After reading this I realize I have no clue what it is like to be raised in a totalitarian political system, an absolute dictatorship. As a retired cop I cannot relate to a system where the police (granted not all of them) are uniformed thugs and murderers. Does not compute, I can't wrap my head around it. The butchery and depravity is beyond me.
The journalist, Michael J.Totten, is asking the questions to an interpreter nicknamed "Hammer."
QUESTION: Tell us about living under Saddam Hussein.
ANSWER: It was crazy life, like feeling safe inside a jail. If they sent you to an actual jail nothing changed. They arrested everyone, literally everyone, for no reason and sent them to jail for two weeks just so they could see the jail.
I went there three times. The first time because I worked for a movie company. They sent all of us to jail. It had nothing to do with me.
I was given a three year sentence. My family has money, so I paid the judge 50,000 dollars. I gave it directly to the judge, plus four new tires for his car and a satellite TV. He gave me a three month sentence instead of a three year sentence.
He scratched “3 years” off my sentence and wrote “3 months” in by hand.
They sent me to Abu Ghraib. I saw so many things. If you want me to talk about that I would need a whole newspaper.
QUESTION: Tell us a little about Abu Ghraib.
ANSWER: On the bus to the jail I didn’t have handcuffs. I asked why. The guard said “Look behind you.”
The first guy behind me got a 600 year sentence.
The next guy got six hanging sentences.
The third guy was sentenced to be thrown blindfolded out of a second story window. Twice.
Another guy f*cked his mother and sisters three times. He was freed on Saddam’s birthday.
Another guy had his hand cut off.
There was this last guy. He went to the market with his wife. She waited in the car when he went to buy something. When he came back to the car his wife was screaming. Two guys were in the car with her. One held her arms and the other was raping her. He grabbed his AK-47 and chased them away. They ran to their car and he shot them. Their car blew up. They were mukhabarat [Saddam’s secret police]. He got a death sentence. On his second day in Abu Ghraib they killed him and sent the mother- and sister-f*cker free for the fourth time.
The guards who ran Abu Ghraib sold hallucinagenic drugs to prisoners for money.
They forced me to take them.
You need protection in there. You find someone and give him drugs and cigarettes. You pay off the guards to just punch you in the face or move you to a different cell instead of kill you.
I was freed 26 days after I arrived, on Saddam’s birthday before I finished the three months.
I can’t live with this nightmare anymore.
QUESTION: What’s it like out there now for the average Iraqi?
ANSWER: If you give average Iraqis electricity right now it will be enough. This is the most important thing. Give them power for seven days in a row and there will be no fights.
After the US came and Saddam fell they earned 3 dollars a month. Now they earn between 100 and 700 dollars a month.
Giving them electricity would reduce violence. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself what would happen to this Army base if the power was cut off forever and the soldiers had to spend the rest of their lives in Iraq. Do think think these soldiers would still behave normally?
Iraqis are paid to set up IEDs. They do it so they can buy gas for their generator and cool off their house or leave the country. Their hands do this, not their minds.
TV is the most interesting thing to Iraqis. They learn everything from the TV. Right now they only have one hour of electricity every day. Do you know what they watch? Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera pushes them to fight. If they got TV the whole day they would watch many things.
Their minds would be influenced by something other than terrorist propaganda. Right now they have no electricity. They have no dreams. Nothing. And Saddam messed with their minds. For more than 30 years he poisoned their minds.
You can’t understand Iraq because you can’t get inside their mind. When you get
inside their mind…it is a crazy mind.QUESTION: What will happen if the Americans leave next year?
ANSWER: Rivers of blood everywhere. Syria and Iran will take pieces of Iraq. Anti-American governments will laugh. You will be a joke of a country that no one will take seriously.
I will kill myself if it happens. I am completely serious. The militias will hunt down and kill me and my family. I will beat them to it by killing myself.
I worked for the U.S. government for four years. Everyone who works as an interpreter for four years and gets a signature from a General or a Senator gets a Green Card. My hope is to get this somehow. I will do anything for this.
I am doing this for my son. Everything for my son. I don’t want my son living here getting into religion and militias and Al Qaeda. I want my son to be free, to have a girlfriend, to get married, and to be a good citizen.
QUESTION: Why is there peace in Kurdistan but not in this part of Iraq?
ANSWER: The Kurds got rid of Saddam earlier. They fought against Saddam just like the Shia fought against Saddam, but the Kurds won their war and the Shia lost. In 1991 the Americans were heroes to the Kurds, but they disappointed the Shia and left them to Saddam. They were not reliable. So the next time, in 2003, some Shia thought they should get help from Iran. They know Iran is not going anywhere. Iran is a more reliable ally than the Americans.
The Shia never forgot being abandoned by the Americans. They talk about this all the time, still. They know the U.S. will leave Iraq and they will face Al Qaeda alone.
Shia people here are very simple, very easy. They are easy to control. They don’t need too many things. Just electricity, rights, a decent life, a good opportunity to get a job.
QUESTION: What is the worst thing you have ever seen in this country.
ANSWER: 60 guys from Al Qaeda kidnapped an interpreter’s sister. She had a baby boy, six months old. They raped her, all 60 guys. Then they cut her to pieces and threw her in the river. They left the six month baby boy to sleep in her blood.
We found him on a big farm south of Baghdad. All that was left was his legs and his shoes. The dogs ate him.
I don’t want this for my family.
These people are like animals who came from another planet.
And the libs were crying about underwear party hats and naked pyramids.
No comments:
Post a Comment