Reply #12: No food, electricity or water [View All]

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000136.php#more
“Doctors in Fallujah are reporting there are patients in the hospital there who were forced out by the Americans,” said Mehdi Abdulla, a 33 year-old ambulance driver at a hospital in Baghdad, “Some doctors there told me they had a major operation going, but the soldiers took the doctors away and left the patient to die.” He looks at the ground, then away to the distance.

Abu Hammad continues, “Most of the innocent people there stayed in mosques to be closer to God for safety. Even the wounded people were killed. Old ladies with white flags were killed by the Americans! The Americans announced for people to come to a certain mosque if they wanted to leave Fallujah, and even the people who went there carrying white flags were killed!”

One of the men standing with us, a large man named Mohammad Ali is crying; his large body shuddering with each bit of new information revealed by Abu Hammad.

“There was no food, no electricity, no water,” continues Abu Hammad, “We couldn’t even light a candle because the Americans would see it and kill us.”


http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000129.php#more

Obviously, the ongoing occupation and heightening resistance to it are a major focus for all Iraqis. "What I said during Saddam's time I say now, that this is a political issue and not a military issue," said Dr. Wamidh Omar Nadhmi, a senior political scientist at Baghdad University and a long-time secular activist.

Nadhmi was an outspoken critic of Saddam Hussein's government, and he sees ominous parallels today. Accepting the risks of standing up against Ba'athist rule in the 1990s, he and other dissidents offered a solution. "We raised these slogans: Political dialogue, national reconciliation, and transformation to democracy," he said during a recent interview at his home in Baghdad. "And now I find myself repeating the same solutions."

The professor is also the official spokesman for the Iraqi National Foundation Congress, a council of intellectuals, community leaders and clerics whose goal is to create an alliance of political parties that work for the betterment of Iraq. The group boasts a diverse membership that includes prominent Shi'ite leaders and Muslim scholars. Also participating are Christian, Turkmen and Kurdish Iraqis and even pre-Saddam era Ba'athists.

"We suggested to the occupation forces and Iraqi government four requirements for an Iraqi election: an international committee of oversight; an immediate ceasefire because we cannot have elections under bombardment and rockets; withdrawal of American troops from the major cities one month before the election…" Nadhmi paused before adding the fourth requirement: "We even gave this international committee the right to delete any name from the list of people running for office if they didn't like it."
Instead of accepting the suggestions of his council, which Nadhmi described as prerequisites for a free and democratic election, the interim government declared martial law.