Iraq Is As Bad Now As Under Saddam

I know that rightwingers seem to think that liberals take pleasure when bad things happen in Iraq in Afghanistan. That’s such a stupid theory. After all, we’re the ones that didn’t want anyone to die in the first place.

Anyway, I’m sure they think we’re pleased as pink with the lastest news from John Pace, former director of Human Rights for the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq. He’s been saying that human rights abuses in Iraq are as bad now as they were under Saddam Hussein and the level of extra-judicial executions and torture is up; morgue workers are being threatened by both government military and insurgents not to investigate deaths.

All of this sort makes the whole Plan B idea of “at least Saddam is out of power” kind of void.

“Under Saddam, if you agreed to forgo your basic right to freedom of expression and thought, you were physically more or less OK,” Pace said in an interview with The Associated Press. “But now, no. Here, you have a primitive, chaotic situation where anybody can do anything they want to anyone.” [“Ex-Official: Iraq Abuses Growing Worse” (Yahoo!News)]

What I find frustrating about this “breaking” news is that it isn’t. I’ve heard this news reported before, but not in American MSM. Why does it take so friggin’ long for this sort of thing to come out? And why will rightwingers claim this is exaggerated or made-up and that we aren’t focusing on the good like the fact that Iraqi women were allowed to vote or we rebuilt some schools we blew up? Mind you, if you if there were daily bombings in your town, would your news anchor be covering the dog show? When 9-11 happened, do you recall what other news stories were on the news that night?

But what’s really so frustrating is that by focusing on why we liberals never talk about all the good happening over there in Iraq, the rightwingers never seem to admit that there’s actually anything bad going on over there — let alone that it’s all going to hell in a handbasket, though I’m not really sure who’s hell its going to.

tags: Iraq, Saddam Hussein, U.N., human rights abuses

One comment

1. on November 9, 2006 at 5:03 pm

   Ranya said:

   Speaking of Iraq and human rights, it’s so clear to all of us what suffer it has faced, what dark era it has gone through. Iraq is literally on the edge of an intense civil war, no matter how the media puts it. The main question remains, what’s more to come?

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