July 7, 2009

First, they took his name out of Iraqi history books. Then, they made a criminal charge that constitutes a two-year prison sentence for displaying a picture of him in public. Now, the Iraqi government has banned people from visiting Saddam Hussein’s grave.

According to an article in Al-Jazeera News of July 6, 2009, titled "Iraq Bans Visits to Saddam’s Grave:
The Iraqi government has banned all organised visits to the grave of Saddam Hussein, the country's former leader who was executed in 2006.
The government issued the order on Monday after some schools began arranging trips for their pupils to visit the site in Saddam's native village of Al-Awja, outside the northern town of Tikrit, a government statement said.

… Thousands of Saddam's Sunni Arab supporters regularly visit the site to commemorate the former leader with poems and songs of praise.
Many also visit to mark the anniversaries of his birth and death.
Buried alongside him are his two sons Uday and Qusay, who were killed in a US attack in the northern city of Mosul in July 2003.
First, for years we heard Saddam and his sons called "butchers" by the West. But, the remains of him and his sons indicate the most brutal form of butchery. His sons were chopped to pieces by hundreds of bullets and artillery shells, while Saddam’s body was defiled by rabid Iran supporters after he was hanged. The imagery of butchery lives in the graves of the Hussein family, but it was butchery imposed by outsiders, not by Saddam and his sons.

Last week, I gave a speech at San Diego State University to a class of Professor Khaleel Mohammed, a well-known expert on Islam. The kids were mostly aged from 18-21 and many did not even remember the March 2003 invasion of Iraq because of their young age at the time.

I spoke about the re-writing of Iraq’s history in Washington, D.C. by U.S. personnel and how the history books were blank from the years 1968 to 2005. Most of the students seemed skeptical of my assessment. They could not believe the U.S. would pull such dirty tricks.

The professor injected a statement. He told of his being a professor in Toronto at the time of the invasion and that he was contacted by the U.S. government to discuss the subject of Iraq’s education. They flew him to Washington, D.C. and offered him a top post in the program of re-writing Iraqi history. He said the salary they offered was astronomical. But, once the discussions began, he knew this was not a job he could perform. He was told that Iraqi history was to be re-written in Washington and it must reflect U.S. propaganda and turn the Iraqi education system into a carbon copy of the U.S. system. The professor said he refused because he would not be able to live with himself if he participated in such a venture.

Then, he pointed to a middle-aged woman in the class and said, "We have an Iraqi in class who went through the times of Saddam. What is your opinion?" She said that she learned more in the seventh grade in Iraq than she has at a top U.S. university. I asked her when she graduated from Baghdad University and she replied, "1985." She then said she taught high school for a few years. But, her next statement kind of shocked the students, most of whom only knew what U.S. propaganda had thrust on the public. She said, "In those days, we had freedom. Under Saddam, we had total freedom. Not so today. My niece, a Christian, has to be fully-veiled when she leaves the house, despite it being against her beliefs. Plus, what there is of an education system today in Iraq is pathetic."

Today, I sent Professor Mohammed the Al-Jazeera article. Here is his response:
This is nonsense...and will arouse Muslim sentiment against them. In ANY human system, you cannot prevent people from having their views of the dead. And if the Iraqi puppets enforce this ban, it will only achieve what is beyond their wildest dreams: the people will lionize him more than ever.
This is not the first time people were stopped from visiting Saddam’s grave. On the first anniversary of his death, thousands were not allowed to pay tribute. According to an article in The Times of London, called , "Thousands Prevented from Visiting Saddam Tomb on Anniversary of Execution," and published on December 30, 2007:
A handful of Saddam Hussein supporters wept at a graveside in a village north of Baghdad today on the first anniversary of his execution, while thousands more were preventing from visiting the tomb because of heightened security…

… In the nearby village of al-Dawr thousands of people had planned a demonstration to condemn the execution followed by a march to Saddam’s graveside, but their movement was restricted by an indefinite curfew imposed from Saturday, said Selam al-Abid, a former guard to Saddam.
In December 2003, after the announcement of Saddam’s capture by U.S. troops, the streets of Baghdad were filled with pro-Saddam supporters. The following day, U.S. military personnel surrounded a Baghdad school, Adnan Kheiralla Boy’s School, and dragged about 40 students by their hair and held them for a couple of days in cages. Their crime? They had a picture of Saddam Hussein in their class.

Such actions are not indicative of a "democratic" society, one that was forced on Iraq by the U.S. The other day, I saw an automobile bumper sticker with the words "Free Iraq" on it, commemorating the new democratic Iraq. Another sticker, on the other side of the bumper, heralded the praising of Jesus for freeing the Iraqis.

If Saddam is such a spent force, why are the stooges in Baghdad so bent on denying his existence or stopping people from visiting his grave, or even mentioning his name? Logic tells us that if the denigration was true, the Iraqi quislings would promote Saddam’s "brutal legacy." Plus, Maliki is very jealous. Saddam’s presence could command hundreds of thousands of people to show up to listen to his greetings to the Iraqi people. If Maliki gave a public speech, he couldn’t get a swarm of flies to attend even if he had barrels of honey surrounding him.

Today, the "Arab street’ considers Saddam Hussein as one of the greatest leaders in Arab history, arguably the greatest in modern times. Even some of his critics from before the March 2003 invasion are now speaking of his foresight. In my book, The Mother of All Battles: The Endless U.S.-Iraq War, I include a speech given by Saddam Hussein at the Amman Summit in Amman, Jordan on February 24, 1990. Point-by-point, he laid out the future of the Arab world if it did not recognize and resist U.S. plans for domination of the Arab world. The leaders did not listen, but the Arab people did. Today, they see that speech as the blueprint for U.S. hegemony in the Arab world. It’s too bad the leaders did not take the message to heart.

News analyst and Middle Eastern expert, Husayn al-Kurdi passed on his comment today about the ridiculous decree that makes it illegal to visit Saddam’s grave:
Saddam Hussein, Knight and Supreme Martyr of the Arabs and Role Model for all Resisters to Imperialism and Injustice Spawned by the Crusaders, will never die. The struggle for justice and emancipation from usurpers and invaders will go on until all of the Crusaders and their lackeys, collaborators and stool pigeons have reaped the ultimate reward for their depredations. The living pigs and their lickspittles cannot match the memory of the Great Martyr.
One thing is a fact that upsets the pretenders in Baghdad: no matter how many laws are enacted or how many arrests are made, the Iraqi people will not forget Saddam Hussein and the accomplishments of his leadership and those of the Ba’ath Party. The more they try to eliminate Saddam’s memory, the more they fail. Saddam made Iraq worth fighting for.