Posted on 02/25/2003 9:49:22 AM PST by Stultis
Safia Taleb Al Souhail, Advocacy Director for the Middle East and Islamic World at the International Alliance for Justice, www.i-a-j.org, shares the stories of six Iraqi women who met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair last December to brief him on Saddam Hussein’s persecution of their families and communities: “These stories are just a tiny sample of the crimes that the Ba’ath regime has committed against the Iraqi people for the past three decades… Saddam Hussein himself is a weapon of mass destruction. Disarmament is not enough… His ongoing wars against the Iraqi people must be stopped.”
Rend Rahim Franke, the Executive Director of the Iraq Foundation, www.iraqfoundation.org, a non-profit organization working for democracy and human rights in Iraq, discusses the prospects for democracy in Iraq and argues that a free Iraq could act as a catalyst for democracy in the Middle East: “Removing Saddam Hussein would liberate the Iraqi people’s energy and talents so that they may be directed towards good, not evil.”
Entifadh K. Qanbar, the Director of the Washington, D.C. office of the Iraqi National Congress, www.inc.org.uk, a coalition of Iraqi opposition groups, calls on the United States to commit itself to supporting a democratic Iraq: “All of the Iraqi opposition is united around two common goals: The removal of Saddam Hussein, and the creation of democracy in Iraq. We welcome the United States’ leadership in helping us to achieve these goals.”
Dr. Barham Salih, the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, www.puk.org, explains that a military intervention to remove Saddam Hussein would not be a war on Iraq, but a liberation of Iraq: “When the President of the United States drives through Baghdad in his limousine, the streets will be filled with thousands of Iraqis waving American and Iraqi flags.”
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