That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it...
Posted on 10/10/2004 3:56:16 PM PDT by Impeach98
FReepers Rock! Keep the comments coming. Donate! Donate!
I'm so happy Howard won the election in Australia. You guys are next! GO BUSH!
Now... Howard KALOOGIAN - Chairman of Move America Forward = rocks too!
The past 10 minutes were awesome. First the "THANK YOU" from the people of Iraq. And then the first-hand testimonial from William John's a US Marine who just returned from Iraq.
Goose bumps here!
Iraqi women tour U.S. with this quiet, stunning message: (Thanks for liberating Iraq.)
By Laura Berman / The Detroit News
August 5th 2004
They are two Iraqi women on a tour of the American Midwest, conveying a simple but somehow stunning message.
To wit: Thanks for liberating Iraq. Thanks for sending American troops. You Americans are a lovely people.
Taghreed Al-Qaragholi, 30, and Surood Ahmad Falih, 33, are college-educated, professional women who have flourished in post-occupation Iraq.
They are believers in democracy, believers in the current transformation of their country. As women, they feel particularly affected.
Both insist that their lives, and those of most Iraqis, have improved since Saddam Hussein’s statue was toppled in Baghdad.
Falih, who watched family members being bombed in their own car under Saddam’s regime, has no doubts that the situation has improved.
For 10 years, as a United Nations employee, she’s worked with a small Kurdish village in Iraq whose male population was completely eliminated during the Saddam regime.
“There are no men. Zero,” she says. “It was very bad there. There was no safe place.”
She carries a folded e-mail print-out from a South Carolina soldier’s mother — a woman who invited her to stay with her family — and tears flood her eyes when she speaks of other kindnesses she’s experienced in the United States.
Both women are here under the auspices of the Iraq-America Freedom Alliance, a coalition of Chaldean, Kurdish and Muslim groups, among others. And that group is, in turn, funded by a U.S. foundation whose board members include Steve Forbes, former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Al Gore’s former aide, Donna Brazile — a foundation committed to what its spokesman, Bill McCarthy, calls “an aggressive war on terrorism.”
These two women are here to say good things about the U.S. presence in Iraq, and to encourage an American response to terrorism, and during their visit Wednesday to the Detroit area, they did so with conviction and charm.
They describe themselves as women fighting for the rights of women in Iraq — rights they say have now been won, if not fully secured. Under the country’s new constitution — the document that Al-Qaragholi laboriously typed and re-typed while its words were being debated and repeatedly changed — women are guaranteed representation in the parliament.
“Before women had no political rights. Now we have four government ministers who are women, six deputy ministers. It is very different than under Saddam Hussein,” says Al-Qaragholi, who is an administrator with one of Iraq’s political parties. She also says that women make up 60 percent of the population, a gender distortion produced by years of war and political executions.
She sees her two younger sisters, ages 18 and 17, as newly hopeful about their lives and futures.
“Before, we educated ourselves to be able to leave. We were like machines, and we kept our emotions inside,” said Falih.
Both women insisted that most Iraqis support the American troops. “We want to say thank you to the mothers and fathers of American soldiers,” says Falih.
They are here, uttering words Americans do not often hear. And no matter how you might feel about the American military presence in Iraq, their clear sense of hope is at once surprising and affecting.
ping
She is disputing the media's portrayal of the war... talking about the troops being invited into the homes for tea by the local population!!!
Goosebumps here, too! More, more!
Invited into homes for tea? That's more like it! Don't wanna show my age here, but I was a child in Germany when the troops came...oh, how I loved the Yankee soldiers...big smiles, hugs and chewing gum! Hero's, each and every one! Love you guys. GO BUSH!
Cool - now my buddy, John Ubaldi is on. Ubaldi is a Marine Reservist who activated himself after 9/11 and went over and served in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
"PONG? Is that a 60 foot ping? "
I don't know. I've never measured it. :~ )
BUMP! This program is really inspiring. Thanks!
Steve Swett - one of the people in the Swift Vets group is now on.
That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it...
Yep - I think you are right. They were both supposed to call in. Scott Swett and Steve Pitkin. Thanks for the clarification!!
Looks like Scott is on now.
Whatdiddysay? What did he say? Steve Pitkin...whatdiddyhesay? Oh, never mind, I know you can't listen and type at the same time.
Instead it caused Americans to turn against the men who had risked their lives to defend their nation.
*forwarding Free Republic thread on to Melanie for her to see the love and adoration for her!!*
Thanks...
I know his story and just read his statements again on the link provided. It's great to hear that he has a chance to say this on radio. How many people are listening to this program do you think? Will Steve Pitkin become a household word after this or will the truth die like every other good story about Iraq...and the truth about that lying, despicable creature the Dem's have chosen for a candidate? (Who sent his ugly sister over here in an attempt to influence our election?) FAT CHANCE! Aussies know when they are being told lies.
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