dead, 12,000 have left, and the remainder, who are seen as having money and are thus targets for kidnappers, must work from armed-guarded clinics.
He reminded us about the Green Zone, the giant fortified area in the centre of Baghdad - while most of the city doesn't get electricity or water or sewage disposal, the Green Zone gets plenty, so the occupiers who live there have no idea what it feels like to live anywhere else.
He discussed "one of the great thefts in history", the "enormous kleptocracy", that started with Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority, which, infamously, didn't keep accounts. (They believed that all money spent would miraculously "trickle down".)
Cockburn is one of the brave few British journalists who still report from Iraq. He described just how difficult it is to do so: he can't go anywhere for more than 20 minutes; he can't make an appointment; he can't mention to anyone where he might be going, he meticulously avoids traffic jams. And those measures are just to "increase the odds in your favour", he said.
There may have been a plethora of books on Iraq, but most see the country as only a "backdrop" for what is "real and significant" - ie, Washington politics. But Cockburn, thank goodness, is different; he tries to see the occupation the way Iraqis see it.
He talked of cities that reporters rarely get to, such as Mosul and Kirkuk, where we don't know just how bad the violence is; he stressed that even the conservative official figures record that at least 3,000 civilians are murdered every month. It is a "society pulsating with fear the whole time".
Someone in the audience wondered if really the situation isn't so bad, that this is just the "Iraqi way of going about things" and it would all even itself out.
"That's baloney," said Cockburn. "This is the worst thing to happen to Iraqis since 1258, when the Mongols invaded and took Baghdad."
