"The Occupation Gets More Sadam Like Everyday" Says Iraqi Engineer

[Itsthetruth]

CounterPunch
May 10, 2005

An Interview with Ghazwan al-Mukhtar
The Occupation Get More Saddam-like Everyday
By KEVIN ZEESE

Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar is an engineer living in what America calls "liberated' Iraq" but what he calls "occupied Baghdad." Ghazwan has been an outspoken critic of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, he was also an outspoken critic of Saddam Hussein. The interview was conducted by Kevin Zeese of Democracy Rising.

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Ghazwan al-Mukhtar: Saddam used Abu Ghraib prison to torture prisoners. In November 2002 all prisoners in Iraq were released and Abu Ghraib prison was closed. The Americans reopened the prison again and started torturing Iraqis more savagely. It is now more appropriate to call it Abu Gulag!!! To add insult to injury we were told that those actions are done by "the seven bad apples" and they want us to believe that!!! The torture migrated, or was it illegally smuggled!!!, from Gitmo to Afghanistan to Iraq. I think that lie was the straw that broke the camels back.

I will not try to proportionate the blame between Saddam and America for the ills that happened to us, the Iraqi people, since I believe the civilized world should not have turned the blind eye to the blight of the Iraqi people just because the ills were done by Saddam. Probably the civilized world is more guilty than Saddam because Saddam was a known dictator long before the Gulf War stated in 1991. Some of those civilized and bleeding hearts were in Baghdad meeting Saddam, shaking his hand and later on supported him in his war against Iran. They totally disregarded Saddam's human rights abuse for their political gains. I am sure you know that I am referring to the visit in 1983 and 1984 by none other than Donald Rumsfield who aligned his country, the USA, to a dictator like Saddam.

I do not only criticize the United States occupation. I also criticized Saddam. I called him a ruthless dictator. He did not arrest me. On the otherhand when America destroyed our telephone system in 2003 they set up a small mobile system which they used and shared with NGO. We called it the (914) system, a US number with country code 1, and was ran by MCI. My wife was working as a doctor for the UNDP so she was issued this 914 telephone. Amy Goodman from Democracy Now sent me a message to give her a phone number so they could call for interview. I gave her my wife's number (cheep local call!!) she called and we talked about the situation in Iraq. Two days later the phone went dead and was never reactivated again. I think BIG BROTHER did not like what I said. Democracy?

While Saddam denied the Iraqi people of their political rights The UK-USA-UN have denied the people of Iraq most of their other rights, namely the right to have decent education, clean water, medical health through the economic sanctions. And, now with the war and occupation not only have these basic necessities continued to be taken from us but now our political rights are being taken as well.

Kevin Zeese is a director of Democracy Rising. You can comment on this article by visiting his blogspot at www.DemocracyRising.US.

http://www.counterpunch.org/zeese05112005.html

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. New boss/Old boss.

Different names, different uniforms, same tactics to subjugate the people.

[NNN0LHI]

2. The next country Bush invades won't greet us with flowers and candy now

:eyes:

[clem_c_rock]

3. Time to fucking leave - after 3 western invasions, installed puppet regime

s, murderous sanctions that only affected Iraqi people (mainly children), massive collective punishment in the form of napalm and chemical weapons, the vast majority of construction only going towards building the embassy, the Green Zone, and 14 permanent bases - I think we've proved, after 90 years, we have never done anything but oppress the Iraqi people.

And now the intent is even worse. The first thing we did when we took over was to disband the Iraqi army - making them fully helpless to Western occupation "security". We intend to make this country ours and the PNAC states it fully in "Rebuilding Americas Defenses".

Anyone who believes we're suddenly going to change and finally do something beneficial to the Iraqi people is living in a complete dream world.

WAKE THE FUCK UP!!

[clem_c_rock]

4. kick