Baghdad Bishop reveals how Iraq has improved since Saddam

Wires From The Bunker ^ | 8/19/2005 | Peter Glover

[sionnsar]

If you only receive your news on the run from the mainstream media you might easily be conned into believing that Iraq would have been better off under Saddam. That nothing could be farther from the truth is though borne out by a much more searching analysis of what is actually going on around the country and away from the terrorist car bombings.

Even the BBC Today radio programme this morning carried a piece revealing how vastly improved life already was for many in some of the outlying areas in the Kurdish area.

But today a Chaldean Bishop in Baghdad, Monsignor Rabban al Qas, had this insight to offer,

"What the media portray is true: explosions, killings, attacks. But if you see how much order, discipline, transport, displacements, and work have improved, there is a change for the better compared to one or two years ago. Now people understand there is a government, the structure of a new state. Thousands and thousands of allied and Iraqi soldiers are present. There is a constitution which is being drawn up, laws are being enacted. The presence of authority is recognized. This was not the case before. And Al-Qaeda integralists and terrorists coming from abroad seek to penetrate Iraq precisely to destroy the beginnings of this social organization."

To put all of this, and what the US-led invasion has ended, into real perspective it is important to set the bishop's comments against just one part of what is known of Saddam's record in power,

* The Iraqi regime has repeatedly refused visits by human rights monitors. From 1992 until 2002, Saddam Hussein prevented the UN Special Rapporteur from visiting the country. When looking back at his reign of terror, it is easy to understand why.

* Human Rights Watch estimates that Saddam's campaign of terror against Kurds in 1987-1988 killed at least 50,000 people. The same organization also claims that "senior Arab diplomats told the London-based Arabic daily newspaper al-Hayat in October [1991] that Iraqi leaders were privately acknowledging that 250,000 people were killed during the uprisings, with most of the casualties in the south."

 

* Hussein's regime carried out executions frequently. Some 4,000 prisoners were killed at Abu Ghraib in 1984. Between 1997 and 1999 2,500 prisoners were executed in a "prison cleaning campaign".

* Furthermore, an Amnesty International report written in 2001 says "victims of torture in Iraq are subjected to a wide range of forms of torture including the gouging out of eyes, severe beatings and electric shocks... some victims have died as a result and many have been left with permanent physical and psychological damage.

And this is just a small insight into the reign of terror in Saddam's Iraq. And that doesn't begin to deal with his international excursions into terror by dropping missiles on Israel, invading Kuwait and Iran et al.  And yetThe Times columnist Matthew Parris can still ask The Daily Telegraph/Chicago Sun columnist Mark Steyn - in all seriousness - how he can today still support the war in Iraq.

Just ask the bulk of the Iraqi population Matthew. They'll tell you.

[Loyalist]

Some 4,000 prisoners were killed at Abu Ghraib in 1984.

Irrelevant. Were any of them forced to wear panties on their head? < /sarcasm>

[CROSSHIGHWAYMAN]

There is only one difference between the despotic regime of Saddam Hussein and the coinsurgency of former regime holdouts and Al Quaida terrorists......

Under Saddam...no news got out because no free press existed.

Today the bad news is dominant because that's what makes news......and the media is eager to show it.

The enemy is getting ground down day by day and week by week.

The good guys are taking casualties.

But the Iraqi people have always been great survivors.

And this time they will have something of their own worth fighting for.

And this will be just the start of good things to come.

[tophat9000]

And Al-Qaeda integralists and terrorists coming from abroad seek to penetrate Iraq precisely to destroy the beginnings of this social organization."

This is also what Cindy Sheehan and the so call "anti-war activists" are out to destroy...these people ate not anti war if they were they be protesting for all to lay down there gun and help form the new Iraq government...they are pro war by the other sides...