Reporter in Baghdad:Many Iraqis See This As Their Liberation

[MMMMMM]

March 20, 2003

(excerpt)
"Many, many Iraqis are telling us now – not always in the whispers we only heard in the past, but now in quite candid conversations – that they are waiting for America to come and bring them liberty," said New York Times reporter John Burns in an interview from Baghdad on the PBS News Hour last night.

"Along with all of this apprehension," said Burns, "Americans should know that there also is a good deal of anticipation. Iraqis have suffered beyond, I think, the common understanding in the United States from the repression of the past 30 years."

PBS's Gwen Ifill asked Burns to clarify: "They are actually eagerly anticipating war?"

"It's very hard for anybody to understand this," he said. "It can only be understood in terms of the depth of repression here."

Burns said that, of course, there are people who don't want war out of loyalty to the regime, or out of fear or out of "suspicion of America's motives." Because of the closed nature of Iraqi society, we cannot know how numerous either side is, he said.

"All I can tell you – and every reporter who is here will attest this – is that the most extraordinary experience of the last few days has been a sudden breaking of the ice here," said Burns, "with people from every corner of life coming forward to tell us that they understand what America is about in this."

Burns said the people naturally are fearful of errant bombing, damage to Iraq's infrastructure and what kind of government might come after Saddam is gone.

"Can I just say," Burns stated, after Ifill tried to interrupt, "there is absolutely no doubt, no doubt, that there are many, many Iraqis who see what is about to happen here as their moment of liberation." (end excerpt)

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=31621

So for all the skeptics: maybe most Iraqis want to be liberated from Saddam.

For Mark Heide: Maybe your theory that most all average people see their governments as good is simply a crock; maybe the average Iraqi sees Saddam's regime as bad, which it is. People aren't that stupid.

[nicky g]

"So for all the skeptics: maybe most Iraqis want to be liberated from Saddam."

I'm certain most of them do. The anti-war case is that: the war is illegal, the war will kill more people than it saves, the war will destabilise the region, the war will increase arab hatred of the west and make terrorism more likely, the motives of the warmongers are not humanitarian and they will treat Iraq shabbily after the war. Hopefully we are wrong on all those things. I continue to have some worries: for example, the largest single party in Iraq other than the ruling Ba'ath is the outlawed Dawa party, a Shia party which is aligned with the government of Iran. I doubt that pro-Iranian religious Shias will much appreciate a long American occupation, or that the US will allow them to take part in running the country. They also came out against the war. But who knows.