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Dear Colin and colleagues, I, too, am sick of the brazen provocation of some list members, who keep rubbing salt in our(Iraqi)wounds. This is not the first time they cast doubt on the authenticity of photographs in order to deny the Iraqi holocaust perpetrated by their idol, Saddam Hussein. As I replied to them at the time, Wed 01/10/2003 13:32: I, too, am sick of the insensitivity of the unholy alliance between Saddam's apologists and the loony ultra leftists, who add insult to injury. The former have lost their idol and the latter have just woken up belatedly to join the bandwagon of anti-Americanism. Why did not they do so when America, all capitalist and almost all other governments were hand in glove with Saddam, even when he invaded Iran, using chemical weapons against them and Iraqi Kurds ? Where were they when Saddam invaded Kuwait? Where have they been all my life ? It is for the Iraqi people to judge Saddam's rule, the last war and the Iraqi Governing Council. Non-Iraqis are politely reminded to limit their remit to the implications of the Iraqi issue on their respective internal politics. At least they are familiar with their own language, culture and way of life. Which is more than can be said of their familiarity with the language, culture and way of life of Iraq, let alone its political complexities. As Iraqis, we do not expect them to have that familiarity, but they should have the common courtesy to ask us if they want to be helpful internationalists. They should refrain from issuing political Fatwas(edicts) on Iraq from the comfort of their ivory towers supplied by courtesy of their capitalist states. How could those who were neither born in Iraq, nor lived there, nor even followed the tragic situation in Iraq in the pre-Gulf war past, be more Iraqi than Iraqis themselves ? I, by virtue of having been born and bred in Iraqi Kurdistan, where I finished my schooling and came to the U.K. for studying 45 years ago, am more qualified and entitled to speak on Iraq than the entire loony leftists of this wide world. Some of them have the audacity to preach to us about our own Iraqi issue. This latest accusation qualifies as a tasteless sick joke, which should be confined to the family albums of such apologists and loony left. The markers of Saddam's apologists and the loony ultra leftists are: 1. Lack of any positive idea, let alone action, to improve the life of the Iraqi people. 2. They manipulate the plight of the Iraqi people as pawns in their ideological opposition to capitalist states. 3. Their reporting and comments on post-Saddam Iraq is conspicuous by the absence of anything positive in the current situation, it is all doom and gloom. 4. Their slogans on sanctions, pre-war and post-war are exactly those of Saddam, such as their latest march in London on 27th September 2003. Regards, Muhamad -----Original Message----- From: casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk [mailto:casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk] On Behalf Of Colin Rowat Sent: 06 December 2003 21:16 To: CASI-discuss@lists.casi.org.uk Subject: RE: [casi] Another bogus mass grave story - from LA Times > I have a backlog of mass graves stories to discuss, I will > try and get through them in the next few days. ... > http://www.latsi.com/latsipix/0506lat1.jpg > > In this photo a man is shown digging with his hand into a > sand dune, that looks identical to all the other sand dunes > in the area (in the article we are also told this area is > prone to flooding!!!). Tom, Do you have any first hand experience with mass graves? I am fortunate not to, but find it quite reasonable to imagine that the photo is accurate - although revolting to engage in a process of coolly wondering about this: if you shoot pleading people in the head at a sandy place, it seems to me that the sand will gradually blow over their bodies, forming dunes of the sort in the photograph. Let us suppose, though, that this is not the case, and that the photo is concocted. Is this relevant? If someone is asked to strike a pose for a camera, that does not in any way alter the truth of the accompanying story. What is the story? You dismiss it as "the 'I was shot and left to die in a mass grave, but crawled out under cover of darkness to tell all' variation, an old favourite in the mass grave atrocity genre." I find sneering like this at mass murder - I assume that you are not doubting that the Anfal campaign took place - deeply offensive. This attitude also seems to me to be found in some of sanctions' most distasteful advocates: the old 'starving children' variation on sanctions, or 'baby funerals', or doubting Unicef because they hired Iraqis. A closer comparison, although different in scale, is to Holocaust denial. I, for one, am not interested in you dumping your 'backlog' of mass grave stories onto this list. I do not feel that your e-mail has contributed to my understanding of mass graves in Iraq, or - more relevant to the list's mandate - the current humanitarian situation in Iraq. It has made me feel unclean. Yours, Colin Rowat work | Room 406, Department of Economics | The University of Birmingham | Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK | web.bham.ac.uk/c.rowat | ( 44/0) 121 414 3754 | (+44/0) 121 414 7377 (fax) | c.rowat@bham.ac.uk personal | (+44/0) 7768 056 984 (mobile) | (+44/0) 7092 378 517 (fax) | (707) 221 3672 (US fax) | c.rowat@espero.org.uk _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk