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[ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ] In a message dated 11/12/03 07:11:50 GMT Standard Time, qumsi001@yahoo.com writes: Dear fellow human beings: Even though I was just in a car accident (only car damage, we are OK), I really had to write my impressions about something else and send it tonight. I had the privilege and was awed to listen to two of the most compassionate human beings. Amal Al-Khederi and Nermin Al-Mufti are two Iraqi mothers and two people whom everyone should listen to. I urge you to go to their talks (see their schedule at http://www.forusa.org/ ). Amal founded a craft center in Baghdad. The center was destroyed in the first Gulf war and then after being rebuilt was destroyed again in this latest ongoing war. Nermin is a renouned journalist who trained to write of civil society and its functions but found herself covering the destruction of Iraqi civil society by US led wars and sanctions over the past 13 years. They spoke with unusual candor and passion about the reality of what Iraqis are going through. They spoke of how a country that is one of the wealthiest and most civilized was taken apart and maligned. They spoke of how the wealth of the country was destroyed and looted especially since the US occupation forces arrived and previously by the US led sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands and destroyed a whole generation. They spoke poignantly of how the US soldiers, responsible under Geneva accords for protection of civilians under occupation watched, encouraged, and sometimes participated in the dismantling of the whole governmental and civic structures. They spoke of how the rulers from abroad have now become "a thousand Saddams" living in palaces and using far worse techniques than he did except when he was being supported by the US in the 1980s and American advisors were all over the country. Some of the current rulers are Americans (e.g. "King Bremer") and some are unprincipled corrupt men who have left Iraq a long time ago and who have no real understanding let alone connection to Iraqi society. Nermin and Amal spoke of the "dissapeared" Iraqis, hundreds and thousands taken by the occupation forces that no one can find what is happening to them let alone where they are. They spoke of how Iraq, the country that give us the alphabet, the math, the laws, and essentially civilization is now ruled essentially by mobs. The lies and distortions of the occupation which no one believes create surrealistic atmosphere. Amal asks what is to become of a child drafted to mouth on TV that schools are rebuilt by the USA and what is to become of the people who can see the PR since thousands of schools were destroyed and looted and a cosmetic painting is being done to the remaining few walls. How is this different from TV PR during the time of Saddam. I urge you to again to see if you can hear those two wonderful women speak and spread the word (website http://www.forusa.org/ ). Mazin Qumsiyeh Qumsiyeh.com _______________________________________________ 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