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ali_ababa
10-29-2007, 10:07 PM
An article about a past Iraqi leader -


Discovery of ex-leader's body unleashes flood of memories and emotions. (http://www.iwpr.net/?p=icr&s=f&o=167565&apc_state=heniicr2004)

By Hussein Ali in Baghdad (ICR No. 75, 20-Jul-04)

Amir Alawi, 46, burst into tears of joy when he heard that the body of former president Abd al-Kareem Qassem had been found.

Killed in 1963 during a coup organised by members of the Baathist party, Qassem's body was recently discovered by a news team associated with Baghdad's Radio Dijla.

"The Baath regime was bloody and criminal from the beginning. Saddam was a coward and he was afraid of the dead, so he hid the tomb of al-Zaeem, the leader," Alawi told IWPR.

Saddam was outside Iraq when the coup overthrew Qassem, and he did not rise to power for another five years. And - if recently released testimony is to be believed - his regime did not even know where its former nemesis was buried.

Alawi's statements underline the feelings of many Iraqis - particularly those persecuted under Saddam - that the former president was a martyr to Baathist brutality.

For many Iraqis - especially the poor - Qassem's short-lived regime was a golden age, the first time they had a president who cared about them.....
Hussein Ali is an IWPR trainee.

http://www.iwpr.net/?p=icr&s=f&o=167565&apc_state=heniicr2004

SWJED
10-29-2007, 10:58 PM
Ali B - thanks much for the info on Abd al-Kareem Qassem. What I gather from your posts you are very fond of Qassem as are other Iraqis.

goesh
10-31-2007, 12:51 PM
Keep your eye on the prize, Ali, your children will know a better future than what you have now - our best haven't bled and died for al qaidah, al sadr or facist sheikhs to take over where saddam left off - I always believed in killing saddam and his loyalists but I became convinced of the mission and cause when I saw the purple fingers