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Some people are incapable of democratic form of govt....without the internal policeman...

Riiiight!
http://www.healingiraq.com/
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
A great day for Iraq
The rallies today proved to be a major success. I didn't expect anything even close to this. It was probably the largest demonstration in Baghdad for months. It wasn't just against terrorism. It was against Arab media, against the interference of neighbouring countries, against dictatorships, against Wahhabism, against oppression, and of course against the Ba'ath and Saddam.

We started at Al-Fatih square in front of the Iraqi national theatre at 10 am. IP were all over the place. At 12 pm people started marching towards Fardus square through Karradah. All political parties represented in the GC participated. But the other parties, organizations, unions, tribal leaders, clerics, school children, college students, and typical everyday Iraqis made up most of the crowd. Al-Jazeera estimated the size of the crowd as over ten thousand people.

You can find a list of some of the parties that we noticed there at Omar's blog. At one point it struck me that our many differences as an Iraqi people meant nothing. Here we were all together shouting in different languages the same slogans "NO NO to terrorism, YES YES for peace".

I spent most of the time taking pictures. heh, I really enjoyed playing the role of a journalist. Everyone was tugging at my sleeves asking me to take their photos mistaking me for a foreign reporter. Some people recognized a reporter from Al-Arabiyah station and they started taunting him. One old man shouted to him "For once, speak the truth".

What was interesting, a group of Al-Sadr supporters showed up and started
shouting "NO NO to occupiers" obviously in an attempt to hijack the demonstration. They drowned in the rest of the crowd.

Tawfiq Al-Yassiri of the Anti-terrorism Popular Committee (which organized the demos) lead the crowd. GC member Samir Al-Sumaydai and deputy minister of interior Ahmad Kathim Ibrahim also attended along with several ministers.

The demonstrators gathered in Fardus square where party representatives gave speeches. We left at 3 pm, had a Kabab lunch at a nearby restaurant and went home. We're at the Internet cafe right now and I've been sitting for 3 hours trying to upload the pictures. I didn't imagine it would be such a time consuming thing job. AARGGHH. If it takes too long I'll try to upload half of them today and I'll leave the rest for tomorrow. But they're really good and I'm determined to put them all. I think I would make a great photographer, don't you think? Say yes.

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