~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I O 93 93/93 I O ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Location: LaGrange, Kentucky, United States

The opinions and interests of a husband, analyst and Iraq war veteran.



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Saturday, January 01, 2005

"Liberal Iraqi" speaks out

New Baghdad blog to check out. Some quick points (there is a full length essay post to be had out of Ali's words, but this is too important to wait...)
Traveling was prohibited especially for government employees since the Iraq-Iran war, and now I can travel again to any country that accepts to give a VISA to Iraqis.
Learning arabic for my MOS in the military, my one teacher from Iraq was allowed in the '80s to travel to the US for school only after providing his sister's name and address as a hostage in order to prevent his defection. After the first Gulf War in 1991, Saddam's government stopped checking in with Ustead's sister and he became a US citizen while I was his student in 2001.

As I've said before, I went to war in Iraq (2003) under the impression that I was making America safer with the added bonus of freeing 25 million oppressed Iraqis. In retrospect, I realize that I went to war to free 25 million Iraqis with the added bonus of making America safer.

While he concedes that he will never know for sure, Ustead believes a US bomb in 1991 destroyed the office records that allowed Saddam to harrass his sister. They still correspond via the internet.

I know that some conservatives have their own selfish motives behind their support for democracy in Iraq, but I believe that the majority of them just want Iraq to succeed and also want to have a friendly democratic government in the ME instead of a brutal mad dictatorship that has ties with terrorist organizations all over the world.

Amen. Like I said, I went to Iraq with a rifle for the sake of US interests but it wasn't long before I was fighting for Iraqis.

So there's no sophisticated ideology that I endorse, I just support freedom of press, freedom of expression, women's freedom, separation of "Church from the state", freedom of religion and limited control by the government over economy. I do, however support strongly international aggressive interference in countries' internal policies to save others from oppression and humiliation.

This man understands (and espouses) the finest characteristics of western society even better than some of us here in the West. Iraq is NOT a quagmire. It is the cradle of civilization, the birthplace of humanity. It's value to the world is beyond comprehension and it is our duty to protect it from despots and dictators.

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