Iraq: Telling the Left from the Right
HOW MANY AMERICANS WHO OPPOSE THE LOOMING war know the left from the right when it comes to Iraq? The only two players on the field are not George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein.
HOW MANY AMERICANS WHO OPPOSE THE LOOMING war know the left from the right when it comes to Iraq? The only two players on the field are not George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein.
How many anti-war activists like Sean Penn know their left from their right in Iraq? Or that the Iraqi Communist Party produces more detailed reports on torture under Saddam than any Western human rights group?
Any egomaniac with an audience can do a live stand-up in an alleged combat zone, but Jon Lee Anderson is a war correspondent’s journalist. His book, The Lion’s Grave, skillfully navigates Afghani politics.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein released thousands of political and other prisoners from jails across his country, including from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. The broad amnesty was no doubt welcomed by many Iraqis.
On the eve of the invasion, few U.S. experts seem to know that nearly two-thirds of Iraqis are Shi’ite Muslims, who populate the slums of Baghdad as well as the south of Iraq.
I never heard an outburst like the one a young Iraq Shia boy made as I helplessly watched from my own prison cell as he was tortured by Saddam’s guards, until my golden retriever cried out one day after she was bitten by a Rottweiler.
The influential journal Foreign Affairs ran an article on Iraq entitled “The Rollback Fantasy.” But unfortunately, it got Iraqi’s basic demographic’s all wrong to create a myth that misled President George W. Bush and others.
