Spoils of the Iraqi occupation

In reply to the public affairs officer of the US Embassy (September 8), I can assure Eric Holm-Olsen that I do not misquote. It is others who mislead as they did with the weapons of mass destruction claim or when they bomb residential areas which, according to international law and the Geneva Convention, are strictly off limits, or even wedding ceremonies, and say that they are bombing terrorist coves. Or when they say that they have killed so many terrorists and in fact they murder innocent civilians, mostly women and children.

The point is, should we believe what the reputed independent Daily Mirror wrote or what the US media reported which, it has to be underlined, was reproducing an edited version of General Tommy Frank's speech as handed to the press by the same US military?

Sorry, but I am more inclined to believe the Daily Mirror, especially when one considers what Donald Rumsfeld had said during the onslaught against Iraq when asked at a press conference what could be done to reverse the media's "overwhelmingly negative" war coverage: "You know," he ranted "penalise the papers and the television... that don't give good advice and reward those people that do give good advice". According to the editor of Harper's Magazine this translates into: "You punish the critics and you reward your friends. That's what he means. That's the standard currency of Washington journalism... To show reality becomes unpatriotic, in effect".

As for the alleged torture of Iraqi soccer players by Saddam Hussein's son, Uday, I have to say that the horror story depicted by Mr Holm-Olsen bears a striking resemblance to that fabricated lie of 1990, on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War, that Iraqi soldiers tossed Kuwaiti infants from hospital incubators, leaving them to die. Indeed, the Swedish ex-coach of the Iraqi soccer team on arrival at Stockholm Airport from Iraq, just before the illegal military aggression against that country was launched, vehemently denied having seen or heard of any ill treatment of Iraqi players in his five years of service in that country.

However, having said that, I would expect such behaviour from the son of a dictator but I would never expect similar methods being employed by military personnel of a country which boasts of being the champion of human rights in the world. The shocking pictures of the inmates being tortured by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison together with others of detainees being treated like dogs at X Ray Camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are still fresh in everybody's minds.

As they say, charity begins at home, so before lashing out at others one would do better to put one's own house in order!

Finally, Mr Holm-Olsen mentioned Ahmed Manajid, the 22-year-old midfielder from Falluja who vented his feelings against the US occupation forces in his country so openly in Athens and who, according to the US Embassy's public affairs officer, reflects "how free speaking, world-travelling Iraqi athletes such as he are a pretty good indicator that a new era has dawned in Iraq". Should we conclude, with the same reasoning, that since even under Saddam's rule there where many "free speaking, world-travelling Iraqi dissidents to speak out against Saddam's regime, they are a pretty good indicator that there was an era of freedom in Iraq"?

In truth, the player in question felt free to speak out his thoughts only when he was safely on Greek soil. He did not dare utter those words in Iraq, where he would have been immediately detained. Indeed, under Dr Alawi's US controlled regime, freedom of speech is non-existent while it is illegal to organise peaceful demonstrations against the government or the US occupation forces.

Those who dare do so are mercilessly shot at and bombed by Dr Alawi's and the US military as has happened on numerous times not least last month when thousands of Iraqis, heeding Grand Ajatollah Al Sistani's call, were marching peacefully towards the Ali Imam Shrine in Najaf. This is the legacy of the US invasion and domination of Iraq. It indeed has brought about a new era to that country like Mr Holm-Olsen has said. But an era of bloodshed and misery, an era of famine and deprivation, an era of repression and imposition.

The words by US army Gunner Sgt Clayton continue to echo with the force of a denunciation: "With our brutal methods we are breeding the worst enemy we could; a generation of kids raised on bloodshed and brutality. It is all they know".