Reply #59: I sometimes like to check up historical events from the people living them

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I don't really think you could call it a War, to be truthful. More like an invasion with some resistance. I am hearing very little of soldiers coming forward declaring how EVIL the belligerents were.

Mostly things I have heard coming from there, of the few reports one could get from regular GI folks over there, are the questions like "what the heck are we doing over here in the first place". Other than securing the well heads to steal Iraq's oil, I have not heard one thing that was accomplished. The last line they proffered by the corporate media was one of giving democracy to Iraq. Sounds like that one is not going real well at the present time. (wonder why?)

http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=3049

Democracy Delayed Is Democracy Denied
The sooner elections are held in Iraq the fewer American lives will be lost.
by HUSSAIN AL-SHAHRISTANI, Iraqi Democrats Against the Occupation/Wall Street Journal
February 12th, 2004
A U.N. electoral fact-finding team has arrived in Iraq to discuss with local leaders and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) the possibility of holding elections. Iraqis expect the U.N. experts to give advice on the best way to organize elections through which they choose the people they can trust to rule them.

Since the fall of the regime, I have led numerous humanitarian and developmental projects in different regions of Iraq. Village elders, community leaders and professionals tell me of their dreams for a new Iraq. I am struck by the deep-rooted concern and fear felt by these people that the occupying forces will impose a new dictatorship on them that may cost them further hundreds of thousands of lives. Fair and free elections, they insist, are their only guarantee of living as free people.
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Al-Sistani is perhaps the only person who can realize both the dreams of the majority of Iraqis, and the declared goal of the U.S.: to create a stable democracy that could potentially transform the Middle East. The U.S. should value the role the Grand Ayatollah is taking to lead the Iraqi people away from militancy and toward the international system of democracy. If Washington plays it right, this path that Al-Sistani spearheaded in Iraq could prove to be the most significant victory in a war on terrorism. Let us hope--and pray--that Washington has the wisdom to seize it. The most practical way to help Iraq now is to allow the U.N. to work with representatives of all constituents of the Iraqi society to develop a formula for early direct elections--an achievable task. Elections will be held in Iraq, sooner or later. The sooner they are held, and a truly democratic Iraq is established, the fewer Iraqi and American lives will be lost.

Mr. Al-Shahristani is chairman of the standing committee of the Iraqi National Academy of Science. He was held in solitary confinement for 10 years under Saddam Hussein.
Opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily represent that of IDAO
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I am still hopeful that things will get worked out, in spite of what was done over there for the last FIFTY + years