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Dahr Jamail
Ali looks me calmly in the eye and politely asks me if he may ask me a personal question. I tell him, “Of course.” After pausing, he takes a deep breath and asks, “If someone invades your house, kills some of your relatives while taking the rest to jail, steals your things, remains in your home and then threatens you and tries to tell you what to do in your own home, what would you do? Would you welcome him with flowers? What would you do if this happened to you in your home?”
Dahr Jamail
"This little boy and girl, their father was shot by the USA. Who will take care of this family? Who will watch these children? Who will feed them now? Who? Why did they kill my brother? What is the reason? Nobody told me. He was a truck driver. What is his crime? Why did they shoot him? They shot him with 150 bullets! Did they kill him just because they wanted to shoot a man? That?s it? This is the reason? Why didn?t anyone talk to me and tell me why they have killed my brother? Is killing people a normal thing now, happening everyday? This is our future? This is the future that the USA promised Iraq?”
Ahmed Amr
George Bush doesn?t have Saddam Hussein to kick around any more. But the resistance lingers on. Worst still, Saddam is still alive and will be accorded some kind of public trial. He might even have time to write his memoirs while preparing for his defence. That is no comfort to the many willing Iraqi, American, Arab and European collaborators who played along with Saddam during various stages of his reign of terror.
Robert Fisk
"Peace” and “reconciliation” were the patois of Downing Street and the White House yesterday. But all those hopes of a collapse of resistance are doomed. Saddam was neither the spiritual nor the political guide to the insurgency that is now claiming so many lives in Iraq - far more Iraqi than Western lives, one might add - and, however happy Messrs Bush and Blair may be at the capture of Saddam, the war goes on.
Sami Ramadani
As a long-time refugee from Saddam Hussein’s regime, the joy for me was deep, but the pain, too, was overwhelming as I remembered relatives and friends who lost their lives opposing Saddam’s tyranny or in his wars. This delightful moment - enjoyed by all the Iraqis I spoke to as the news of his capture was breaking - was soured by the fact that it was Iraq’s newly appointed tyrant, Paul Bremer, doing the boasting: “Ladies and gentlemen… we got him!”
Danny Dayus
After a war that is expected to have cost $150billion by mid-2004, at the expense of tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, after the economic and social infrastructure has been devastated, and after the country’s land and water have been further polluted by burning oil wells and depleted uranium weapons fragments, I hear that the USA occupiers have finally taken Saddam Hussein prisoner. Caught at last, but what does his capture signify?
Helena Cobban
Fine words came recently from George W. Bush on the need for “democracy” in the countries of the Middle East. One may ask, of course, whether he is aware of the many disconnects between his rhetoric and the reality of a USA policy that is maintaining a military occupation regime in Iraq, supporting a brutal, actively colonialist military occupation regime in Palestine, and engaging in shady backroom deals with all the actively anti-democratic intelligence services of the region. But let us, for a few moments, take him at his word. Let us suppose that he really does want to see democracy grow and flourish throughout the Middle East, and that Iraq is to be the first centrepiece and exemplar of this project.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran
The demonstrators converged on the provincial governor’s office on Sunday with banners, sleeping mats, cooking pots and a simple demand: Iskander Jawad Witwit should quit. After three days and nights of continuous protests, Witwit did just that. But the demonstrators have refused to budge. “Yes, yes for elections!” shouted the protesters, a collection of students, clerics and middle-aged professionals whose ranks swelled to more than 1,000 on Thursday. “No, no to appointment!”
Tariq Ali
This week, Bush amplified USA policy by insisting on the time-honoured norm: to the victor, the spoils. Why should those countries (Germany, France, China, Russia, etc) that had refused to make the necessary blood sacrifice expect a share of the loot? The EU is screaming “foul”, and its bureaucrats are suggesting that by denying the non-belligerent states equal opportunities to exploit an occupied Iraq, the USA is withdrawing itself from the groove of capitalist legality.
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