Oh, My God! Who Will Come To Tell You The Truth?-Delegation of Iraqi Women

Oh, my God! Who will come to tell you the truth? We are come to tell you the truth.

We Are Human, Like You
By davidswanson
Created 2006-03-07 11:23
By David Swanson

Andy Shallal.

A delegation of women from Iraq told stories last night in Washington, D.C., unlike anything we've ever heard about this war from the media in the United States. And the media was not there, so I'm going to tell you what they said.


Eman Khamas with microphone.


Eman Ahmad Khamas is a human rights advocate who has documented abuses by the U.S. military in Iraq. She is a member of Women's Will, and is married with two daughters. She said:

"Hundreds of Iraqi mothers and wives are, like you, waiting for a knock on the door…

"This occupation has destroyed Iraq. Americans don't know that tens of thousands of Iraqis are in prisons. Americans don't know how many have been killed. Lancet reported 100,000 in 2004, not counting Falluja. Now it is something like double this number.

"Hundreds of thousands of families must search for men who are missing, and they are left with nothing to support themselves.

"Many people do not know about the bombing of cities. Bush said the war ended on May 1, 2003. That's not true. Many Iraqi cities have been bombed severely. And families are buried in the rubble.

"'Get the troops back home' is not enough. Yes, the occupation has to end immediately, but those responsible for these crimes have to be held responsible."





Faiza Al-Araji is a civil engineer, a blogger (http://afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com ) and a religious Shia with a Sunni husband. She has three children. After one of her sons was recently held by the Ministry of the Interior, the family fled to Jordan. She said, very rapidly, very passionately:

"Please work on ending this occupation. You live in a beautiful country. We are human, like you. And we deserve to have a life, like you.

"This will destroy our country. People are dying day and night. And your media is telling you the lies. Baghdad was shining. It was very nice. Even under Saddam it was the shining Baghdad. Now it is full of garbage and tanks and barriers. People are dying. They are not normal people. You cannot see three years of dying and lack of security and lack of medicine, lack of everything.

"We see Mr. Bush on television lying that Iraqis are happy for their freedom. Oh, my God! Who will come to tell you the truth? We are come to tell you the truth. And what we have done? This is what we are always asking: What we have done?

...........................



Souad Al-Jazairyis an Iraqi now living in the United States, a writer, journalist and TV producer. She is active with the Iraqi Women's League. She said:


"There were 30 years under the dictatorship of Saddam, brought by the CIA to Iraq. Then 13 years with no food. Then the bombs. Now they're destroying Iraq by dividing them. They want to provoke a civil war. They are turning neighbors against neighbors. It's not just about oil, in my opinion. They want to control all of Asia."




Nadje Al-Ali is a writer/researcher specializing in women in the Middle East. She is a founding member of Act Together: Women's Action on Iraq and mother of a three-year-old daughter. She is currently living in the UK and working on a book about women in Iraq. She said:

"Iraqis have not just suffered for three years. At least 5,000 children per month died according to UNICEF under 13 years of sanctions. And prior to that the regime was backed by the US.

"Women are suffering. Everyone is scared, but if a woman is kidnapped – and most middle-class families have had a member kidnapped) she can be sexually molested or raped. A lot of families keep their women folk inside. This was not the case before.


Medea Benjamin and Cindy Sheehan were expected at Monday's event, but got held up in New York by being arrested at the United Nations.

http://www.democrats.com/node/8100

Too bad the same bastards who have torn Iraq apart put the very man in power they sought to remove (Saddam).

When he was no longer dancing to their fiddle, it was time for him to go.

Saddam got too powerful and full of himself, so the cabal had to get rid of him. Can't have your operatives thinking they can go independent on you now. Wouldn't be prudent.

,...killed, maimed, starved, oppressed millions upon millions of innocent people.

,...that did not threaten us. We are the bad guys. No wonder the world hates us.

They will all pay for the slaughter of innocent Iraqis.

if you count the shit they've done to this once great nation.

,...and be even more accurate about how U.S. corporacratic regimes destroy countries, peoples and democracy with a rule of force.

:grr: Wish we'd clean house of these global dictators. I am sick to death of them!!!

still have their poppy fields and heroin traffic to prop up their economy :sarcasm:

Only to later bomb the crap out of that country.

started when we decided that Saddam was our guy. We have been fucking over the Iraqi people for something like 30 years, through several regimes. The latest fucking is indeed the worst, by far the worst, but it is simply not the first.

When he stopped economically benefitting those global corpora-cannibals, they USED the U.S. military to get rid of him.

It's disgusting that our "free press" doesn't care to cover their stories. They're too afraid that they might lose a major advertiser with ties to the war to tell the truth about it.

