A mourner paying tribute to Saddam Hussein
December 7, 2009
As we approach the third anniversary of the murder of President Saddam Hussein by U.S. and Iranian-backed
cowards, the current stooge prime minister of Iraq, Maliki, is sparing no effort in attempting to erase the memory of Saddam
and the Ba’ath Party from Iraq’s collective remembrance. Most leaders who are killed in a coup or an invasion
of a foreign country usually have their corpses paraded around for the people to throw things at, or they are buried in some
junk heap in a landfill and forgotten. Not so with Saddam. His memory and his accomplishments are alive and well in the psyche
of millions of Iraqis.
On December 5, 2009. Al-Jazeera News ran an article called "Longing for Saddam in Kikrit." It began:
When you see Iraqi policemen salute the grave of Saddam Hussein, you start to realize how much more needs
to be achieved before Iraq is on the road to true peace and stability. There are Iraqis who long for the past, especially
in Tikrit, the hometown of the late Iraqi leader.
A few moments later, a family arrived at the gravesite which has become a shrine for many. A woman kissed
Saddam's grave and cried out: "Abu Oday, where are you? I wish you were here. Since you have been gone, we have been humiliated."
For a few months, Maliki has blamed every act of violence in Iraq on Saddam Hussein supporters, despite most
being conducted by his own government. A day does not go by without Maliki denigrating Saddam Hussein. He is obsessed. The
main reason for this preoccupation is that Maliki realizes the Iraqi people are much more proud of Saddam than himself. Jealously
prevails.
The following is a recent article I wrote that goes into detail about how Maliki is trying to make Saddam’s
memory disappear. His methods are not working.
WHAT ARE THEY AFRAID OF?
First, they took his name out of Iraqi history books. Then, they made a criminal charge that constitutes a
two-year prison sentence for displaying a picture of him in public. Now, the Iraqi government has banned people from visiting
Saddam Hussein’s grave.
According to an article in Al-Jazeera News of July 6, 2009, titled "Iraq Bans Visits to Saddam’s Grave:"
The Iraqi government has banned all organised visits to the grave of Saddam Hussein, the country's former
leader who was executed in 2006.
The government issued the order on Monday after some schools began arranging trips for their pupils to visit
the site in Saddam's native village of Al-Awja, outside the northern town of Tikrit, a government statement said.
… Thousands of Saddam's Sunni Arab supporters regularly visit the site to commemorate the former leader
with poems and songs of praise.
Many also visit to mark the anniversaries of his birth and death.
Buried alongside him are his two sons Uday and Qusay, who were killed in a US attack in the northern city
of Mosul in July 2003.
First, for years we heard Saddam and his sons called "butchers" by the West. But, the remains of him and his
sons indicate the most brutal form of butchery. His sons were chopped to pieces by hundreds of bullets and artillery shells,
while Saddam’s body was defiled by rabid Iran supporters after he was hanged. The imagery of butchery lives in the graves
of the Hussein family, but it was butchery imposed by outsiders, not by Saddam and his sons.
Last week, I gave a speech at San Diego State University to a class of Professor Khaleel Mohammed, a well-known
expert on Islam. The kids were mostly aged from 18-21 and most did not even remember the March 2003 invasion of Iraq because
of their young age at the time.
I spoke about the re-writing of Iraq’s history in Washington, D.C. by U.S. personnel and how the history
books were blank from the years 1968 to 2005. Most of the students seemed skeptical of my assessment. They could not believe
the U.S. would pull such dirty tricks.
The professor injected a statement. He told of his being a professor in Toronto at the time of the invasion
and that he was contacted by the U.S. government to discuss the subject of Iraq’s education. They flew him to Washington,
D.C. and offered him a top post in the program of re-writing Iraqi history. He said the salary they offered was astronomical.
But, once the discussions began, he knew this was not a job he could perform. He was told that Iraqi history was to be re-written
in Washington and it must reflect U.S. propaganda and turn the Iraqi education system into a carbon copy of the U.S. system.
The professor said he refused because he would not be able to live with himself if he participated in such a venture.
