http://www.wrmea.com/archives/August_2007/0708047.htmlIN 2003, DR. DAHLIA Wasfi gave up a promising career in medicine in the U.S. to become a fulltime critic of the Iraq war. She’s since made two trips to Iraq, lectures nationally on her findings, and has testified before Congress on the devastating effects of the U.S. military occupation of Iraq.
On April 22, she made three emotional speeches in Southern California. At All Saints Church in Pasadena, Dr. Wasfi opened her remarks by explaining that her mother is an American Ashkenazi Jew and her father a Muslim Iraqi who teaches inorganic chemistry at Delaware State University.
The petite dynamo showed photos of herself as a toddler in Basra, where her father returned after earning his doctorate in the U.S. After repaying his government scholarship by teaching for five years at Basra University, he returned to the U.S. with his family.
“My memories of the country as a 5-year-old contrasted with the bombed buildings and poverty I saw everywhere on my first visit in 2004,” Dr. Wasfi told her audience. “Sewage was in the streets, but at least then the electricity was working in Basra.”
It was a different story on her second visit, during the first three months of 2006. ”Electricity worked only four to six hours a day,” she recalled. “Most people now owned generators, and the fumes from these polluted the air.” snip
“Iraqis must have the right to determine their own future,” she stated. “The Americans are not part of the solution. An immediate withdrawal is the only answer.
“Iraq is an absolute disaster,” Dr. Wasfi concluded. “The U.S. invaded it illegally, destroyed the infrastructure, decimated the society, bankrupted the economy and assassinated the leadership. The only thing the Americans accomplished was to make Saddam a hero and a martyr in the eyes of many Arabs and Muslims.“