A man stands near a pool of bloodied water

after a U.S. raid in Kut, 105 miles southeast

of Baghdad, Dec. 27.

Kitabat, Iraq

It's Time to Recover Iraq from the 'Occupiers' ...

"We all know the painful, absolute and clear truth - that Iraq is an occupied country from the north to the south, and every grain of dust bears the brunt of the shoes of strangers."

By Muhsin Al-Jilawi

Translated By James Jacobson and Nicolas Dagher

January 1, 2008

Iraq - Kitabat - Original Article (Arabic)

We all know the painful and absolutely plain truth - that Iraq is an occupied country from north to the south, and every grain of dust bears the brunt of the shoes of strangers. We all share equally the bitterness of this lost dignity and the sense of lost honor and conscience that millions of Iraqis feel - dignity and honor that some people sell every day without the least bit of shame and embarrassment.

This is a country visited by tenth tier occupation leaders [an expression meaning second-rate or less important - referring to obscure members of the U.S. Congress] who don't know where they are or how the Iraqi government came about, or that they are visiting a country infiltrated by murderers from every corner of the globe, a country whose wealth and resources have been stolen in a blatant, public way ... Is this the dignity sought by a great nation that founded such a radiant civilization? Do those who feud over tables and chairs and the spoils of looting [those running Iraq] have any respect left for the millions of Iraqis who are fed up with being displaced, poor and disgraced …?

The truth about the occupation and its motives for breaking the Iraqi state can no longer be concealed, nor can the reasons for creating so-called organizational chaos, which has allowed the false agenda and circumstances under which we live to be established, so that we might live under domination in perpetuity ... Today we have clans, tribal factions, families, cliques, gangs, parties, sects, nationalities ... But absent amidst all of this is Iraq and the Iraqi government. That fact is obvious through the many “mini-occupations” of Iraq's national possessions, because occupiers dominate Iraq - its land, its skies and its resources.

After the contents of Iraq's state institutions have been looted, the small parties rush in to pick up the crumbs - the documents, buildings, furniture, storage items and the nation's secrets. It's all part of an organized effort to sow confusion and cause the loss of collective memory that should have been the property of the people. This has resulted in a loss of the law, our history and research into understanding the truth about the former regime and knowing the real motives for the looting suffered by Iraq's government after the toppling of the dictatorial regime ...

In the city of Kut, for example, the Dawa party controls the House of the Mayor [City Hall], the Supreme Council controls the largest vocational training center for textiles, and the Communist Party the worker's club ... These buildings are some of Kut's major landmarks. And this is similar to what is occurring in other Iraqi cities, which means that there are thousands of buildings and institutions now in the hands of parties and even militia members and their parties. This can no longer be acceptable to any conscientious Iraqi who is aware that this continuing practice represents a new culture that arrived with the occupier and its henchmen who took possession of the country without legitimacy and with hollow justifications that were proven wrong in time.

The taking of these assets represents considerable state wealth stolen openly and publicly ... what is required now is for the Iraqi state - which claims night and day to be independent and to be applying the law equally to all - to return these institutions to their rightful owners (the State) and return to them their independence, to invest the necessary resources in them, and to add urgently needed funds to the state Treasury for the sake of rebuilding the infrastructure, and since there is little housing and no work, the lives of the millions of Iraqis who live below the poverty line ...

It's also important to draft and put in place democratic laws for the conduct of political parties, to make sure that the resources, headquarters and financing of these parties is transparent, and that political groups break their connections to the activities for which they are suspected, whether domestically or with foreign entities, and ensure that they receive the proper level of support. This support should be based on their size and influence and be consistent with democratic mechanisms appropriate to the form and function of a modern and dynamic nation, for which everyone strives ... !

We put this problem before the governor of Kut and bring it to the attention of every official in the province, to urge them to take urgent action to restore the owners their legitimate rights - so that the city of Kut and all other Iraqi cities can finally be free of all of the obnoxious signs of the nation's occupiers ...!

SEE ALSO:

Al-Zawraa, Iraq

Iraqis Win 'Our War Against Terror'

http://worldmeets.us/alzawraa000007.shtml

Click here for Arabic Version