They Ask, We Ask: Was it Worse Under Saddam?

[RedEarth]

By Zaki Chehab

In June last year, in al-Jadriyah, a wealthy suburb of Baghdad, the wife of a veterinary surgeon received a call that people in the city have come to dread. It was from an unknown group claiming respon- sibility for kidnapping her husband a few hours earlier and demanding a ransom of $100,000. Her response was not what they expected. She thanked them and urged them to pay her $200 in return for killing her husband, describing him as useless, unemployed and penniless. She desperately needed the money, she said, to buy essential medicine for her youngest son. The gang, assuming they had nabbed the wrong person and were not after all in possession of a professional man of means, released the vet unharmed. His wife's unorthodox reaction had saved him.

The vet was one of the lucky few; thousands more Iraqis have been killed by their kidnappers, many of them after large ransoms have been paid. Even school- children are not spared: at a press briefing this month, Abdul Falah al-Sudani, the minister for education, said that 76 schools around the country have been attacked since April 2003, resulting in the deaths of 64 students and 310 teachers or other school employees. This was threatening to paralyse the entire school system, putting in jeopardy the educational rehabilitation of the country, he said.

The story is the same at the universities. Isam al-Rawi, head of the Teachers' Association of Iraqi Universities, says that more than 200 lecturers have been murdered since the fall of Saddam Hussein, in what he describes as "organised killings". Just last week, four lecturers were kidnapped from al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad and to date no trace of them has been found. Samir, a sports teacher from Fallujah, told me resignedly: "Threats to teachers like myself, and their assassination, have become something normal in Iraq and we have to live with that."

With kidnap gangs singling out the children of professional parents, it is little wonder that families are fleeing the country in what amounts to a severe brain drain. University professors, doctors, engineers and businessmen and their next of kin seek refuge abroad, many in Amman, the Jordanian capital, where tens of thousands of Iraqis have already settled over the past three years. (There are so many of them, in fact, that property prices in Amman are soaring.) The shrinking of the intellectual heart of Iraq has all but extinguished private investment and the consequences are being felt by the entire country at the most basic levels. Unemployment is running at 60 per cent and life for the Iraqi people is more difficult than at any time in living memory.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0317-20.htm

[LynnTheDem]

1. Worse now, better under Hussein

bush; worse than Saddam.

Who lied? bush

Who didn't lie? Hussein

Gawd bless bush. :eyes:

[Ready4Change]

2. Here is the problem:

It's close.

Are things in Iraq worse now than they were under Saddam? Hard to say. I don't have enough info, and the info I have can't be trusted, imo. Most of the population has no electricity. Water sources are unreliable. Unemployment is rampant. Violence, insurgent and sectarian, is on the upswing. And the impression is that the Iraqi people are still oppressed, still at risk of torture.

The question should be LAUGHABLE.

It is not.

I'm not laughing.

[yurbud]

3. Check polls of Iraqis (LINK)

If I remember correctly, in 2004, Iraqis felt less safe and had less water and electricity than they did under Saddam.

The polls at the link include those done by the Coalition Provisional Authority for itself, and one done by the British government which is even bleaker, so they can hardly be called propaganda:

http://whatiraqiswant.blogspot.com/