"This will destroy our country. People are dying day and night. And your media is telling you the lies."
<snip>
"And where is the media? They will stay in the Green Zone and tell you the stories of the occupation leaders. Sixty reporters have been killed, because they do not want you to hear the stories of Iraqi people.
Faiza Al-Araji

""But Iraqi women were the most well educated in the Middle East. There was free child care and free transportation. Which countries do this? Not your country."
<snip>
"A lot of families keep their women folk inside. This was not the case before."
Nadje Al-Ali


"Bush promised to keep civilian casualties as low as possible.

"I work in the second biggest hospital in Baghdad as director of the pharmacy department, and my office is across from the emergency department. From 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. the bodies don't stop coming in, injured or killed, and the crying and the agony of the mothers and wives."
Entisar Mohammad Ariabi

,...makes Iraq out to be. Freakin' L-I-A-R!!! :grr:

Why ain't they in Guantanamo or Abu-Ghraib studyin' freedom and democracy?

One time I saw a protest poster from an Iraqi that said "Saddam=Bush". So true.

:kick:

Ah, yeah - we're all so much better off after the US invasion :sarcasm:

,...get coverage these days. x(

The Vile Media is not about to cover this story at all.

I just can't. These brave women deserve our attention.

Again the American people are denied the opportunity of gaining an informed opinion by the corrupt and biased US corporate media. At what cost? How many more of our soldiers must die, how many more civilians -- how many more years of bloody war for no better reason than our media cherry picks what news they'll report so that it reflects only what our criminal government wants the people to know?

These women are here to tell the American people their side of the story, something we should all be interested to hear after three years of being told only the half BushCo wants us to know, and they're IGNORED by the press! How do we expect them to view this slight? What will they say when they go back to Iraq? I doubt it will be "The American media reported about us across their country! They care about what we have to say"!!

(So, Kool Aid kiddies, if the US press won't even give these women the time of day, how can this war REALLY be about giving Iraqis freedom?)

I'm FED UP. (Again.) This is INFAMOUS!!

turn on the TV and decide which channel to watch?

You could start a news organization consisting of volunteers who gather news, write the stories, edit the stories, check the accuracy of the stories, and then make copies and go door-to-door like Jehovah's Witnesses to spread the word. What percentage of people do you think would listen?

Those who already believe what's in the pamphlets or side with that political view in general will listen. But even then, if it doesn't come from a known source then it's suspect. Sad but true.

What if the corporate media started reporting nothing but the facts? What if they stopped making the news all about opinion the way they do now, as if the truth were up for grabs to the most persuasive argument? THAT is their duty. People don't have the time to research stories and check facts; that's what the news is for.

But I don't suppose there's ever been a time in our history when the "respected" media outlets in this country did their jobs as they should.

That's sad if people give nothing but TV news networks an opportunity to become known to them as news sources.

For the last 15 years or so CNN has been popular. FAUX is more recent but has a link to local stations that people have been familiar with for a while. And of course MSNBC and the nightly and local news broadcasts are all linked to national networks that have been around for decades. Anyone who's just looking for a shot of news is bound to tune in to one of these stations, or listen on the radio (where the sources are the same).

If they receive the stations that broadcast alternative (and IMO more reliable) news sources like Democracy Now! and INN World Report, they aren't bound to know what those programs are or to trust them, if they even know they exist.

So no, most people aren't relying on anything but the popular corporate outlets as their news sources -- outlets which are failing miserably in their responsibility to fully inform the people. And that's playing a big role in our democracy's downfall.

News is NOT opinion!

Shame on the MSM for not getting this out there...

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March 7th, 2006 12:22 pm
Free Cindy Sheehan!


Peace mom, three others held overnight after protest bust

By Sarah Ferguson / Village Voice

A lawyer for Cindy Sheehan and three other protesters busted Monday busted outside the U.S. Mission to the United Nations says they were roughed up during the arrests and then held overnight. They were finally released from jail late Tuesday morning.

"It's an absolute disgrace that they weren't given desk appearance tickets," said defense attorney Robert Gottlieb, who says they were expected them to be released some time today.

Sheehan, whose son, Casey, was killed in a battle with Shia insurgents in April 2004, and Missy Beattie, whose nephew, Marine Lance Corporel Chase Comley, was killed by a suicide car-bomber a year later, were arrested with two members of the anti-war group Code Pink at around 2 p.m. on Monday after they refused to leave the plaza of the midtown office building where the U.S. Mission is housed.

They had marched there with a group of Iraqi women to present the U.S. Mission with a petition demanding the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=6116

I believe two women were denied visas to enter the U.S. because their husbands were killed withe the U.S. troops.

These women are courageous all of them!

In their words "We are human, like you. And we deserve to have a life, like you."

When will be learn.

:7