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sabra Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 09:48 AM
Original message
185 professors killed since U.S. invasion

http://www.azzaman.com/english/index.asp?fname=news/2007-02-01/kurd.htm

185 professors killed since U.S. invasion

Some 185 university professors have been assassinated since the 2003 U.S. invasion which has plunged the country into a spiral of violence.

The figure was made public in a statement the ministry has issued following the kidnapping of three more Baghdad University professors this week.

The ministry pleaded with the abductors to release the professors, warning that the country’s educational system would collapse unless the authorities put a halt to violence.

Some colleges both state-run and private have suspended teaching in protest against the abduction.
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marmar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 09:50 AM
Response to Original message
1. BushCo won't be satisfied until we've taken that country back to its........
pre-civilization state.
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BrokenBeyondRepair Donating Member (642 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 04:57 PM
Response to Reply #1
17. that's the goal..
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Just-plain-Kathy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 09:51 AM
Response to Original message
2. It's horrible what we did to that country. ...n/t
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pampango Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 05:12 PM
Response to Reply #2
19. It is also horrible what they are doing to each other.
We created the conditions in which a civil war could happen and Iraqis, some not all, made sure that it did happen. There is no possible justification for our invasion, legally, morally or otherwise. Saddam was no threat to us and "did a good job of controlling his people", as some friends of ours said last Saturday over dinner.

Yugoslavia dissolved into civil war when Tito died (not our fault that time.) We should have known that removing a dictator from the scene can cause chaos.

Of course, when the Soviet Union withdrew from Czechoslovakia there could have been a civil war between the Czechs and the Slovaks. But they negotiated a settlement among themselves and created two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Different people, different culture.



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Little Wing Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 10:04 AM
Response to Original message
3. A right-winger's wet dream
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 03:15 PM
Response to Reply #3
9. It's a Conservative heaven-on-earth. What could be better?
Just kill off every intelligent person who can tell people how wrong you are, and why!

American wingers started going after selected college professors and certain high school teachers here as soon as Bush was installed, in earnest: those damned "liberals."
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Dover Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 10:07 AM
Response to Original message
4. It's genocide, plain and simple. The professors were the 'mind' of that country's future
Edited on Fri Feb-02-07 10:21 AM by Dover
And the citizens are its heart. Is there no justice against this genocide? Why does our Congress, military, etc. behave as though these criminals who have seized our country as well as Iraq are anything but? We go about our business as though we were somehow civilized human beings completely detached from our actions. We ALL have blood on our hands. Is the corruption in this country so broad and deep that there is NO ONE with a will and a remedy to stop this madness? They should be grabbed by the collars and tossed like garbage into prison NOW, not treated as some legitimate part of our government and political/legal institutions! And if I believed in the death penalty, I'd recommend a hanging after being held at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo without counsel for months on end first.
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Orrin_73 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 03:21 PM
Response to Reply #4
11. a genocide scholar was asked whether the 655000 iraqi deaths
constitutes a genocide? his answer "No". So much for genocide scholars.
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Dover Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 03:53 PM
Response to Reply #11
13. That 'scholar' was probably among those who did the Bushies global warming studies too.n/t
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no_hypocrisy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 10:07 AM
Response to Original message
5. Incremental destruction of a society and its culture.
The military did nothing when the museums were attacked and looted, losing their precious articifacts of their culture.

It's no surprise that intellectuals encompassing professor would be a likely target. They have the capacity to understand the chaos and to make appropriate dissent, that is, a challenge to the anarchy. And it's a message to the survivors to leave the country while they can.

And the same thing will happen to Iran and its citizens if and when our next staged invasion occurs.
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pampango Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 10:41 AM
Response to Reply #5
7. Our country bears the moral responsibility for removing the
dictator who kept a lid on this violence. We did this in flagrant disregard for international law and for alleged reasons that have been proven to be false.

That being said I reserve another large dose of outrage for the butchers who seek out and kill civilians, professors, shoppers in marketplaces, students at girls' schools, etc., in large numbers as their primary strategy for resisting the occupation. To the extent that the resistance is composed of "patriotic" Iraqis, they would have more moral authority if they acted like the French resistance in WWII. While the French may not have been as "effective" in expelling the occupiers, as the Iraqis may prove to be, the French attacked Germans and perceived collaborators. They did not try to get rid of the Germans by bombing innocent French civilians to cause chaos and anarchy.

Now that our chief idiot has unleashed this violence, will the Sunni bombers and the Shiite death squads go away when we leave? If they were mainly attacking our troops, as the French did to the Germans, you could safely assume that they would melt away. However, in Iraq there will still be plenty of professors, students, and shoppers available for slaughter, in order to destabilize any government in power. Is the fate of the Iraqis to be governed by either a secular dictator (Saddam Jr.) or a religious theocracy?
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malaise Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 08:12 PM
Response to Reply #5
21. Bingo n/t
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AliceWonderland Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 10:12 AM
Response to Original message
6. This is what happens with war/violence, and why it is such a tragedy and scourge
Edited on Fri Feb-02-07 10:14 AM by AliceWonderland
And then the pundits wonder, why doesn't Iraq stand on its own two feet and rebuild? Why are the natives so sullen, recalcitrant? Do they think that any society would be robust after decades of violence, externally imposed strongmen, overthrown governments, sanctions, wars?
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Posteritatis Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 02:57 PM
Response to Original message
8. About a year before the Iran-Iraq War..
..my favorite professor from my university - a kind of frightening pan-talented classicist - was offered a position at Baghdad University for teaching and/or research for a few years.

..Yeah. Thinking it's a good idea she didn't take that one up..
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Lisa Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 03:19 PM
Response to Original message
10. my boss (a prof himself) was almost in tears when he heard this
He was seconded to work at the UN recently, and has been involved in a project to restore the Iraqi marshlands. He was absolutely devastated to hear that one of his colleagues had been seriously injured in an attack. It's getting so that the people there cannot even go to an international conference, or receive research funding from outside sources -- it puts their lives in danger.
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ellisonz Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 03:42 PM
Response to Original message
12. The new brain drain in Iraq...
:scared:
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pampango Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 04:51 PM
Response to Reply #12
16. Easier to run a theocracy, if the education level is kept down.
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goforit Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 04:38 PM
Response to Original message
14. Cheney doesn't like educative societies.
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ChairmanAgnostic Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 04:47 PM
Response to Original message
15. Laura's Edukashun Plan at work
Other professionals have also been decimated.
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Doctor_J Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 05:12 PM
Response to Original message
18. you mean terrorists masquerading as professors
:eyes:
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brentspeak Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 10:11 PM
Response to Reply #18
22. It's their fellow Iraqis who are killing the professors
Shiite and Sunni death squads, targeting each other's intellectuals.
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MasonJar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-02-07 05:59 PM
Response to Original message
20. We owe the Iraqis so much because we allowed this monster
machine to steal its way into power twice. We are culpable. So many lives, so much destruction, so much pure unadulterated graft, so many lies! How can these so-called leaders of government sleep at night? How can we allow them to remain in power? Enough is enough. NOW! This ancient country was the seat of the beginning of civilization. Its many millenium old artifacts were just so much garbage to people like W, who had never been out of the country and who have the class of a stripe painted on a road in the backwoods of Crawford, Texas. This ancient center of learning and art was also a modern city/country, advanced in its treatment of women in the middle of a narrow-minded region (which currently sports a government run by Islamic law) and education (which now denies the rights of students and kills their professors.) Bush is brain dead and so is the government he has generated in Iraq.
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