{"id":1419,"date":"2003-03-29T17:01:00","date_gmt":"2003-03-29T21:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles-wp\/?p=1419"},"modified":"2003-03-29T17:01:00","modified_gmt":"2003-03-29T21:01:00","slug":"uniting-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/2003\/03\/29\/17\/01\/uniting-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"Uniting Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

I note that the US\/UK invasion seems to be accomplishing what Saddam Hussein in all his decades of bloody rule could not: uniting Shia and Sunni Iraqis against a common enemy.
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Gafel Hamdani has lived 74 years and raised one daughter and eight sons. On Friday night, his three youngest boys were stretched out on the floor of his living room in simple caskets–killed by the latest explosion in a Baghdad neighborhood … Grief and shock seized the working-class Shualla district of southeast Baghdad after a missile slammed into a crowded market area at dusk, killing at least 51 people and injuring about 50 others, hospital workers and residents said … At the Nasr marketplace itself, a kind of cul-de-sac filled with about 20 metal stalls selling fruits and vegetables and household items, the missile fell in the middle of the street and sent blast waves and shrapnel in all directions. The missile left a crater about five feet wide and three feet deep, and incinerated a car nearby. Pools of blood were still on the ground when government minders took journalists to the site about three hours after the blast … “I saw a plane in the sky, then something threw me on the ground,” Salman Zakker, a 52-year-old father of 12, said as he lay on his side with a large chunk of shrapnel protruding from his buttocks. “I could not get up and I could not feel my legs. Women were screaming. Two boys were lying next to me. I tried to help them get up, but they were dead.” “I don’t believe America is doing it by accident,” said Dr. Abbas Ali Abbas, 36. “Every day, they kill civilian people. Every day, injured civilians are brought to our hospital. It is not a war. It is slaughter.” … One son, Haider Gafel, 24, a university student studying management, stepped forward and warned that strikes such as this one turn all Iraqis into brothers whether they be Shiite or Sunni. “We are Shiites,” he said. “They may kill all the Shiites. They may kill all Iraqis. But whatever they do, we will stay true to our Islamic faith.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Like the Sha’ab highway massacre on Thursday \u00ef\u00bf\u00bd when at least 21 Iraqi civilians were killed or burned to death by two missiles fired by an American jet \u00ef\u00bf\u00bd Shu’ale is a poor, Shia Muslim neighbourhood of single-storey corrugated iron and cement food stores and two-room brick homes. These are the very people whom Messrs Bush and Blair expected to rise in insurrection against Saddam. But the anger in the slums was directed at the Americans and British yesterday, by old women and bereaved fathers and brothers who spoke without hesitation \u00ef\u00bf\u00bd and without the presence of the otherwise ubiquitous government “minders”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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I note that the US\/UK invasion seems to be accomplishing what Saddam Hussein in all his decades of bloody rule could not: uniting Shia and Sunni Iraqis against a common enemy. Gafel Hamdani has...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t