* Some of those interviewed requested their real names not be published for fear of reprisals against family members in Iraq
With the cold Mosul winter winds lashing against his reddened face, Kathim Raad* embraced his wife and promised they would meet again once he resettled in Jordan.
The US military was weeks away from launching Operation Iraqi Freedom, but Raad was not convinced that a post-invasion Iraq would herald an era of civil liberties and economic prosperity.
“I knew the whole country would descend into chaos,”…”I refused to raise my family, my two sons, in the despair most of us knew was coming.”
Zeyad Alwan*, 30, a doctor in Baghdad, says the carnage in the city has convinced him he must leave by any means possible.
“I simply don’t want to get killed by an illiterate, black-clad slum dweller, or a militiaman dressed in police uniform, or a young confused soldier from Texas, or a bearded fundamentalist from Yemen or Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Imad Khadduri, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist and physics professor residing in Canada, believes the brain drain has sealed the future of the country’s education system.
“With no one left to train Iraqis to teach and instruct a new generation, any hope of reconstruction in the country is lost.
The terror instituted by the U.S. to return the Shah to power — and destroy the first democratic Iranian government in the 1950’s — led inexorably to today’s theocracy. By the time we stop killing Iraqis and sacrificing Americans, I expect the same sad result as in Iran.
Iraq, like several of the countries in the area are artificial creations of the European colonial powers after WWI. It’s not surprising that they have so many internal problems.
In a natural world the Kurds would have stayed with their breathern in Turkey, the Sunni arabs would have joined with the Saudi’s and the Shia would have merged with their breathern in Iran.
I don’t think Humpty Bush or anyother Humpty can put the pieces back together at this point. While there are many Iraqi’s that consider the whole country as their home, they may be losers as time goes on. I really do see 3 seperate little countries coming out of this mess. Unfortunatly, only 2 of them will be viable due to oil wealth, and this will lead to regional fighting for years to come.
Turkey will never stand for a free Kurdish enclave next to it’s border due to it’s large Kurdish population in that area who have been trying for 70 years to join the Iraqi Kurds. Iran will protect the Shia third of Iraq, and the Saudi’s will protect the Sunni middle……looks like problems for many, many years to come.
At least there won’t be any weapons of mass destruction, they will be to busy fighting eachother to make them…..so Bush will win that one.
This is the view that the Administration doesn’t want you to see. The Pentagon will refer to them as “collateral damage”. The President will once again assure us, Peace and Democracy are now in Iraq.
I wish every politician in Washington could go to Iraq and see what they have done in the name of WMD / Regime Change / Democracy / Peace in our Time.
Its interesting to go INTO another country and REMOVe the person in charge…Then expect things to go back to usual..
Usual, over there, is 6 tribes ALL fighting each other.
Sadam, IS/WAS cruel…but he HELD that country in check. He had Little to do with religious groups, and persecuted them ALL.
NOW we are seeing the start of Civil war…
Unless they get there BUT, together…AFTER the war, ALL those other nations and groups are going to take it AWAY, for there OWN uses.
The SMART ones, are going to:
1. sit on the side lines.
2. instigate the civil war.
THEn they will walk into the country AFTER everyone has killed each other…
What you see NOW, besides the result of the USA NOT closing the borders and patroling them…
Is the REAL radicals that cant SEE, past there noses whats happening.. It ISNT 1 group.
But, the MORe they piss off those people, the better chance they will GROUP up…and FIGHT back…
WITH WHAT? is the question.