Please, we all know what brutes Saddam and his ilk were. That’s not what I’m wondering about. I wonder, in part, how many were actually tortured and murdered by those in power before the US invaded. Not counting criminals and such, but just those opposing or seeming to oppose the government. You know what I mean, those talked about by President Bush when he says the people are better off now. He mentions murder and torture over and over, so I’m wondering just how bad it was. Were ordinary people, janitors and such, grabbed off the street and executed/tortured, etc?
I’ve known and talked to many people who went there at the time, and they all said you couldn’t really tell on the surface what was happening. The Iraqui people seemed to be alright, and business and all went on pretty normally. A co-worker who spent a lot of time in the Middle East working for oil companies, told me that by far one of the worse places to be was Saudi. Iran too. Most of the other places were pretty cool.
So what’s the straight dope on everyday life in Iraq, pre-war.
Peace,
mangeorge
Good luck with this. I really don’t think (we) will ever really know.
My money is on “better off now” however.
Certainly less foreign “fighters” hijacking the country’s name for their murderous agendas, making life miserable for everyone.
Let’s look at the Shi’ites. They were forbidden from practicing their religion openly. They could not commemorate Ashura, which is the central commemoration for Shi’ites throughout the world: what makes this even more significant is the fact that Kerbala, one of the most sacred places for Shi’ites throughout the world, was in Iraq and Shi’ites could not perform their commemorations there. They were shut out from the political process. Powerful figures in the Iraqi Shi’ite scene, like Grand Ayatollah Sistani, survived only because they learned to keep their mouths shut and wait patiently for deliverance (which inevitably came, not by the hand of the Imam, not by the hand of a fellow Shi’ite, not by the hand of a Muslim, but by the hand of an international non-Muslim force). As usual, the Sunnis were oppressing, suppressing, mistreating, tyrranizing, and denigrating the Shi’ite religion and people. (Let’s not forget Saddam’s mass genocidal executions of Shi’ites.) They may have been better off than the Iraqis not in the no-fly zone, who had no protection from Saddam, but their outer and inner suffering has been tremendous.
If only for liberating the Shi’ites, I am glad for the liberation of Iraq.
Let’s also no forget how people starved and died while Saddam kept building palaces and filling his personal treasury with money meant for the people.
WRS/Thû
I’ll just add that the Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD includes, as one of the extras, a fairly long clip of “typical life” in Baghdad the day before the American invasion began. As the OP’s friend noted, you can’t really tell there was anything horrible (if there was indded) going on – people were going about their business and enjoying themselves and doing their jobs just like in any other medium-sized city.
My own suspicion is that, while Iraqis may have more intangible freedoms today (the ability to criticize government leaders without fear of reprisals), they’ve also lost a lot of the mundane foundations of civilized life – clean water, reliable electricity, safe streets, etc. Telling people “Be happy, you’re free!” doesn’t do much good if they don’t have food for their families and a job to support them, methinks.
What was the deal with the government arming citizens? Were folks consigned into some sort of police force? I’ve just heard scraps of info on this and wonder what the real situation was.
Amnesty can paint you a picture. Two pieces of context though: A. the Baathists were in 69-2003 …so keep that in mind when they talk about hundreds of thousands killed and B. You could pick a time and place it will be different story i.e. al-Samawa in March 1991 was as monstrous a time/place as pretty much anywhere anytime anyplace you care to name. Same in gassing the Kurds …
Generally and broadly speaking - it was never good.
I get the sneaking suspicion we’re seeing History at work. (as written by several different people.) We’ve got the government telling us things are getting better, we’ve got the ‘liberal agenda’ telling us Fahrenheight 9/11.
What I keep hearing about is suicide bomber after suicide bomber killing class after class of police trainees. That tells me there are two sides to this that feel extremely strongly about their position. (You’d think that suidice bombing would be a self-solving situation.)