Baghdad Bulletin: Dispatches on the American Occupation

November 2003

November 2003 Grand Rapids, Michigan 10.22.03 This is it. Last night in Grand Rapids before I go back. I hate good-byes. I went to a party a few nights ago and ended up in front of the house with a girl I knew from high school and a Vietnam vet. He talked about his war, about the killings he saw, about My Lai and the others that were just like it but failed to become household names. I don’t know if he was telling the truth, but he started crying, and there I was, standing on the sidewalk with a man I had never met before, and he just started crying. Maybe he was just drunk. Imagine having a front-row seat to the new world order and not even knowing it. Most Iraqis will never have a chance to meet the occupation of‹cials whose decisions now govern their lives. They will just be stuck accepting the new rules, and the ‹rst rule is that the victor makes the rules. At the Bulletin we received dozens of open letters to “President Bush,” “Commander Bush,” “The Honorable Mr. Bush.” They came from eight-year-olds and professionals and everyone in between. 77 Dear Mr. Bush— This is a letter from an Iraqi woman who lived in the United States for 10 years, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I am so grateful for the American people who helped me and my husband get our doctorates in your country. I always think of the States as my second home, and if I had the choice to go back and enjoy the freedom and the democracy your country enjoys, I would. The reason I’m writing to you sir is to give you a picture of what’s going on in my country since you came to free it from the regime of Saddam Hussein. My family and I were against the regime from its start, and it got worse year after year. He put me in jail for ‹ve years, from 1991 to 1996. I spent one of them in the Iraqi Intelligence Department, a cell in which it was too dark to see my hand in front of my face. I could not see my family—all for disagreeing with his son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, while I was a director general in the Issue Department of the Central Bank of Iraq. After my release I joined the Al-Mansur University, a private university , to avoid becoming reinvolved with the government. All this time, we have been waiting to be freed from sanctions and from the regime, but even though it has happened, I have not had a moment to enjoy it. Things have begun to get worse for my country. I would love to see security and the order restored to the Iraqi society. People are dreaming of a decent life with a good infrastructure, with good communication. The heat in my country reaches 55 degrees Centigrade in the shade. With no electric power, just imagine the elderly and the children suffering in the heat. There is no trash collection, the water is dirty and sewerage systems are not working. And on top of it, we are forced to spend hours in line to be searched for weapons. Why did they let people loot the weapons? Now they want them back. I am a mother and a wife and my heart is bleeding to see these people suffering from unemployment. Not every Iraqi is from the Baath Party, so why are they out of their jobs? We have a saying in Iraq sir, “hunger is murder.” My heart is bleeding for your soldiers, too, and I hate to see them being hurt and killed by my people. I don’t want to see another Vietnam. 78 BAGHDAD BULLETIN I want them to remember Iraq as a great civilization that taught the world to read and write. So please, Mr. Bush, by all the mercy of all the religions in the world, try to help the women of Iraq, mothers, sisters, wives, to have a decent life for their families. This letter was dictated to me by Maysoon, an economics professor . She cried as she spoke; one thing she did not mention in the letter was that she was tortured repeatedly in prison. We received dozens of letters similar to this one, some...