...fundementalism would move into power and Iraq would be absorbed by Iran to form the new Persia.
<snip>
IRAQ: Threatened teachers fleeing the country
24 Aug 2006 14:14:55 GMT
BAGHDAD, 24 August (IRIN) - "When I was a child, I dreamt of being a professor so that I could give knowledge to thousands of people in my country," said Hala Jumeiri, an engineering professor at Mustansiriyah University in Baghdad. "I fulfilled my dream - but today I'm fleeing Iraq for my own safety because violence has reached the classroom."
Jumeiri and her family are packing their bags and will leave the country in the next few days after she received threats and two of her colleagues were killed for doing their jobs.
"Gangs want to destroy the scientific minds of Iraq and with the current lack of security, even giving a low mark to a student in an exam can be reason enough to be threatened or killed," Jumeiri said. <.....>
There are no reliable statistics on how many professors have left Iraq since the US-led coalition forces began occupying Iraq three years ago, but UPUI statistics show that more than 10,000 professionals in general, including doctors, have already gone.
<more>
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/9c65cf0098d9fd852b6cc81cfa749748.htmAlso, the U.S. is already pulling out of Iraq...
<snip>
August 27, 2006
You wouldn’t catch me dead in Iraq
Scores of American troops are deserting — even from the front line in Iraq. But where have they gone? And why isn’t the US Army after them? Peter Laufer tracked down four of the deserters
They are the US troops in Iraq to whom the American administration prefers not to draw attention. They are the deserters – those who have gone Awol from their units and not returned, risking imprisonment and opprobrium.
When First Lieutenant Ehren Watada of the US Army, who faced a court martial in August, refused to go to Iraq on moral grounds, the newspapers in his home state of Hawaii were full of letters accusing him of “treason”. He said he had concluded that the war is both morally wrong and a horrible breach of American law. His participation, he stated, would make him party to “war crimes”. Watada is just one conscientious objector to a war that has polarised America, arguably more so than even the Vietnam war.
It is impossible to put a precise figure on the number of American troops who have left the army as a result of the US involvement in Iraq. The Pentagon says that a total of 40,000 troops have deserted their posts (not simply those serving in Iraq) since the year 2000. This includes many who went Awol for family reasons. The Pentagon’s spokesmen say that the overall number of deserters has actually gone down since operations began in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is no doubt that a steady trickle of deserters who object to the Iraq war have made it over the border and are now living in Canada. There they seek asylum, often with the help of Canadian anti-war groups. One Toronto lawyer, Jeffry House, has represented at least 20 deserters from Iraq in the Canadian courts; he is himself a conscientious objector, having refused to fight in the Vietnam war – along with 50,000 others, at the peak of the conflict. He estimates that 200 troops have already gone underground in Canada since the war in Iraq began.
<more>
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-2318643,00.html