CPTnet
4 June 2005
IRAQ REFLECTION: A few good quotes
by Greg Rollins
Over the past several days I have spent time with a Christian Peacemaker
Team (CPT) delegation listening to a lot of different people in Iraq.
Because the people in Iraq, Iraqi or otherwise, always ask us to tell
people abroad what they have to say, here are some of their quotations:
"I am not special," one of our translators told us as he talked about the
violence here in Iraq. "Everyone has seen what I have seen."
"It has been two years," the psychiatrist said, "and not much has changed."
"It is like trying to yell through concrete walls. The sound comes back and
hurts your ears so you stop yelling; he has made the concrete that thick."
One of our translators said, referring to Iraq under Saddam Hussein and why
the rest of the world never paid attention to the cries of the Iraqi people.
"I was a resident of an American colony," an Iraqi said with a smile as he
referred to his time in a U.S. run prison in Iraq.
"They should all be killed," said an Iraqi friend when he talked about the
insurgents that the Multinational Forces and Iraqi forces have captured.
"When your hand is in the fire, it is different than when your hand is in
the snow," a Chaldean priest told the delegation, referring to a lack of
security in Iraq and why he, a priest, carries a gun.
"Ultimately, the U.S. forces are going to pull out," a U.S. major told us at
a military base outside the city of Karbala.
"Satellite television; praise be to God," said one of our drivers.
"Iraq is not only Fallujah. Now a days many villages, many towns are the
same," a woman told us. She talked about the suffering of the people in
Fallujah and Iraq in general after the U.S. invasion last fall.
"The occupation is responsible for bringing terrorists from outside the
country to inside the country," a woman told the delegation.
"If America wanted to eliminate terrorists, they could make it, but they use
Iraq as a big magnet to attract terrorists from all over the world," said
the representative of a shrine in the city of Karbala.
"Yes, there are foreign terrorists here. They are from the U.S., Britain,
Italy," said one woman when asked if she believed foreign militants were
responsible for the violence in Iraq.
"On this channel we have a show called Oprah," our landlord said while we
watched T.V.
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