- We woke up yesterday morning (11-24) to this news: Sunni
tribal leader and his sons shot dead.
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- "Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms shot dead an aging
Sunni tribal leader and three of his sons in their beds on Wednesday, relatives
said.
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- Except when you read it on the internet, it's nothing
like seeing scenes of it on television. They showed the corpses and the
family members- an elderly woman wailing and clawing at her face and hair
and screaming that soldiers from the Ministry of Interior had killed her
sons. They shot them in front of their mother, wives and children.
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- Even when they slaughter sheep, they take them away from
the fold so that the other sheep aren't terrorized by the scene.
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- In war, you think the unthinkable. You imagine the unimaginable.
When you can't get to sleep at night, your mind wanders to cover various
possibilities. Trying to guess and determine the future of a war-torn nation
is nearly impossible, so your mind focuses on the more tangible - friends.
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- Near and distant relations. I think that during these
last two and a half years, every single Iraqi inside of Iraq has considered
the possibility of losing one or more people in the family. I try to imagine
losing the people I love most in the world- whether it's the possibility
of having them buried under the rubble...
- or the possibility of having them brutally murdered by
extremists
- or blown to bits by a car bomb
- or abducted for ransom
- or brutally shot at a checkpoint. All disturbing possibilities.
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- I try to imagine what would happen to me, personally,
should this occur. How long would it take for the need for revenge to settle
in? How long would it take to be recruited by someone who looks for people
who have nothing to lose? People who lost it all to one blow. What I think
the world doesn't understand is that people don't become suicide bombers
because- like the world is told- they get seventy or however many virgins
in paradise. People become suicide bombers because it is a vengeful end
to a life no longer worth living- a life probably violently stripped of
its humanity by a local terrorist- or a foreign soldier.
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- I hate suicide bombers. I hate the way my heart beats
chaotically every time I pass by a suspicious-looking car- and every car
looks suspicious these days. I hate the way Sunni mosques and Shia mosques
are being targeted right and left. I hate seeing the bodies pile up in
hospitals, teeth clenched in pain, wailing men and women.
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- But I completely understand how people get there.
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- One victim was holding his daughter. "The gunmen
told the girl to move then shot the father," said a relative.
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- Would anyone be surprised if the abovementioned daughter
grew up with a hate so vicious and a need for revenge so large, it dominated
everything else in her life?
-
- Or three days ago when American and Iraqi troops fired
at a family traveling from one city to another, killing five members of
the family.
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- "They are all children. They are not terrorists,"
shouted one relative. "Look at the children," he said as a morgue
official carried a small dead child into a refrigeration room.
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- Who needs Al-Qaeda to recruit 'terrorists' when you have
Da'awa, SCIRI and an American occupation?
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- The Iraqi Ministry of Interior is denying it all, of
course. Just like they,ve been denying the whole Jadriya torture house
incident and all of their other assassinations and killing sprees. They've
gone so far as to claim that the Americans are lying about the Jadriya
torture house.
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- In the last three weeks, at least six different prominent
doctors/professors have been assassinated. Some of them were Shia and some
of them were Sunni- some were former Ba,athists and others weren't. The
only thing they have in common is the fact that each of them played a prominent
role in Iraqi universities prior to the war: Dr. Haykal Al-Musawi, Dr.
Ra'ad Al-Mawla (biologist), Dr. Sa'ad Al-Ansari, Dr. Mustafa Al-Heeti (pediatrician),
Dr. Amir Al-Khazraji, and Dr.Mohammed Al-Jaza'eri (surgeon).
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- I don't know the details of all the slayings. I knew
Dr. Ra,ad Al-Mawla- he was a former professor and department head in the
science college of Baghdad University- Shia. He was a quiet man- a gentleman
one could always approach with a problem. He was gunned down in his office,
off campus. What a terrible loss.
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- Another professor killed earlier this month was the head
of the pharmacy college. He had problems with Da'awa students earlier in
the year. After Ja,afari et al. won in the elections, their followers in
the college wanted to have a celebration in the college. Sensing it would
lead to trouble, he wouldn't allow any festivities besides the usual banners.
He told them it was a college for studying and learning and to leave politics
out of it. Some students threatened him- there were minor clashes in the
college. He was killed around a week ago- maybe more.
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- Whoever is behind the assassinations, Iraq is quickly
losing its educated people. More and more doctors and professors are moving
to leave the country.
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- The problem with this situation is not just major brain
drain - it's the fact that this diminishing educated class is also Iraq's
secular class
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- - posted by river @ 1:03 AM
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