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Below is a letter I got from an Iraqi man (and resides in Iraq still) who reads my column at shgresources.com he tells me the facts of life before the Americans came...It will make you cry....   Jennifer

 

Facts from our life
Here I swear to say the truth and nothing but the truth
Part 1
The time of Saddam Hussein
July, 17th – 1968 – April, 9th – 2003

Have you ever heard of the cutting of tongues, hands, noses, ears, and legs?
Or the extinguishing of burning cigars on the nipples of women?
Or the pulling out of someone's nails or teeth with pincers?
Have you ever heard of a bottle of Pepsi with a broken neck and a man or a woman forced to sit on it?
Have you ever heard of the putting of wires carrying high voltage on someone's penis?
Or to strip a girl out of her clothes to be raped by twenty men or more?
Have you ever heard of thousands of people buried alive in mass graves?

Have you ever heard of young men and women who were put to drown in pools of acid?
Or the execution of thousands by cutting their heads with a sword?
These are examples of only very common punishments imposed by the law on people their only crime is that they hate the leader. I am not talking about the middle ages or a pre-historic period. This was happening in Iraq in the nineties of the twentieth century.

There's only one permanent, supreme, and powerful leader; Saddam Hussein. It is unwise to speak his name just like this; you must say: the leader, the hero, the brother, the beloved …etc. he has 99 surnames, just like the almighty God in the Islamic tradition. The pictures of the president are everywhere; in the streets, at every corner, on the doors of shops and houses, on the first pages of the children's textbooks, at schools, and on trees and pillars of electricity. Under each picture, a caption says: "There's no life without the Sun, and no Iraq without Saddam Hussein".

There's only one Party; The Baath Party. The members of this Party are about one million. They live a luxurious life. They have money, cars, nice and big houses. They have the right to travel abroad. Their sons and daughters attend special schools and universities and they hold the supreme positions in the country. But their main job is to watch others and listen to their speeches and phone calls, and to execute whomever they suspect of his loyalty to the great leader. To be a member in the Party is not easy; in order to be a member in the Party you must be a Sunni Moslem and you must be able to kill and torture whomever you think is an enemy to the beloved leader. The smallest act of behavior is enough to make you an enemy to the leader; a word or a look of disgust at one of his pictures is enough. The rest of the Iraqi people (more than 26 million) are supporters to the Party. One must either be a member in the Party or supporter to the Party. If you are neither a member nor a supporter, then you are an enemy; and enemies must die. There's no place for them in life. Every child reaches the age of 12 must sign a paper which says that he or she is a supporter to the Party and an obedient soldier to the leader. The paper also says that if he changes his mind one day or if the government feels any suspect of his loyalty to the great leader or towards the party he is to be executed.
There's only one TV channel. It is the channel of the Party. Space channels, the internet, and mobile phones are forbidden. It is a very serious crime if they discover that someone keeps a satellite broadcasting receiver. The Party channel broadcasts about eight hours a day. They broadcast songs that chant the beloved leader and his glorious victories over his enemies and the luxurious life the people of Iraq live under his wise leadership. Then comes the news which always deals with the activities of the leader during the day. After that comes a programme discussing the great thoughts of the genius leader.

Every morning, teachers, who are members in the Party, ask children at schools: 'What did your father say when he saw the leader on TV yesterday?" If one of the children says that his father turned off the TV when the leader appeared on the screen, it's all over with the family of that child. The whole family will vanish the very next morning.

They usually come at night to take whole families out of their beds to the cells of torture. When you find out that your next door neighbors are not at home, forget them and never talk about them; it is such a dangerous act to speak about them or remember them. They do not exist and they never exist. People know very well what happens, but no one dares to talk about it. To be safe you must be careful in everything, even when you are asleep. And let me tell you this story for an example:

Four young men were sitting in a bar in Baghdad one evening. As they were drinking one of the said: "I had a dream last night. In that dream I saw that I was the President of Iraq, and you, my three friends, were ministers. The four men laughed high and went on with their drink. The next morning the four men disappeared. A week later their families received their dead bodies. To be a good Iraqi citizen you must be straight and loyal even in your dreams.

When they shoot someone, his family must pay them the price of the bullets that killed its son. Then the family of the victim must send a telegram of thanks to the great leader for saving the country from such a disloyal enemy. Here I have to mention that it is a sign of disloyalty and disobedience to mourn the executed person or to make a decent funeral for him.
After the Desert Storm in 1991, the Shiis in the South and Middle rose against the dictator. What was the result? Soon the revolution was put down, and 6 million people from the Shii (men, women, and children) were buried alive in mass graves and the major Shii cities were destroyed. And when the Kurds in the North tried to rise against him at the same time, he attacked their cities and villages with chemical weapons. In few moments, hundreds of thousands were killed by poison gas.

The dictator has two sons. They are as evil as their father. They kill anyone they dislike. They used to haunt colleges and universities with their guards. They have an army of guards. The purpose of their frequent visits to universities is to look for the most beautiful girls to take them somewhere by force and rape them. They took some of my female classmates in front of my eyes and I could do nothing to save them.

Iraq – Mesopotamia – was the first civilization in the world, and it is the richest country on the earth. But the Iraqis do not find what to eat, except the little bad food that keeps them alive. Where does the fortune of Iraq go? Part of this huge fortune is spent on the development of mass destruction weapons and part of it goes to the pockets of the dictator and his family and followers. The rest of our fortune goes to the Palestinian terrorists and to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. While the Iraqis live in poverty, the family of the dictator and his followers lose millions of Dollars every night in the gambling places in Switzerland. At the same time the dictator builds for himself hundreds of palaces made completely from gold and marble. His sons have cars and wagons made completely from gold.
That was the kind of life we led before the multinational forces, under the leadership of the United States, came to Iraq. It was the happiest moment in our life when we heard Mr. Bush declare the beginning of the liberation of Iraq operation. America saved us from all our fears and miseries and poverty. The Americans are helping us now to rebuild our country. Now we have law, and no one is above the law. All our fortune is ours now. We practiced our rights and elected a new President and a prime minister. Now we have a parliament that watches human rights and the behavior of the government. America did all this to us. The dictator and his followers are in prison now waiting to be prosecuted. His sons were killed earlier in an attack by the American Army on a palace they were in. now we are free; we have a lot of money; and we are able now to use the internet and mobile phones and to receive space TV channels. Now we can talk publicly against the President; we can say whatever we like and express our thoughts freely through hundreds of newspapers and TV channels.
 

To be continued
 

Karim Nayef