Then, he pointed to a middle-aged woman in the class and said, "We have an Iraqi in class who went through
the times of Saddam. What is your opinion?" She said that she learned more in the seventh grade in Iraq than she has at a
top U.S. university. I asked her when she graduated from Baghdad University and she replied, "1985." She then said she taught
high school for a few years. But, her next statement kind of shocked the students, most of whom only knew what U.S. propaganda
had thrust on the public. She said, "In those days, we had freedom. Under Saddam, we had total freedom. Not so today. My niece,
a Christian, has to be fully-veiled when she leaves the house, despite it being against her beliefs. Plus, what there is of
an education system today in Iraq is pathetic."
Today, I sent Professor Mohammed the Al-Jazeera article about banning visitors from Saddam’s graveside.
Here is his response:
This is nonsense...and will arouse Muslim sentiment against them. In ANY human system, you cannot prevent
people from having their views of the dead. And if the Iraqi puppets enforce this ban, it will only achieve what is beyond
their wildest dreams: the people will lionize him more than ever.
This is not the first time people were stopped from visiting Saddam’s grave. On the first anniversary
of his death, thousands were not allowed to pay tribute. According to an article in The Times of London, called , "Thousands
Prevented from Visiting Saddam Tomb on Anniversary of Execution," and published on December 30, 2007:
A handful of Saddam Hussein supporters wept at a graveside in a village north of Baghdad today on the first
anniversary of his execution, while thousands more were preventing from visiting the tomb because of heightened security…
… In the nearby village of al-Dawr thousands of people had planned a demonstration to condemn the execution
followed by a march to Saddam’s graveside, but their movement was restricted by an indefinite curfew imposed from Saturday,
said Selam al-Abid, a former guard to Saddam.
In December 2003, after the announcement of Saddam’s capture by U.S. troops, the streets of Baghdad
were filled with pro-Saddam supporters. The following day, U.S. military personnel surrounded a Baghdad school, Adnan Kheiralla
Boy’s School, and dragged about 40 students by their hair and held them for a couple of days in cages. Their crime?
They had a picture of Saddam Hussein in their class.
Such actions are not indicative of a "democratic" society, one that was forced on Iraq by the U.S. The other
day, I saw an automobile bumper sticker with the words "Free Iraq" on it, commemorating the new democratic Iraq. Another sticker,
on the other side of the bumper, heralded the praising of Jesus for freeing the Iraqis.
If Saddam is such a spent force, why are the stooges in Baghdad so bent on denying his existence or stopping
people from visiting his grave, or even mentioning his name? Logic tells us that if the denigration was true, the Iraqi quislings
would promote Saddam’s "brutal legacy." Plus, Maliki is very jealous. Saddam’s presence could command hundreds
of thousands of people to show up to listen to his greetings to the Iraqi people. If Maliki gave a public speech, he couldn’t
get a swarm of flies to attend even if he had barrels of honey surrounding him.
Today, the "Arab street’ considers Saddam Hussein as one of the greatest leaders in Arab history, arguably
the greatest in modern times. Even some of his critics from before the March 2003 invasion are now speaking of his foresight.
In my book, The Mother of All Battles: The Endless U.S.-Iraq War, I include a speech given by Saddam Hussein at the
Amman Summit in Amman, Jordan on February 24, 1990. Point-by-point, he laid out the future of the Arab world if it did not
recognize and resist U.S. plans for domination of the Arab entity. The leaders did not listen, but the Arab people did. Today,
they see that speech as the blueprint for U.S. hegemony in the Arab world. It’s too bad the leaders did not take the
message to heart.
News analyst and Middle Eastern expert, Husayn al-Kurdi passed on his comment today about the ridiculous decree
that makes it illegal to visit Saddam’s grave:
Saddam Hussein, Knight and Supreme Martyr of the Arabs and Role Model for all Resisters to Imperialism and
Injustice Spawned by the Crusaders, will never die. The struggle for justice and emancipation from usurpers and invaders will
go on until all of the Crusaders and their lackeys, collaborators and stool pigeons have reaped the ultimate reward for their
depredations. The living pigs and their lickspittles cannot match the memory of the Great Martyr.
One thing is a fact that upsets the pretenders in Baghdad: no matter how many laws are enacted or how many
arrests are made, the Iraqi people will not forget Saddam Hussein and the accomplishments of his leadership and those of the
Ba’ath Party. The more they try to eliminate Saddam’s memory, the more they fail. Saddam made Iraq worth fighting for.
The Mother of All Battles is available. To
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